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Saturday 28 May 2016

Hostility to Christians Religious Persecution

Robert Cardinal Sarah, of  Guinea, is the Prefect for the Congregation of Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. For the second time, in the last year, he has urged priests to celebrate the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite, "ad orientem" or to the East (liturgical east). He was recently in Washington to address the assembled at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast.




Opening Remarks
Thank you for inviting me to this remarkable gathering, in the company of such a distinguished audience.
As you well know, what happens in the United States has repercussions everywhere. The entire globe looks to you, waiting and praying, to see what America resolves on the pressing challenges the world faces today. Such is your influence and responsibility.
I do not say this lightly, because we find ourselves in such portentous times.
1. The Situation of the World and the Mission of the Church
Rapid social and economic development in the past half century has not been accompanied by an equally fervent spiritual progress, as we witness what Pope Francis calls “globalized indifference.”
It is the result of giving in to the delusion that we are self-sufficient, that man is his own measure in a pervasive individualism. It is manifested in the fear of suffering in our societies, our closing our eyes and hearts to the poor and vulnerable, and, in a very despicable way, in how we discard the unborn and the elderly.
When he prophetically announced the Second Vatican Council in the Apostolic Constitution Humanae Salutis, Saint John XXIII remarked that the human community was in “turmoil” as it sought to establish a new world order where humanity relies entirely on technical and scientific solutions instead of God.
Today we are witnessing the next stage – and the consummation – of the efforts to build a utopian paradise on earth without God. It is the stage of denying sin and the fall altogether. But the death of God results in the burial of good, beauty, love and truth. Good becomes evil, beauty is ugly, love becomes the satisfaction of sexual primal instincts, and truths are all relative. 
So all manner of immorality is not only accepted and tolerated today in advanced societies, but even promoted as a social good. The result is hostility to Christians, and, increasingly, religious persecution.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the threat that societies are visiting on the family through a demonic “gender ideology,” a deadly impulse that is being experienced in a world increasingly cut off from God through ideological colonialism.
Saint Pope John XXIII observed in 1962:
“Tasks of immense gravity and amplitude await the Church, as in the most tragic periods of her history. The Church must now inject the vivifying and perennial energies of the gospel into the veins of the human community.”
This remains the challenge that the Church is facing presently, more even than in 1962, and it is our task today. This is what I spoke of in my book God or Nothing:
“Today the Church must fight against prevailing trends, with courage and hope, and not be afraid to raise her voice to denounce the hypocrites, the manipulators, and the false prophets. For two thousand years, the Church has faced many contrary winds but at the end of the most difficult journey, the victory was always won.”
2. The Family
“The future of the world and the Church passes through the family.” These prophetic words of Saint John Paul II show how the Church, in our time, must, above all, defend and promote the beauty of the Christian family in fidelity to God’s design. In his post-synodal Exhortation on the Family, Amoris Lætitia (“The Joy of Love”), Pope Francis states clearly: “In no way must the Church desist from proposing the full ideal of marriage, God’s plan in all its grandeur … proposing less than what Jesus offers to the human being.”  This is why the Holy Father openly and vigorously defends Church teaching on contraception, abortion, homosexuality, reproductive technologies, the education of children and much more. In my first five years as Archbishop of Conakry (Guinea, Africa), I made it my task to dedicate all of my pastoral letters to the family. Perhaps only the beauty of the family can reawaken the longing for God in the innermost recesses of the conscience of our brothers and sisters, and heal the wounds inflicted on our humanity by sin.
Saint John Paul, the Pope of the new evangelization, describes in Familiaris Consortiohow the family is the first place where the Gospel is welcomed and is also the first herald of the Gospel. How true this is!
The generous and responsible love of spouses, made visible through the self-giving of parents, who welcome and nurture children as a gift of God, makes love visible in our generation. It makes present the perfect charity of the Trinity. “If you see charity, you see the Trinity,” wrote Saint Augustine.
From the beginning of creation, God, who is a communion of persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three different Persons, yet one – has built a Trinitarian structure into our very nature. In the continent of my origin, Africa, we declare: “Man is nothing without woman, woman is nothing without man, and the two are nothing without a third element, which is the child.” The Triune God dwells within each of us and imbues our whole being: God’s own image and likeness.
Every human being, like the persons of the Trinity, has the capacity to be united with other persons in communion through the vinculum caritatis – the bond of charity – of the Holy Spirit. The family is a natural preparation and anticipation of the communion that is possible when we are united with God. The family, as it were, is a natural praeparatio evangelica – written into our nature.
This is why the devil is so intent on destroying the family. If the family is destroyed, we lose our God-given, anthropological foundations and so find it more difficult to welcome the saving Good News of Jesus Christ: self-giving, fruitful love.
St. John Paul explained: if it is true that the family is the place where more than anywhere else human beings can flourish and truly be themselves, it is also a place where human beings can be humanly and spiritually wounded.
The rupture of the foundational relationships of someone’s life – through separation, divorce or distorted impositions of the family, such as cohabitation and same sex unions – is a deep wound that closes the heart to self-giving love unto death, and even leads to cynicism and despair.
These situations cause damage to little children through inflicting upon them a deep existential doubt about love. They are a scandal – a stumbling block – that prevents the most vulnerable from believing in such love, and a crushing burden that can prevent them from opening to the healing power of the Gospel.
Advanced societies, including – I regret – this nation have done and continue to do everything possible to legalize such situations. But this can never be a truthful solution. It is like putting bandages on an infected wound. It will continue to poison the body until antibiotics are taken.
Sadly, the advent of artificial reproductive technologies, surrogacy, so-called homosexual “marriage”, and other evils of gender ideology, will inflict even more wounds in the midst of the generations we live with.
This is why it is so important to fight to protect the family, the first cell of the life of the Church and every society. This is not about abstract ideas. It is not an ideological war between competing ideas. This is about defending ourselves, children and future generations from a demonic ideology that says children do not need mothers and fathers. It denies human nature and wants to cut off entire generations from God.
3. Religious Freedom
I encourage you to truly make use of the freedom willed by your founding fathers, lest you lose it. In so many other countries, on almost a daily basis, we hear of merciless beheadings, futile bombings of churches, torching of orphanages and ruthless expulsions of entire families from homes that religious minorities suffer worldwide simply because of their beliefs. Even in this yet young twenty-first century of barely 16 years, one million people have been martyred around the world because of their belief in Jesus Christ.
Yet the violence against Christians is not just physical, it is also political, ideological and cultural. This form of religious persecution is equally damaging, yet more hidden. It does not destroy physically but spiritually; it demolishes the teaching of Jesus and His Church and, hence, the foundations of faith by leading souls astray. By this violence, political leaders, lobby groups and mass media seek to neutralize and depersonalize the conscience of Christians so as to dissolve them in a fluid society without religion and without God.  This is the will of the Evil One: to close Heaven … out of envy.
Do we not see signs of this insidious war in this great nation of the United States? In the name of “tolerance,” the Church’s teachings on marriage, sexuality and the human person are dismantled. The legalization of same sex marriage, the obligation to accept contraception within health care programs, and even “bathroom bills” that allow men to use the women’s restrooms and locker rooms. Should not a biological man use the men’s restroom? How simpler can that concept be?
How low we are sinking for a nation built on a set of moral claims about God, the human person, the meaning of life, and the purpose of society, given by America’s first settlers and founders! God is named in your founding documents as “Creator” and “Supreme Judge” over individuals and government. The human person endowed with God-given and therefore inalienable rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” George Washington wrote that “the establishment of Civil and Religious Liberty was the motive that induced me to the field of battle.”
Today, we find ourselves before the battle of a sickness that has pervaded our world. I repeat: the battle of a sickness. That is what we face. I call this sickness “the liquidation, the eclipse of God.” Pope Francis describes the causes of this “sickness.” I quote:
“Religious liberty is not only that of thought or private worship. It is freedom to live according to ethical principles consequent upon the truth found, be it privately or publicly. This is a great challenge in the globalized world, where weak thought – which is like a sickness – also lowers the general ethical level, and in the name of a false concept of tolerance ends up by persecuting those who defend the truth about man and the ethical consequences.”
What are the remedies to this sickness? What should we do to protect the family, religious freedom, and marriage – as revealed to us by God?
Concluding Remarks
Before such a distinguished gathering, I offer three humble suggestions.
1.       First: Be prophetic. The Book of Proverbs tells us: “Where there is no vision, discernment, the people perish” (29, 18). Discern carefully – in your lives, your homes, your workplaces – how, in your nation, God is being eroded, eclipsed, liquidated. Blessed Paul VI saw that in 1968 when, for the Church, he so courageously wrote Humanae Vitae. What are the threats to Christian identity and the family today? ISIS, the growing influence of China, the colonization of ideologies such as gender? How do we react? 
2.       Be faithful. This is my second suggestion. Specifically for you, as men and women called to influence even the political sphere you have a mission of bringing Divine Revelation to bear in the lives of your fellow citizens. Uphold the wise principles of your founding fathers. Do not be afraid to proclaim the truth with love, especially about marriage according to God’s plan, just as courageously as Saint John the Baptist, who risked his life to proclaim the truth. The battle to preserve the roots of mankind is perhaps the greatest challenge that our world has faced since its origins. In the words of Saint Catherine of Siena: “Proclaim the truth and do not be silent through fear.”
3.       Third: Pray. Sometimes, in front of happenings in the world, our nation or even the Church, the results of our prayer might tempt us to become discouraged. Like Sisyphus in the Greek myth: condemned to roll a large boulder uphill, only to see it roll down again as soon as he had reached the top. Pope Benedict XVI in Deus Caritas Est  encourages us : “People who pray are not wasting their time, even though the situation appears desperate and seems to call for action alone.”
Whether in doctrine or morality or everyday decisions, the heart of prayer is to discern God’s will. This can only happen in prolonged moments of silence where, like Elijah before the horrendous threats of Queen Jezebel, we allow the “gentle breeze” of God to enlighten us and confirm us along our journey to do God’s will. Such was the virginal silence of the Blessed Mother. At a marriage, the wedding feast of Cana, when for a new family “they have no wine,” Mary our Mother trusted in the grace given by Jesus to bestow the joy of love overflowing – Amoris Lætitia. She pronounced her very last words, “Do whatever He tells you” (John 2: 1-12). Then she remained silent.
Be prophetic. Be faithful. Pray. That is why I came to this prayer breakfast. To encourage you. Be prophetic. Be faithful. And, above all, pray. These three suggestions make present that the battle for the soul of America, and the soul of the world, is primarily spiritual. They show that the battle is fought firstly with our own conversion to God’s will every day.
And so I wholly welcome this initiative, and join you in prayer that this great country may experience a new great “spiritual awakening”, and help stem the tide of evil that is spreading in the world. I am confident that your efforts will no doubt contribute to protecting human life, strengthening the family, and safeguarding religious freedom not only here in these United States, but everywhere in the world.
For in the end: it is “God or nothing.”
Thank you very much.

8 comments:

Ana Milan said...

Our thanks to Cardinal Sarah for this uplifting address he gave to the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast which is truly in keeping with our Modernist times and for his witness to the Truth.

His recent plea to priests to celebrate the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite facing "ad orientem"is rather futile in Spain (and I'm sure other places in Europe) as we do not have Bishops & priests who are willing to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in this form. The fact that Pope Emeritus Benedict reminded us that Summorum Pontificum was never abrogated was ignored by our clergy and as Traditional Orders must have faculties from the local NO Bishop, who refuses, then this Rite is not made available to us. As Prefect for the Congregation of Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments I would urge him to use his influence to overcome this dislike for the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite. At this juncture of our history it is much more important that what was upheld by the CC for 1,500 years is not banished forever but nurtured and maintained as a right of inheritance of any baptised Catholic & should be available in every parish throughout the world - not must in a few places where the local Bishop is more tolerant of it.

TLM said...

How can you not love this man who is courageously determined to help the Church back to a Christ Centered Church?

Mark Thomas said...

I know where Robert Cardinal Sarah won't be on June 25, 2016 A.D. He won't attend the "Veri Catholici Conference/Manifestation in Rome, on Saturday June 25th to condemn the errors contained in the papal document, Amoris Laetitia, and demand in the name of all that is holy and true in the Catholic Religion, that the document be rescinded and that its authors and supporters repent publicly and undo the scandal they have caused."

Robert Cardinal Sarah declared:

"In his post-synodal Exhortation on the Family, Amoris Lætitia (“The Joy of Love”), Pope Francis states clearly: “In no way must the Church desist from proposing the full ideal of marriage, God’s plan in all its grandeur … proposing less than what Jesus offers to the human being.” This is why the Holy Father openly and vigorously defends Church teaching on contraception, abortion, homosexuality, reproductive technologies, the education of children and much more."

Robert Cardinal Sarah...Concluding Remarks

"Before such a distinguished gathering, I offer three humble suggestions.

3. "Pray. Whether in doctrine or morality or everyday decisions, the heart of prayer is to discern God’s will. This can only happen in prolonged moments of silence where, like Elijah before the horrendous threats of Queen Jezebel, we allow the “gentle breeze” of God to enlighten us and confirm us along our journey to do God’s will. Such was the virginal silence of the Blessed Mother. At a marriage, the wedding feast of Cana, when for a new family “they have no wine,” Mary our Mother trusted in the grace given by Jesus to bestow the joy of love overflowing – Amoris Lætitia."
================================================================================

Cardinal Sarah's tremendous address at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast is the blueprint that we need to construct the holy and powerful response required to combat in holy fashion that the Culture of Death's attack against the Truth, and, in particular, the attack against families.

Cardinal Sarah's references to Pope Francis' powerful defense and promotion of family and marriage, in particular, via Amoris Laetitia, is uplifting and necessary as we must stand with the Vicar of Christ Pope Francis in the holy battle against Satan's Culture of Death.

I pray that the folks at Veri Catholici read Cardinal Sarah's holy and uplifting address in question. That should spur Veri Catholici to cancel their conference designed to denounce Pope Francis and Amoris Laetitia.

It is time to follow Cardinal Sarah's lead. We must stand with Pope Francis and Amoris Laetitia's powerful defense and promotion of family and marriage. We are brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ. Please let us stand with Cardinal Sarah as, in turn, he stands with His Holiness Pope Francis.

Let us be at peace with Pope Francis, who, as Cardinal Sarah declared, "openly and vigorously defends Church teaching on contraception, abortion, homosexuality, reproductive technologies, the education of children and much more."

Pax.

Mark Thomas

Mark Thomas said...

Robert Cardinal Sarah said..."Sadly, the advent of artificial reproductive technologies, surrogacy, so-called homosexual “marriage”, and other evils of gender ideology, will inflict even more wounds in the midst of the generations we live with."

It is difficult enough for us to confront secular groups who support the above. That task is made even more difficult when such "Christian" communities as "mainstream" Protestant "churches" support the Culture of Death.

But even more horrific than that is the fact that the majority of Catholics, and that includes Mass-going (Novus Ordo) Catholics, support the evils that Cardinal Sarah noted.

A strong push by our Churchmen must be made to revitalize Western Church liturgy which, in turn, should form more Catholics who are loyal to Holy Mother Church. Our Churchmen must also make it clear that Catholics who cooperate with the satanic Culture of Death risk incurring the pains and fires of hell.

Pax.

Mark Thomas

Anonymous said...

"We must stand with Pope Francis and Amoris Laetitia's powerful defense and promotion of family and marriage."

You've got to be kidding!!! Allowing adulterers to receive Holy Communion and commit sacrilege is defending the family????

Wake up and smell the coffee!!!

Mark Thomas said...

"You've got to be kidding!!! Allowing adulterers to receive Holy Communion and commit sacrilege is defending the family????"

Anybody who permits that should read the following from Robert Cardinal Sarah:

"In his post-synodal Exhortation on the Family, Amoris Lætitia (“The Joy of Love”), Pope Francis states clearly: "In no way must the Church desist from proposing the full ideal of marriage, God’s plan in all its grandeur...proposing less than what Jesus offers to the human being."

They should also read the following from Church Militant:

http://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/pope-francis-no-communion-for-divorced-and-remarried

"Pope Francis: No Communion for Divorced and Remarried"

Pax.

Mark Thomas

Peter Lamb said...

“Religious liberty is not only that of thought or private worship. It is freedom to live according to ethical principles consequent upon the truth found, be it privately or publicly. This is a great challenge in the globalized world, where weak thought – which is like a sickness – also lowers the general ethical level, and in the name of a false concept of tolerance ends up by persecuting those who defend the truth about man and the ethical consequences.”

So speaks a modernist quoted by another modernist.

No Catholic has liberty of religious thought - he is taught, or learns the True Faith and is guided by it; he submits and adheres to the true Faith, in toto, or not at all.
A Catholic does not live by "ethical principles", but by the Truth revealed to him by God and his Church.

"To the shepherds alone was given all power to teach, to judge, to direct; on the faithful was imposed the duty of following their teach-ing, of submitting with docility to their judgment, and of allowing themselves to be governed, corrected, and guided by them in the way of salvation. Thus, it is an absolute necessity for the simple faithful to submit in mind and heart to their own pastors, and for the latter to submit with them to the Head and Supreme Pastor."
(Pope Leo XIII, Letter Epistola Tua to Cardinal Guibert, June 17, 1885; excerpted in Papal Teachings: The Church, p. 263.)

The persecuted are not those who defend the "truth about man" and "ethical consequences", they are those who defend the Truth of God and eternal consequences.
Typical modernist gobbledegook! Sounds great, almost orthodox, but when one analyses it - modernist tripe.

"Our Apostolic Mandate requires from Us that We watch over the purity of the Faith and the integrity of Catholic discipline. It requires from Us that We protect the faithful from evil and error; especially so when evil and error are presented in dynamic language which, concealing vague notions and ambiguous expressions with emotional and high-sounding words, is likely to set ablaze the hearts of men in pursuit of ideals which, whilst attractive, are nonetheless nefarious."
—Pope St. Pius X, Apostolic Letter Notre Charge Apostolique, 1910.)

Peter Lamb said...

"...diabolical error, when it has artfully colored its lies, easily clothes itself in the likeness of truth while very brief additions or changes corrupt the meaning of expressions; and confession, which usually works salvation, sometimes, with a slight change, inches toward death."
—Pope Clement XIII, Encyclical In Dominico Agro (1761), par. 2.)

"… [The heretic Nestorius] expressed himself in a plethora of words, mixing true things with others that were obscure; mixing at times one with the other in such a way that he was also able to confess those things which were denied while at the same time possessing a basis for denying those very sentences which he confessed."
(Pope Pius VI, Bull Auctorem Fidei.)

TH2 recently hit the nail square on its head when he wrote: "No more middle ground. Yes or no, Christ or Anti-Christ."

I hear a storm coming but the truth must out. Cardinals Sarah and Burke - modernists. Bishop Schneider - modernist. They cast out pearls of orthodoxy periodically to bamboozle poor desperate traditionalists who crave orthodoxy, thereby keeping these poor souls in the conciliar ambit. Mixing orthodoxy and heresy is standard modernist operating technique! These pseudo traditionalist heroes continue to steadfastly march behind Bergoglio and his conciliar flag. They remain ensconced in the conciliar church. They are Judas goats.
Christ has nothing with belial. We are for Our Lord, or against Him. If they are really Catholic prelates, let them stand up and say so. Let them loudly, bravely, manfully renounce the conciliar heresy and lead us Catholics to real, entire orthodoxy!
Recognizing the truth of our situation is not easy, comfortable, or pleasant. There is a price to be paid, but what a small price compared to what Our Lord paid for us. Modernist camp followers will pay the same price as their masters. How terribly will the wilfully blind rue their ways! The abettors, the allies, the promoters, the consorts, the concealers, the informed followers of heretics will pay the same eternal price as their masters.