15, April 2024
Cardinal Robert Sarah says Western prelates have lost their nerve 0
An African cardinal widely seen as a conservative critic of Pope Francis, and styled by some as possible candidate for the papacy himself, has warned of what he described as a “practical atheism” taking hold within the Catholic Church.
Cardinal Robert Sarah of Guinea also repeated his criticism of Fiducia Supplicans, the recent Vatican document authorizing blessings of couples involved in same-sex unions, insisting that it’s not just traditional African culture but Catholic teaching itself which makes the document unacceptable.
Speaking to the episcopal conference of Cameroon, Cardinal Robert Sarah of Guinea, the Vatican’s former top official for liturgy, criticized Western bishops for their reluctance to oppose secular worldly values, accusing them of a failure of nerve.
“Many Western prelates are tetanized by the idea of opposing the world. They dream of being loved by the world; they’ve lost the desire to be a sign of contradiction,” said the 78-year-old Sarah.
Sarah told the Cameroonian bishops he believes “the Church of our time is experiencing the temptation of atheism. Not intellectual atheism, but that subtle and dangerous state of mind [of] fluid and practical atheism.”
“The latter is a dangerous disease, even if its initial symptoms seem benign,” he said.
According to Sarah, practical atheism is more insidious than its intellectual counterpart, as it does not declare itself openly but seeps into every aspect of contemporary culture, including ecclesiastical discourse.
He asserted that the Church and its leadership has been guilty of “accommodating, of complicity with this major lie that is fluid and practical atheism.”
“We pretend to be Christian believers and men of faith. We celebrate religious rites, but in fact we live as pagans and unbelievers,” Sarah said.
Sarah described “fluid and practical atheism” as a treacherous and elusive force. He compared it to being caught in a spider’s web, where efforts to escape only tighten its grip. This brand of atheism, he argues, is a masterful trap set by Satan himself.
The Church leader emphasized that this form of atheism preys on human frailties and on man’s tendencies to give in to its deceptions. He urged that within the Church, there should be no factions or self-proclaimed saviors, as such divisions play into the adversary’s hands.
“We don’t have to create parties in the Church; we don’t have to proclaim ourselves the saviors of this or that institution,” he said.
“But each of us can decide today: the lie of atheism will no longer pass through me; I no longer wish to renounce the light of faith; I no longer wish, out of convenience, laziness or conformism, to allow light and darkness to cohabit within me,” Sarah said.
“To maintain the spirit of faith,” he said, “is to reject anything that undermines it and to view the world solely through the lens of faith, holding steadfastly to God’s hand,” calling that the only path to true peace and kindness.
Sarah condemned the “bitterness and partisanship” that have plagued the Church, suggesting that these issues are symptomatic of a deeper spiritual crisis. He stressed that only a spirit of faith can foster genuine brotherly love and bring peace to a world ravaged by deceit and conflict.
The cleric also exhorted the episcopate in Africa to defend what he called the “unity of faith” in the face of Western distortions.
Referring to the October 2024 session of the ongoing Synod of Bishops on Synodality, Sarah praised the spirited defense African Church leaders have mounted of traditional doctrine and values.
“At the last Synod, the Church in Africa forcefully defended the dignity of the man and woman created by God. Her voice was ignored and scorned by those whose sole obsession is to please Western lobbies,” Sarah said.
“The Church in Africa will soon have to defend the truth of the priesthood and the unity of the faith. The Church in Africa is the voice of the poor, the simple and the small,” he said.
The cleric noted that while the African Church today plays a critical role in upholding the word of God, Western Christians seem to be misled by their wealth into a false sense of enlightenment and modernity.
Sarah highlighted the unique position of African bishops as guardians of the faith’s universality, standing against those, he said, who fragment the truth and promote a culture of relativism. He praised their role as messengers of divine truth, suggesting that God often chooses the seemingly weak and unpopular to confound the strong and well-regarded.
Sarah also commended the bishops of Cameroon for their opposition to Fiducia Supplicans, the recent Vatican document permitting blessings for same-sex couples and others in non-traditional relationships. Sarah called the Cameroonians’ decision not to implement it as a “bold and prophetic move” that upholds the unity of the Church and the truth of its teachings.
He criticized the notion that African bishops’ resistance to Fiducia Supplicans is rooted in traditional African culture, dismissing such claims as a form of intellectual neo-colonialism.
Instead, Sarah pointed to the Symposium of Episcopal Conference of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM)’s statement, which outlined theological and doctrinal reasons for not adopting such blessings in Africa, including previous declarations on homosexuality, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Sacred Scriptures, and concerns about the language used in the Vatican document.
The President of the National Episcopal Conference of Cameroon, Archbishop Andrew Nkea Fuanya, told Crux that Sarah “is a great man of God, an icon of the Catholic Church in Africa and it’s a great opportunity that he is amongst us.”
“He has taught us to go into intimacy with God in silence, because there is so much noise in this world,” Nkea said.
Source: Crux
5, July 2024
Vatican excommunicates major Pope Francis critic for ‘schism’ 0
The Vatican has excommunicated Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, one of Pope Francis’s most virulent critics, after judging him guilty of splitting the Church, the dicastery in charge of doctrine said Friday.
The 83-year-old ultra conservative, who has called in the past for Francis to resign as pope, has been on trial since last month after being accused by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith of the crime of schism, or splitting the Catholic Church.
“His public statements manifesting his refusal to recognise and submit to the Supreme Pontiff, his rejection of communion with the members of the Church subject to him, and of the legitimacy and magisterial authority of the Second Vatican Council are well known,” wrote the dicastery in a statement.
“At the conclusion of the penal process, the Most Reverend Carlo Maria Vigano was found guilty of the reserved delict of schism,” it wrote, adding that his punishment was “excommunication” in accordance with canon law.
An excommunicated Catholic is prohibited from administering and receiving the sacraments and from exercising ecclesiastical functions, according to canon law.
Vigano — who served as the Vatican’s papal envoy to the United States from 2011 to 2016 and who is backed by an ultra-conservative US church faction — has been an outspoken critic of Francis, going so far as accusing him of heresy.
In announcing last month that he had been summoned to appear before the powerful dicastery, which is charged with defending Catholic doctrine, the retired archbishop wrote on X: “I regard the accusations against me as an honour.”
He did not appear before the tribunal, which judged him in absentia.
– ‘Judged as a heretic’-
In a pages-long declaration, Vigano railed against Francis’s welcome for undocumented migrants, his “delirious encyclicals” about climate change and authorisation of blessings for same-sex couples, and accused him of promoting his allies.
“I accuse Jorge Mario Bergoglio of heresy and schism, and I ask that he be judged as a heretic and schismatic and removed from the Throne which he has unworthily occupied for over eleven years,” he wrote last month, using the Argentine pope’s given name.
Vigano is allied with staunch traditionalists within the Church, especially in the United States, who have battled Francis’s more progressive moves on liturgical or social issues, such as the Latin Mass or welcoming LGBTQ people into the Church.
Accusing him of sowing confusion and failing to uphold key Catholic beliefs, they have sometimes called into question the legitimacy of Francis as leader of the world’s 1.3 million Catholics — raising fears of a rupture within the Church.
In 2018, Vigano made headlines by calling for Francis’s resignation, publishing a scathing list of accusations over the pope’s management of sexual abuse cases within the Church.
In particular, Vigano accused Francis of having long protected former American cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was defrocked a year later for sexual abuse against a minor.
Vigano again caused a major scandal in 2019 by publishing a long letter of unconditional support for then-US President Donald Trump, criticizing confinement measures during the Covid pandemic and defending a crackdown on rioters in the United States.
In November, in a rare move, Francis dismissed US bishop Joseph Strickland, a prominent conservative who had repeatedly criticised his papacy from his Tyler, Texas diocese.
Source: AFP