Post by hoyaloya on Feb 3, 2014 15:59:15 GMT -5
Not only for every idle word but for every idle silence must man render an account – St. Ambrose
Is Pope Francis urging our silence on abortion and other core issues? The mass media have so interpreted his recent statement. In effect, their message is that we should play nice, not be scolds making people uncomfortable. But here is what Cardinal Raymond Burke had to say.
From an article by Robert Moynihan in the January 2014 issue of the magazine Inside the Vatican:
“Raymond Arroyo, the EWTN news host, … asks Burke about those who would like the Church to stop talking about abortion and gay marriage, and who say that Pope Francis explicitly urged Catholics to “stick to the essentials.”
Burke replies:
Well I, the Pope’s statement, it doesn’t state that. In fact it’s a text that’s not altogether easy to interpret. But my response is, what could be more essential than the natural moral law? In other words, these are, these acts that are always and everywhere evil, they’re the first commands of our conscience, to respect human life, to respect the integrity of the family, and to respect conscience. And so, to me the Pope can’t be saying, I can’t interpret that phrase of his, as saying that these are not essentials. I’m not exactly sure why he mentioned it. One gets the impression, or it’s interpreted this way in the media, that he thinks we’re talking too much about abortion, too much about the integrity of marriage as between one man and one woman. But we can never talk enough about that! As long as in our society innocent and defenseless human life is being attacked in a most savage way, I mean, it’s literally a massacre of the unborn, when this is extending now to those… to the aged, to those who are, have chronic illnesses, to those who are severely handicapped, and also to the whole question of creating human embryos artificially in order to destroy them, or in experimentation: we can never talk enough about that, because if we don’t get this straight, that human life, innocent and defenseless human life is an inviolable dignity, how are we going to understand anything else correctly with regard to care of the sick or whatever it might be?”
I agree. You?
Of concern, however, is the disturbing news that Pope Francis has removed Cardinal Burke and Cardinal Rigali [another who spoke out on abortion] from key Vatican committees. And some priests have been quick to adopt the media’s interpretation, which supports their own decisions to stay silent on such issues. One homilist suggested that backing off these issues is a Christ-like approach. Is it?
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. Matthew 10:34-35
And He made a whip of small cords and put them all out of the Temple, with the sheep and the oxen, sending in all directions the small money of the changers and overturning their tables. John 2:13-16
And everyone who commits an offense against one of these little ones who believe in me, it were profitable for him that a donkey's millstone would be hung around his neck and he be sunk in the depths of the sea. Matthew 18: 6
He will come ready to clean the grain, separating the good grain from the chaff. He will put the good part of the grain into his barn, but he will burn the chaff with a fire that cannot be put out. Luke 3:17
For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell putting them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others; if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)— if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment. Peter 2:4-9
Peter’s words remind me that the apostles and disciples cared not that their words made their listeners uncomfortable.
Is Pope Francis urging our silence on abortion and other core issues? The mass media have so interpreted his recent statement. In effect, their message is that we should play nice, not be scolds making people uncomfortable. But here is what Cardinal Raymond Burke had to say.
From an article by Robert Moynihan in the January 2014 issue of the magazine Inside the Vatican:
“Raymond Arroyo, the EWTN news host, … asks Burke about those who would like the Church to stop talking about abortion and gay marriage, and who say that Pope Francis explicitly urged Catholics to “stick to the essentials.”
Burke replies:
Well I, the Pope’s statement, it doesn’t state that. In fact it’s a text that’s not altogether easy to interpret. But my response is, what could be more essential than the natural moral law? In other words, these are, these acts that are always and everywhere evil, they’re the first commands of our conscience, to respect human life, to respect the integrity of the family, and to respect conscience. And so, to me the Pope can’t be saying, I can’t interpret that phrase of his, as saying that these are not essentials. I’m not exactly sure why he mentioned it. One gets the impression, or it’s interpreted this way in the media, that he thinks we’re talking too much about abortion, too much about the integrity of marriage as between one man and one woman. But we can never talk enough about that! As long as in our society innocent and defenseless human life is being attacked in a most savage way, I mean, it’s literally a massacre of the unborn, when this is extending now to those… to the aged, to those who are, have chronic illnesses, to those who are severely handicapped, and also to the whole question of creating human embryos artificially in order to destroy them, or in experimentation: we can never talk enough about that, because if we don’t get this straight, that human life, innocent and defenseless human life is an inviolable dignity, how are we going to understand anything else correctly with regard to care of the sick or whatever it might be?”
I agree. You?
Of concern, however, is the disturbing news that Pope Francis has removed Cardinal Burke and Cardinal Rigali [another who spoke out on abortion] from key Vatican committees. And some priests have been quick to adopt the media’s interpretation, which supports their own decisions to stay silent on such issues. One homilist suggested that backing off these issues is a Christ-like approach. Is it?
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. Matthew 10:34-35
And He made a whip of small cords and put them all out of the Temple, with the sheep and the oxen, sending in all directions the small money of the changers and overturning their tables. John 2:13-16
And everyone who commits an offense against one of these little ones who believe in me, it were profitable for him that a donkey's millstone would be hung around his neck and he be sunk in the depths of the sea. Matthew 18: 6
He will come ready to clean the grain, separating the good grain from the chaff. He will put the good part of the grain into his barn, but he will burn the chaff with a fire that cannot be put out. Luke 3:17
For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell putting them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others; if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)— if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment. Peter 2:4-9
Peter’s words remind me that the apostles and disciples cared not that their words made their listeners uncomfortable.