Secularist hypocrites against reason and free speech

I picked this up from Sancte Pater to whom a biretta tip   o{]:¬)   is owed.   The original is at EWTN.

Are you ready for this sort of thing where you are?

http://jonkepa.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/roucovarela.jpgActivists forced the Archdiocese of Madrid, Spain to cancel a speech Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco Varela planned to give at the Autonomous University of Madrid on Dec. 1.

The Spanish radio network, COPE, criticized the “aggressive secularism” of such activists in an editorial on its website.

Cardinal Rouco was scheduled to give a lecture titled, “The God who is unknown to 21st century Spaniards.” However, several days ago activist groups began calling for the event to be disrupted. The Spanish government said it could not guarantee the cardinal’s security, and Church officials therefore decided to cancel the speech.

“What happened here is another example of the cultural paradigm that seeks to impose aggressive secularism,” the editorial stated, while denouncing the activists’ “efforts to silence anyone who would speak of God and the meaning of man’s existence.”

And there is the added irony that freedom and truth have become a nuisance at the place which is supposed to be the pillar of knowledge – the university,” the editorial continued.  [Like the experience of the Holy Father when he could not go to La Sapienza.]

Because of these threats, COPE said, students will not hear the cardinal speak “about ‘the God who is unknown’ to the Spaniards of our day, like St. Paul did at the Areopagus of Athens.”

“The difference is that while 2,000 years ago, St. Paul could freely speak of the ‘unknown God,’ now an entire democratic system has caved in to the threats of violence, refusing to guarantee freedom and order on the university campus,” COPE stated.

The editorial also criticized the Spanish government for its unwillingness to “defend the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution,” and university officials “who also have done nothing to defend their own students.”

Hypocrites.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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24 Comments

  1. Maltese says:

    Around 18 years ago, while a student at the University of Michigan, I was unpriviledged enough to hear Hans Kung give a speech, in which he forcefully argued for abortion. He was applauded.

    It’s easy to lose sight of just how topsy-turvy this world is. But certainly, the above example of Kung, and the fact that a Cardinal was forced to be quiet, should offer a clue as to the sort of spiritual environment in which we live.

  2. Supertradmum says:

    What I am concerned about is the odd statement that the government could not guarantee the Cardinal’s safety. Is there such anarchy in Spain? Obviously, it is no longer a free country open to freedom of speech. Again, we see the “tyranny of the liberal”. Nuestra Senora del Pilar, have mercy on us and Europe.

  3. MikeM says:

    In my experience at a prominent secular university in the US, the majority of students are respectful of my faith and eager to engage people of religious perspectives even if they are not religious, themselves… BUT, I’ve been spit on, had dirt thrown at me, and been screamed at in the middle of the bookstore when I was just trying to buy a book, all by people who I hadn’t even been talking to at all, because I’m Catholic.

    I think that the lesson is that it only takes a few idiots to ruin the whole tenor of things. I’ve been in classes that directly address religious issues where I was the only Catholic, and where Christians were a small minority, and have been very impressed by just how far other students will go to make sure that, even if they have radically different world views, I am free to comfortably express my positions (something I do my best to reciprocate.) In my experience, it’s a very small minority around here who operate using intimidation and insults… I guess things could be different in Spain, but I suspect that it’s the same there, too. It’s too bad the jerks won this one.

  4. Prof. Basto says:

    Terrible.

    But I am of the opinion that the Cardinal should have gone ahead anyway, even if “his security could not be guaranteed”.

    And if, by force of the evil that is in this world and that has been conquering the minds of many, the good Cardinal’s security of person came to be indeed violated; say, if the mob phisically attacked and beat the Cardinal, then, firstly, he would receive such beating as Christ’s representative. And Christ certaily did not back down for fear of what would happen to Him. Secondly, he would receive such a beating while in the purpose of spreading the message of the Gospel, and as a Cardinal he swore to be unfailing in his duty of propagating the Faith and the Holy Church even unto the shedding of blood. Thirdly, such a beating would ensure worldwide attention to the anti-Catholicism that is now present even in formerly Catholic societies and States, in former strongholds of the Faith, where the majority of the population is still nominally Catholic; it would call to attention the hipocrisy of the liberals, of their message of supposed tollerance for all views (when actually only the heterodox views are respected), the hipocrisy of the Spanish Government, of the university authorities and the worldwide diffusion of anti-Catholicism as the last acceptable form of prejudice.

  5. Torkay says:

    Worse than hypocrites – Satanists.

  6. Supertradmum says:

    MikeM,

    Your reward is both now, as a knight in the Church Militant, and in heaven. God bless you.

  7. Jacob says:

    I agree with Prof. Basto that His Eminence should have gone anyway.

  8. EoinOBolguidhir says:

    There was some sort of significance to the red of a cardinal’s clericals that Cardinal Burke had mentioned recently. Does anyone remember what he said?

    When push comes to shove, all liberals are wussies of the first order. They are men enough to do anything, even their women.

  9. danphunter1 says:

    If I lived in Spain I would have offered my service’s to His Eminence as a bodygaurd, no doubt.

  10. There is a reason that cardinals wear red.

  11. thickmick says:

    If I lived in Spain I would have also offered my service as a bodyguard and woe be the swine who attempted to harm His Eminence, Deus Vult!

  12. kittenchan says:

    no wonder the instances of bullying in the world have risen so sharply, when the wisdom of the age is telling the bullied to hide rather than confronting the bullies.

    This is how evil is set free to wreak its destruction.

  13. EoinOBolguidhir says:

    Perhaps if the Cardinal were still able to retain a gentiluomo this may have been averted.

  14. Brad says:

    Torkay is exactly right, although this is a hard Truth that most can’t bear to hear. And by satanists, I assume he means both overt satanists and the remaining 99% of secularists who are so ignorant of Judeo-Christianity that don’t even know they worship him, their demonic spiritual father who uttered the original “non servium” that they now vomitously echo.

    Instead of St. Teresa and St. John, Spain now has men french kissing each other as the pope drives by them. The two saints would be the first to say, however, that we must pray for the secularists, exemplified by the aforementioned men, because they are being utterly victimized by the devil.

    When secularists and progressives die and face the four last things, they will be in utter fear and shock to comprehend that their life was spent as a marionette of the father of lies. Only Christ can save them at that moment by greatly pitying poisoned sheep.

    We must all remember this applies to ourselves as well, especially during Advent, since we all, to varying degrees, offend the Trinity and Mary every day.

  15. Stvsmith2009 says:

    Liberals have a distorted view of what it means to be tolerant. To be tolerant means for example, that you and I have opposing views or ideas about a particular subject, but neither uses any means necessary to stop the other from having or expressing his view. A liberal thinks that to be tolerant one has to accept each and every idea that they have. So, if I oppose abortion, euthanasia, same sex marriage, etc., then I am an intolerant bigot. I tend to believe that liberal mindset would have been right at “home” with the thinking and actions of Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot just to name a few.

  16. Emilio III says:

    The week before this happened, I read in a Spanish blog (which unfortunately I can’t find right now) this prayer by St Francis Xavier composed in his final ilness:

    “Bendice ahora que se gasta
    mi luz, a Ignacio y Loyola…
    Cuida a mi gente española…
    Y si algún día mi casta
    reniega de Ti y no basta
    para aplacar Tu poder,
    en la balanza poner
    sus propios merecimientos…,
    ¡Pon también los sufrimientos
    que sufrió por Ti Javier!”

    This seems to be the “day” he was praying about.

  17. Clinton says:

    I don’t agree with those who imply that Cardinal Rouco Varela either lacks in the courage
    department, or has forgotten the significance of a Cardinal’s scarlet. These thugs have
    promised to meet his visit with a violent disruption and the government and the university
    can’t/won’t guarantee order. If some sort of mob violence broke out, it’s certain that it
    would not just be His Eminence who would be injured (or worse).

    Back in 2008, the Holy Father was scheduled to give a talk at La Sapienza, in Rome.
    Bigots (for that is what they are) used the same tactics, and the Pope was forced to decline
    the university’s invitation to speak. (The new rector of La Sapienza has denounced that
    episode, and the ignorance and bigotry of the students and faculty who precipitated it.
    I believe he also re-issued an invitation to the Holy Father). At any rate, note that Papa
    Benedict’s response to the situation was much the same as Cardinal Rouco Varela’s.

    It’s a curious world where an outright thug like Amadinajhad of Iran can address Columbia
    university without riots breaking out, yet a Pope or a Cardinal cannot be guaranteed a
    similar protection from the law or the university. The men of the Church are not the craven
    parties here.

  18. eulogos says:

    Mike M-what book?
    I’d be interested in hearing more about the three incidents you mention.

    Prof. Basto, Yes.. reminds me of what St. Francis said would be perfect joy!

    And St. Paul didn’t escape without blows: “Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep” although I think the Athenians merely laughed at him.

    Susan Peterson

  19. Clinton says:

    It would have been lovely if the King or some high government officials had declared their
    burning interest in hearing what His Eminence had to say and announced their intention
    to sit front and center in the audience. I suspect that the law and the university would then
    have found the wherewithal to guarantee order…

  20. santoeusebio says:

    I do not think there is anything very novel in this story. The Earl of Carnavon, a high Tory Protestant, visited Spain during the Carlist Wars in the early part of the 19th Century. In his book “Portugal & Galicia” he mentions that he had never met anyone more illiberal than a Spanish liberal saying they wanted to abolish the death penalty except for Jews. He goes on to deplore the massacres of Priests and Nuns in those wars in Spain and recounts the baleful effect on the poor of the dissolution of the Monasteries in Portugal.

    If you read Hugh Thomas’s “The Spanish Civil War” he says that extreme anti-clericalism in Spain existed from the time of the abject surrender to Napoleon. This is why I believe there is nothing particularly novel in these deplorable events.

    Nicolas Bellord

  21. Traductora says:

    The Spanish government had absolutely no interest in guaranteeing Rouco’s safety; this is the most aggressively anti-Catholic government since the 1930s. Zapatero has been on the attack against the Church since day one. Rouco is very orthodox and has revitalized the Church in Madrid. He has stood very firm against governmental pressure, although diplomatically (he is a Gallego, and they are famous for their political skills), but his mere existence infuriates the Spanish government.

    The use of the mob has a long tradition in the Spanish left, and the use of anticlericalism and anti-Catholicism an equally long one.

  22. Traductora says:

    BTW, for those who think the Cardinal should have spoken anyway, there most certainly would have been violence – and it would have been blamed on him. The press would have claimed that he provoked it by appearing. As in the US, the press is hand in glove with the leftist government.

    COPE is a radio and TV station owned by the Spanish Council of Bishops, btw.

  23. irishgirl says:

    The word ‘hypocrites’ fits the authorities of the university for denying Cardinal Rouco the right to speak.
    If I were a strong man instead of a weak woman, I would have joined with dan and mick in being a bodyguard for His Eminence!

  24. ASD says:

    Hypocrites.

    Thought experiment: What if a Muslim had been threatened?

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