On the occasion of Mother’s Day, an appeal for discrimination against unmarried mothers to be ended was made by the auxiliary bishop of Salzburg Andreas Laun. “They are mothers who should be honoured” and who deserve support, he declared to the Austrian Catholic press agency Kathpress. Laun deplored the fact that discrimination against unmarried mothers is not yet a thing of the past. Christians, however “are severely prohibited from condemning” other persons, “setting themselves as judges” or “expressing moral indignation”. “Instead of pointing the finger of blame at unmarried mothers and discriminating against them”, Laun suggested we judge more severely the men responsible for these situations. The bishop expressed self-criticism for those within the Church who had connived at or shared responsibility for such discrimination: “Unfortunately we have to admit that there have been priests who have contributed to this atmosphere”, since they were unable to reconcile the Church’s rejection of pre-matrimonial unions with the necessary compassion for “sinners”. “We are no longer indignant about those who live more uxorio , it’s true, but we are only too glad to condemn those women who were ‘too stupid to think of contraception’ and who, once they realized they were expecting an unplanned child, refused the option of having an abortion”. The bishop also deplored the fact that unmarried mothers have difficulty in finding a partner and appealed to men to have the magnanimity to marry them, “not out of compassion but out of love; love for the mother and for the child”.
