The push by some Westerners to use the Vatican’s Amazon synod to advance their personal agendas is an insult to God and his plan for the Church, Cardinal Robert Sarah said in an interview published this week.
“This synod has a specific and local objective: the evangelization of the Amazon. I fear that some Westerners are seizing this assembly to advance their plans,” Sarah told Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera Oct. 7.
The cardinal mentioned in particular synod discussion of the ordination of married men, the creation of women’s ministries, and the jurisdiction of the laity.
“These points touch the structure of the universal Church. Taking advantage to introduce ideological plans would be an unworthy manipulation, a dishonest deception, an insult to God who guides his Church and entrusts to it his plan of salvation,” he stated.
Sarah, who is participating in the Amazon synod in his capacity as prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, noted that he has heard that some people want this synod assembly to be a “laboratory” for the universal Church, and others think after the meeting everything will have changed.
“If this is true, this is dishonest and misleading,” the cardinal commented.
He added that he was “shocked and indignant that the spiritual distress of the poor in the Amazon was used as an excuse to support typical projects of bourgeois and worldly Christianity. It is abominable.”
The proposal of combatting priest shortages in the Amazon by ordaining married, respected men — so-called viri probati, Sarah called “theologically absurd” and implying “a functionalist concession of the priesthood…”
The proposal contradicts the Second Vatican Council’s teaching, he said, by seeming to separate within the priesthood participation in Christ’s identity as priest, prophet, and king.
He added that to ordain married men “would mean in practice to question the obligatory nature of celibacy as such.”
Sarah said no one fears the viri probatiproposal, but the synod will study it and Pope Francis will draw his conclusions, though he noted Francis’ use of a quote from St. Pope Paul VI in a speech in January: “I prefer to give my life before changing the law of Celibacy.”
The above comes from an Oct. 9 story on the website of the Catholic News Agency.
Is God insulted with celibacy is not mandatory in the non-Latin Rites? How about the Ordinariate that B16 implemented? Is God selectively insulted by the same matter?
No but he is insulted by pagan rituals in the space St. Peter was marytred and religious indifferentism
If they ordain married men, they will end up ordaining men who are married to other men.
Sure, that makes sense. Maybe they will ordain men who marry horses. Or those who marry their motorcycle. As we all know, it’s a slippery slope.
YFC you are right about that….once the door of perversions are swung open….you can’t close them
Is it not interesting that Cardinal Sarah is appealing to Vatican II in his opposition to some of the proposals of the Amazon synod when he has advocated for a return to the practices of the pre-Vatican II Church? Beware of wolves in sheep clothing!
I’m sorry to differ with you Harold, but you omit the most pertinent fact of all: Vatican II did not proscribe the Extraordinary form, according to Benedict in his motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. Vatican II assumed the continuous use of Latin, ad orientem, Gregorian chant and the pipe organ. So much for the good and holy Cardinal Sarah’s alleged perfidy. Wolf in sheep’s clothing?!!? How pitiable.
Harold I guess you think everything in the Church is just perfectly just fine since the utter failure of the Vatican 2
How does it follow that, if the Church ordains married men, they will ordain men married to other men? Nonsequitur?
mike m apparently has not noticed that a lot of priests are homosexuals who will not want to be married to women.
Mike M. asks so many questions on each article that I am beginning to think he is a three year old instead of a man. It is getting pretty frustrating when we have to explain the answers to his questions when they are right there in the articles themselves. We all misread at times but I hope not that much. Read, Mike, read before you ask questions. I know you like to play the devil’s advocate but it is getting rather annoying to say the least.
Maybe I am just tired. Going to bed.
Bohemond: I’ve been around long enough to remember the utter failure of the post – Vatican I Church!
comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
I don’t know of any sex scandals in the church involving horses or motorcycles, but there are plenty of homosexual sex scandals that are perpetrated by homosexual clergy. So, a pool of homosexual clergy clearly exists in the church. Homosexuals have been pushing for churches to recognize same-sex wannabe unions. These homosexuals in the clergy are not going to want to marry women. The next step for them to get what they want is for the church to recognize same-sex wannabe unions. I did not refer to that step as logical because it is not logical to stubbornly persist in improper mating and expect the rest of the world to recognize those wannabe unions as being equal to the proper way of mating. Those who do not have enough sense to mate properly should not be allowed to marry.
It was a common refrain by the religious right before Prop 8 that if we allow two men or two women to marry, that that will lead to people marrying their horse or their motorcycle. I didn’t just make up that up. Same sex marriage has been legal in Canada and parts of the US for almost 15 years, yet I’m not aware of any horses in danger of losing their virginity to a human. Well, at least not since Catherine the Great.
There always have been — and we will always have — gay clergy, just as there are gay people in the pews next to us, and in fact, in every element of society. Poor discipline and a lack of understanding of celibacy, chastity, morality, and possibly of clericalism lead to the clergy sex abuse crisis, not the mere presence of gay people in the clerical ranks.
Please don’t pretend that the question of straight married clergy should be decided based on some homophobic scare notion that gays will ruin it for everyone. Decide it on the actual merits of the idea, not on some ridiculous slippery slope scare tactic.
Gay “marriage” is an abomination.. you just can’t accept that fact, but you demand that the Church does.
Point me to the place where I demanded the Church accept an abomination?
YFC, do you want the Church to accept gay marriage…yes or no
Please don’t pretend that homosexual clergy don’t want to have same-sex unions recognized by churches and that homosexual clergy are not involved in most of the sex scandals that take place in the catholic church. The readers are not that stupid.
The question of married clergy in certain circumstances has ZERO to do with gay clergy.
You pretend that they might somehow suddenly be allowed to marry other men if we allow a few more ALREADY married men to be ordained.
Are there gay married clergy in the Orthodox Churches? In Eastern Rite Churches? in the Episcopal Ordinariate?
You keep pretending that gay people have something to do with the question. They just don’t.
Please don’t be disengenuous.
1) Homosexuals have been pushing for their unions to be reputed as marriages for more than 10 years. They brought people to court over the issue. They attacked businesses over the issue.
2) Many priests are homosexuals. Just ask the altar boys if you don’t believe me.
3) The church is now discussing allowing priests to be married.
Should we pretend that homosexuals do not want their unions to be reputed as marriages after they were on the warpath for more than 10 years over the issue?