CHESTER, England — A prominent cardinal of the Catholic Church has called for Catholics to imitate the Christian martyrs in defense of marriage and human life.
His Eminence Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke made the call the weekend of March 6 in addresses for Voice of the Family (see http://voiceofthefamily.info for a link to the full text) and the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) in Chester and Southport, northwest England.
On Friday evening, March 6, in Chester there was standing-room only as the cardinal spoke on the theme “Remaining in the Truth of Christ on Holy Matrimony.”
Bishop Mark Davies, bishop of Shrewsbury, was present, as were many priests, journalists, and families who had traveled from all over the UK.
“I am particularly honored by the presence of Bishop Mark Davies of the Diocese of Shrewsbury who has welcomed me warmly to the diocese, whom I greatly admire, and with whom I have been able to have a good visit earlier in the day,” said Cardinal Burke.
“I express my deepest gratitude to Mr. John Smeaton of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children and of Voice of the Family for the invitation to meet with you today and to address the urgent concerns regarding marriage and the family in our time, especially in the light of the current work of the Synod of Bishops,” said the cardinal.
He added: “Most recently, during the October 2014 session of the Synod of Bishops, I witnessed the work of Voice of the Family, an alliance of 23 pro-life and pro-family organizations, which is managed by the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children.
“I am happy to have the occasion to express my esteem for John Smeaton and the staff who worked tirelessly with him to communicate accurately the work of the 2014 session. Their competence was evident. What was also evident was their deep love of Christ and His Mystical Body, the Church. I thank the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children and Voice of the Family for your most important service to the Church and to society at a most challenging time.”
Early in his address in Chester, Cardinal Burke talked about the harms of some developments at last October’s Extraordinary Synod on the Family.
“In the present time, certainly under pressure from a totally secularized culture, a growing confusion and even error has entered into the Church, which would weaken seriously, if not totally compromise, the Church’s witness to the detriment of the whole of society,” he said.
“The confusion and error became evident for the world during the recent session of the Third Extraordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops.”
His Eminence continued: “The Assembly, dedicated to the discussion of the subject, ‘The Pastoral Challenges of the Family in the Context of Evangelization,’ found itself addressing, in a confused and sometimes erroneous manner, practices which contradict the Church’s constant teaching and practice regarding Holy Matrimony.
“I refer to practices which would give access to the sacraments to those who are living in a public state of adultery, and which would condone, in some manner, conjugal cohabitation outside of the Sacrament of Matrimony, and sexual relations between persons of the same sex.
“The report given at the midpoint of the Synod made strikingly clear the gravity of the situation. The report itself, which lacked practically any consistent reference to the constant Magisterium of the Church, was a manifesto, a kind of incitement to a new approach to fundamental issues of human sexuality in the Church.
“The confusion and error was first expressed in a presentation by Cardinal Walter Kasper during the Extraordinary Consistory of February 20th and 21st of 2014. The heart of the Extraordinary Consistory was a lengthy presentation on marriage and the family by Cardinal Kasper which was followed by an intense discussion by the Cardinals present.”
Burke recalled: “Cardinal Kasper’s presentation was quickly published in various languages and became a focus of a wide discussion, especially in the secular media. Cardinal Kasper’s presentation raised a number of serious questions about what the Church has always taught and practiced regarding the indissolubility of marriage, basing himself on an interpretation of the Fathers of the Church and on a practice developed in the Eastern Orthodox Churches.
“Clearly, his presentation called for a discussion which began in earnest already during the Extraordinary Consistory. After the Extraordinary Consistory, a number of Cardinals, including myself, decided to respond as fully and as profoundly as possible to the positions taken by Cardinal Kasper.
“Five Cardinals contributed to the study,” said Burke. “We Cardinals also called upon the help of Archbishop Cyril Vasil’, SJ, an expert on the practice of the Eastern Orthodox Churches, Fr. Paul Mankowski, SJ, an expert in the Sacred Scriptures, and Professor John M. Rist, an expert on the teaching of the Fathers of the Church. We also called upon the help of Fr. Robert Dodaro, OSA, president of the Patristic Institute Augustinianum in Rome, for the editing of the book.”
He added: “The fruits of our efforts are found in the book, Remaining in the Truth of Christ: Marriage and Communion in the Catholic Church, published in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish editions in time for the study of the Synod Fathers.”
Cardinal Burke continued his speech at Chester by saying that if we don’t accept and live the truth about marriage, the new evangelization will fail.
“It is clear that, if a new evangelization is not taking place in marriages, in the family, then it will not take place in the Church or in society, in general. At the same time, marriages transformed by the Gospel are the first and most powerful agent of the transformation of society by the Gospel. The witness of the family is, therefore, at the heart of a new evangelization.”
Regarding that new evangelization, the cardinal pointed to the importance of worship for the family:
“At the heart of marriage and of family life is divine worship and prayer which give form to every other aspect of life. Sacred worship, the highest and most perfect expression of our life in Christ, is at the heart of family life. In the worship of God, in prayer, and in devotion the family receives the power to evangelize and, at the same time, evangelizes the world most powerfully.”
Our society desperately needs evangelizing, Cardinal Burke pointed out, as illustrated by the consequences of the sexual revolution:
“Through the spread of the contraceptive mentality, especially among the young, human sexuality is no longer seen as the gift of God which draws a man and a woman together in a bond of lifelong and faithful love, crowned by the gift of new human life, but, rather, as a tool for personal gratification.”
And therefore, “once sexual union is no longer seen to be procreative by its very nature, human sexuality is abused in ways that are profoundly harmful and indeed destructive of individuals and of society itself. One has only to think of the devastation which is daily wrought in our world by the multibillion dollar industry of pornography, or the incredibly aggressive homosexual agenda which can only result in the profound unhappiness and even despair of those affected by it and in the destruction of society, as it has always done historically.”
His Eminence outlined the solution: “Fundamental to the transformation of Western culture is the proclamation of the truth about the conjugal union in its fullness and the correction of the contraceptive thinking which fears life, which fears procreation.
“In our society, there is a confusion about the meaning of human sexuality which is reaping a harvest of profound personal unhappiness often to the point of the breakdown of the family, of the corruption of children and young people, and, ultimately, of self-destruction.”
Today, he said, “we sadly find the need to speak about ‘traditional’ marriage, as if there were another kind of marriage. There is only one kind of marriage as God has given it to us from the Creation and as Christ has redeemed it by His saving Passion and Death.”
His Eminence continued:
“We live in a time when the fundamental truth of marriage is under a ferocious attack which seeks to obscure and sully the sublime beauty of the married state as God intended it from the Creation. Divorce is a commonplace in society, as is the pretension to remove from the conjugal union, by mechanical or chemical means, its procreative essence.”
He explained that “now, society has gone even further in its affront to God and His law by claiming the name of marriage for liaisons between persons of the same sex.
“Even within the Church, there are those who would obscure the truth of the indissolubility of marriage in the name of mercy, who condone the violation of the conjugal union by means of contraception in the name of pastoral understanding, and who, in the name of tolerance, remain silent about the attack on the very integrity of marriage as the union of one man and one woman.”
Cardinal Burke lamented that “there are even those, too, who deny that the married receive a particular grace to live heroically in faithful, enduring, and life-giving love, while Our Lord Himself has assured us that God gives to the married the grace to live daily in accord with the truth of their state in life.”
He stressed to his audience: “In our day, our witness to the splendor of the truth about marriage must be limpid and heroic. We must be ready to suffer, as Christians have suffered down the ages, to honor and foster Holy Matrimony.”
The cardinal offered the following examples of heroic suffering for the faith: “Let us take as our examples St. John the Baptist, St. John Fisher, and St. Thomas More, who were martyrs in defending the integrity of the fidelity and indissolubility of marriage.
“Before the confusion and error about Holy Matrimony, which Satan is sowing so widely in our society today, let us follow their example and let us invoke their intercession, so that the great gift of married life and love will be ever more revered in the Church and in society.”
Autographs
MMany people attending the address asked Cardinal Burke to autograph their copies of Remaining in the Truth of Christ: Marriage and Communion in the Catholic Church, the popular Ignatius Press described above by the cardinal.
Also known as “The Five Cardinals Book,” Remaining in the Truth of Christ boasts contributions from Cardinals Walter Brandmüller, Gerhard Ludwig Müller, Carlo Caffarra, Velasio De Paolis, and Raymond Burke.
On Saturday evening, March 7, Cardinal Burke also addressed 150 young people at SPUC’s annual youth conference in Southport on the theme of “The New Evangelization of the Fallen Christian West.”
The cardinal described the family home as “the cradle of life” and lamented the wholesale destruction of the baby in the womb. He affirmed that there is no such thing as “alternative sexualities,” only sexuality as enshrined by God in human nature.
Our Lady Of Walsingham
On Sunday morning, March 8, he celebrated Pontifical Low Mass in the Traditional Roman Rite at the Church of Saints Peter and Paul and St. Philomena, New Brighton.
In his homily on the Gospel text of the Mass, Cardinal Burke said that our Lord warns the faithful to be aware of those things which lead them into repeating sins, such as those of lust.
The cardinal on March 9 made a pilgrimage to the Shrine of St. Augustine, Ramsgate, to pray for England. During his visit the cardinal urged the faithful to turn to the intercession of Our Lady of Walsingham and the many English martyrs and saints, especially St. Thomas More as a martyr for uncompromising obedience in conscience to the moral law.
The true understanding of conscience (recognition of truth) is held by the Church, in contrast to the world’s false understanding (relativism), said Cardinal Burke. In public life, only being true to the natural moral law can serve the common good.
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