Pope Slams 'Radical' Austrian Priests

Pope Benedict has ripped into a dissident group of Austrian priests for questioning some church teachings and advocating for married and female priests. He accused the group—known as the Pfarrer Initiative—of "a desperate push to do something to change the church in accordance with one's own preferences and ideas." He emphasized that church teachings are not merely his own. "We preach not private theories and opinions, but the faith of the church, whose servants we are," he said in an unusually stinging attack during Holy Thursday mass at the Vatican. He singled out the push for female priests, saying that the church has "received no authority form the Lord" to ordain women, notes the BBC. (More female priests stories.)