Card. Sarah: “Catholics can no longer remain silent.”

The Church and her Lord cannot be separated.   The Church and the Catholic Christian cannot separated.   The Lord endured His Passion and Cross.  So too must the Church and individual Catholics endure a passions and crosses.   The Church is, I think, entering into a particularly savage time of Passion and Cross.   So, too, her members, if they are faithful and have not, as Paul warns the Romans, conformed themselves to the world.

A poignant tweet came from Robert Card. Sarah.

“The profanations continue to increase in Europe. Recent acts upon statues of the Virgin Mary in French churches demonstrate how much these gestures reveal barbaric hatred. They call for reactions. Catholics can can no longer remain silent.” +RS

I greatly admire Card. Sarah.   Read his books and you get a sense of the depth and steel within his gentle soul.

When someone like Card. Sarah starts to say, “ENOUGH!  We need to ACT!”, then it is time to act.  Appropriately, but with strength.

The only way that will happen is if we can

RECOVER and REVITALIZE our CATHOLIC IDENTITY.

I’ve written a thousand times here.

How we worship God, in our sacred liturgical worship, is an essential element of our identity as Catholics. We are our rites. They form us and tell us who we are.   No wonder the enemy is attacking statues of Mary in our churches in the Church’s “eldest daughter”!  The serpent went for Eve, too!

Every initiative, all of our Catholic Thing, starts with worship and all of it is connected to worship.  It all must then be brought back to worship.

Without properly ordered worship, we don’t know who we are.  We are our rites.

Couple that with ignorance of or the defiance of the content of the Faith, and we wind up with flocks who have no idea who they are as Catholics, who can’t explain themselves, share what they believe.

If that is what we have become, then why should anyone listen to us? We will be easily driven from the public square.  That’s what’s happening.

This is yet another reason why Summorum Pontificum is so important.

I’m with Card. Sarah.  We must act.

If statues are being attacked in France, then we have to react where we are too.   What can we do?

How about organizing a recitation of the Rosary and Litany of Loreto in reparation?   How about a day of reflection with a Votive Mass of the Blessed Virgin?   How about obtaining, or restoring a statue of Mary?

What else can you do, if you can’t go to France and stand guard in a church?

Augustine points out that when there is charity, there are no distances.

How can you act?

 

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
This entry was posted in ACTION ITEM!, Be The Maquis, Hard-Identity Catholicism, Liturgy Science Theatre 3000, The Coming Storm, The Drill, The future and our choices, The Last Acceptable Prejudice and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

11 Comments

  1. philosophicallyfrank says:

    How to act? 1st by understanding that the “ordinary” form of the Mass is illegal. Correct me if I am wrong; but, a decision of a Great Council of the Bishops of the world in union with the reigning Pope is the word of the “Holy Spirit”. In signing “Sacrosanctum Concilium”, Pope St. Paul VI ended with the following: “Each and every one of the matters set forth in this Constitution has been approved by the Fathers of the Sacred Council. And We, by the apostolic authority given Us by Christ, together with the Venerable Fathers, approve, decree and ordain it’s contents in the “HOLY SPIRIT”, and “ORDER” that what has been thus decided in council be “PROMULGATED” to the glory of God.”
    Capitalization of: “HOLY SPIRIT”, “ORDER” and “PROMULGATED” is my emphasis.
    This was never done and a totally distorted and profane mass was instituted instead. As such the only Mass that is legitimate is the “Extraordinary ” form; unless the Mass called for by “Sacrosanctum Concilium” is adopted. The changes that the Holy Spirit called for need to be made and the abuses need to be deleted. To my knowledge (as limited as it is) the only diocese that has made the called for changes was the Archdiocese of Colombo by Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith along with a “Year of the Eucharist” ; during which he had every priest in the Archdiocese retrained and ordered that “no abuses would be allowed”. That was back during 2010 to 2011. We need to start demanding the Bishops do their job; whether by mail, e-mail, phone, protesting in what ever way can be imagined. Otherwise nothing will be done for another generation, at least; considering the type of Bishop that Pope Francis appears to favor.

  2. sggreener says:

    Our actions and prayers will have to be done without any chance of support from Rome or most bishops.

  3. lifelong Catholic says:

    Of course praying is our priority, but Catholics need to know who the enemy is. We have essays by loyal Catholics about the problems in the Church, but (in my lowly lay opinion) not enough is done to name names or report on their activities. When Church Militant does so, they get blasted by the “Old Guard” of Catholic Journalism. “philosophicallyfrank” rightly ends his commentary with “we need to start demanding the Bishops do their job….”. Unfortunately some of us do not have bishops who are on the side of protecting the Church from continual “change”. Others have bishops who are weak-willed or afraid that they will be removed, forced into retirement or sent to the “re-education camps” to change their attitudes by Jorge ‘Francis’ Bergoglio if they speak up or go against the Modernists. But the “change agents” are never still. One specific movement of priests which has gained momentum since its founding in 2011 is AUSCP. Loyal Catholics are concerned about women’s ordination. The American Association of Catholic Priests (AUSCP) actively promotes it. An organization of lay people called Voice of the Faithful in a newsletter “Voice Matters – Keep the Faith, Change the Church Fall 2019” tells its members to “Ask your bishop to support an ordained women’s diaconate”. If you would like to see what the change agents are doing, go to their websites. Prayer is first and foremost; but just as the pro-life movement acts, “loyal” Catholics must also act. If websites are permitted in this commentary, I submit:
    https://www.lepantoin.org/us-bishops-support-priest-assembly-calling-for-womens-ordination/
    http://www.votf.org/VoiceMattersNewsletter/VoiceMattersNewsletterFall2019.pdf
    http://votf.org/node/1182

  4. Suburbanbanshee says:

    Oh, come on. Why should everything be top down? Did devotion to the Sacred Heart start with bishops and get promulgated solely by bishops?

    Acts of devotion usually come from God speaking to the lay faithful (or lay religious). The faithful encourage the bishops to approve or encourage such acts and spiritual movements. That is the normal way stuff happens.

    We already have a lot of approved ways to make reparations for outrages against Mary, Jesus, etc. If it seems like a good time to pick up doing them again, just begin by doing! And given tools like the Internet and memes, why should it be hard to encourage voluntary participation?,

    Obviously pastors, bishops, etc. are helpful when supportive. But lay devotions are laypeople’s business, and asking for stuff like reparations Masses is also laypeople business. We aren’t babies who need to be spoonfed. If we see a need, we should just go do it.

  5. Kathleen10 says:

    I would change his word “Catholics” to “Cardinals”.
    The laity are waiting on the only people who are able to do anything about our death spiral. The plane is going down, and they are the pilots.
    We are waiting for the Cardinals or bishops, or divine intervention.
    But you are also correct Fr. Z. It is the laity who must keep the faith intact while our Cardinals and bishops decide what they are going to do about Rome, since God gave them authority to intervene He did not give us.

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  7. excalibur says:

    Meanwhile, the American left, and I’m sure Euro-lefties, had a spittle-flecked-nutty when President Trump said Iranian cultural* sites would be targeted if Iran did anything.

    * It seems Iran considers their nuclear sites as cultural sites.

  8. Sue in soCal says:

    One of the things I think we can do is to stop calling ourselves the conciliatory term “ Catholic Christians “. We are CATHOLICS, the OGs (Old Gangstas) of Christianity. We need to reclaim our culture without apology and stand up and defend our turf. Not as gentle a response as Cardinal Sarah, whom I admire greatly (please, God, let him be our next pope), but we’ve got to stop being spineless weasels more worried about what people think of us than living and defending our faith.

  9. Johann says:

    But who is responsible for these attacks? Radical Islamists? Antifa? Radical Feminists? This needs an urgent police intervention because as bad as desecration of Churches is, it will not end there. Soon, priests will be attacked in the streets and Mass celebrations will be disrupted.

  10. BrionyB says:

    I think it’s different groups responsible for it in different locations, e.g., in South America, a major factor is radical feminist groups linked to pro-abortion activism. In France, it’s probably Islam at least in part (though also atheist/feminist/satanist).

    In Scotland, the major problem is anti-Catholic sentiment related to the Northern Ireland troubles (there have been Catholic churches and cemeteries vandalised, priests verbally abused and spat on in the streets, but the police and government will not take it seriously as hate crime).

  11. philosophicallyfrank says:

    And the liturgical profanity continues; Bp. Derio Olivero of the Italian diocese of Pinerolo has deleted the Nicene Creed from the Mass so as not to “offend” “non-Catholics according to an article on churchmilitant.com: https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/bishop-cancels-creed-on-epiphany-to-avoid-offending-non-catholics.

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