Top Tag

The U.S. Intelligence Community

The Catholic Cardinal Robert Sarah does not mince words in an interview about his new book. Excerpt:

In the first part of your book, you describe “a spiritual and religious collapse.” How does this collapse manifest itself? Does it only affect the West or are other regions of the world, such as Africa, also affected by it?

The spiritual crisis involves the entire world. But its source is in Europe. People in the West are guilty of rejecting God. They have not only rejected God. Friedrich Nietzsche, who may be considered the spokesman of the West, has claimed: “God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him…” We have murdered God. In view of God’s death among men, Nietzsche would replace him with a prophetic “Superman.”

The spiritual collapse thus has a very Western character. In particular, I would like to emphasize the rejection of fatherhood. Our contemporaries are convinced that, in order to be free, one must not depend on anybody. There is a tragic error in this. Western people are convinced that receiving is contrary to the dignity of human persons. But civilized man is fundamentally an heir, he receives a history, a culture, a language, a name, a family. This is what distinguishes him from the barbarian. To refuse to be inscribed within a network of dependence, heritage, and filiation condemns us to go back naked into the jungle of a competitive economy left to its own devices. Because he refuses to acknowledge himself as an heir, man is condemned to the hell of liberal globalization in which individual interests confront one another without any law to govern them besides profit at any price.

In this book, however, I want to suggest to Western people that the real cause of this refusal to claim their inheritance and this refusal of fatherhood is the rejection of God. From Him we receive our nature as man and woman. This is intolerable to modern minds. Gender ideology is a Luciferian refusal to receive a sexual nature from God. Thus some rebel against God and pointlessly mutilate themselves in order to change their sex. But in reality they do not fundamentally change anything of their structure as man or woman. The West refuses to receive, and will accept only what it constructs for itself. Transhumanism is the ultimate avatar of this movement. Because it is a gift from God, human nature itself becomes unbearable for western man.

This revolt is spiritual at root. It is the revolt of Satan against the gift of grace. Fundamentally, I believe that Western man refuses to be saved by God’s mercy. He refuses to receive salvation, wanting to build it for himself. The “fundamental values” promoted by the UN are based on a rejection of God that I compare with the rich young man in the Gospel. God has looked upon the West and has loved it because it has done wonderful things. He invited it to go further, but the West turned back. It preferred the kind of riches that it owed only to itself.

More:

In the conclusion of my book, I speak about a poison from which are all suffering: a virulent atheism. It permeates everything, even our ecclesiastical discourse.[Emphasis mine — RD] It consists in allowing radically pagan and worldly modes of thinking or living to coexist side by side with faith. And we are quite content with this unnatural cohabitation! This shows that our faith has become diluted and inconsistent! The first reform we need is in our hearts. We must no longer compromise with lies. The Faith is both the treasure we have to defend and the power that will permit us to defend it.

He goes on:

A West that denies its faith, its history, its roots, and its identity is destined for contempt, for death, and disappearance.

But I would like to point out that everything is prepared for a renewal. I see families, monasteries, and parishes that are like oases in the middle of a desert. It is from these oases of faith, liturgy, beauty, and silence that the West will be reborn.

Read the whole thing. It’s extraordinary.

I’m in Boston today to give a talk at a private gathering for a Catholic classical school, St. Benedict Elementary; headed back home to Louisiana early tomorrow morning. I went to dinner last night with some of the benefactors. I was taken aback by many of their stories, about how difficult it is to live as faithful Catholics in this part of the world. The spiritual collapse of which Cardinal Sarah speaks is general here. On the other hand, so is the renewal. I visited the little St. Benedict School yesterday, and was moved and impressed. I was even more moved and impressed talking to these parents last night, and learning about what they are sacrificing to make sure their children get a real Catholic education. These Catholic moms and dads are wholly undeceived about the challenges they and their children face. But they are not surrendering! They are working hard and giving generously to build this little oasis in a spiritual desert.

Anybody who thinks that the Benedict Option is about surrender should come to see St. Benedict School. It is deeply countercultural, in the best way. It is exactly the opposite of what Cardinal Sarah condemns as Church institutions that allow “radically pagan and worldly modes of thinking and living to coexist side by side with faith.” It is so encouraging to be here. I get the same light-shining-in-the-darkness feeling here that I get when I visit the Tipi Loschi in Italy, and the monastery in Norcia. I’m sure Cardinal Sarah would think the same, if he came to visit.

UPDATE: I should have mentioned that St. Benedict Classical Academy is a modest school that needs help. If you are a Catholic with resources, especially if you live in the Boston area and despair of the condition of the Church, please consider, and consider strongly donating to the school. A place like this would be a blessing wherever it appeared. That it appears in this post-Christian habitat is a miracle, and a sign of real hope.

You may also like

Home Ethos About Contact
Terms Policy GDPR RichTVX
© Saeculum XXI U.S. Intelligence News