An aggression against the Pope
and against democracy
by MARCELLO PERA
A letter to the Editor
Translated from
March 17, 2010
Mr. Pera is a former President of the Italian Senate. During his term, he invited Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to address the Senate.
The addresses he and the cardinal gave that day became the basis for a book entitled WITHOUT ROOTS: The West, Relativism, Christianity and Islam published the year the cardinal was elected Pope. In 2008, the Pope wrote Pera a letter after reading the manuscript of his book Why we should call ourselves Christian - the letter was used as the Preface to the book.
Dear Editor,
The issue of pedophile or homosexual priests that has erupted recently in Germany is targeted at the Pope. It would be a grave error to think that they will not hit the mark considering the fearsome enormity of the undertaking.
And it would be an even greater error to think that the question will be concluded soon and closed, as in previous similar cases. It is not so.
A war is on. Not exactly against the person of the Pope, because on this terrain, that is impossible. Benedict XVI has been made impregnable by his image, his serenity, his clarity, firmness and doctrine. His gentle smile suffices to rout an army of adversaries.
No, this war is between secularism and Christianity. Secularists know well that once a since mud splatter reaches that white robe, then the Church would be smeared, and if the Church is smeared, then so would the Christian religion be.
That is why the secularists are accompanying their campaign with questions like “Who will continue bringing their children to church?” or “Who will continue to send their children to Catholic schools?” or “Who would bring their children to a Catholic hospital or clinic?”
A few days ago, a secularist let slip the intention. He wrote: “The fact of widespread sexual abuse of children by priests undermines the very legitimacy of the Catholic Church to guarantee education of children.”
It does not matter that this verdict has no proof, because it carefully contains the words ‘widespread sexual abuse’: How widespread? 1% of all priests are pedophile? 10%? All of them?
It doesn’t even matter that the sentence is devoid of logic: just replace ‘priests’ with ‘teachers’ or ‘politicians’ or ‘journalists’ undermining the legitimacy of the public school, of parliaments, of the press.
What matters is the insinuation in the crude argument: priests are pedophiles, therefore the Church has no moral authority, therefore Catholic education is dangerous, therefore Christianity is a deception and a danger.
This war of secularism against Christianity is pitched. One must look back to Nazism and Communism to find something similar. The means change but the end is the same: today as yesterday, what they want is to destroy religion.
In the past, Europe paid the price for this destructive fury with its freedom. It is incredible that Germany, above all - even as it continually beats its breast at the memory of the price that it inflicted on all Europe - today , when it has become a democracy, it has forgotten that, and does not seem to understand that democracy itself would be lost if Christianity were neutralized or abolished.
The destruction of religion brings with it the destruction of reason. Today, it will not bring the triumph of secular reason but a new barbarism.
On the ethical level, it is the barbarism of those who would kill a fetus because its birth would harm the ‘psychic health’ of the mother. Of those say that the embryo is nothing but a mass of cells that is useful for experimentation. Of those who would kill an old man because he no longer has a family to care for him. Of those who would hasten the end for a child because he is no longer conscious and is incurable. Of those who believe that ‘Parent A’ and ‘Parent B’ are identical to ‘mother‘ and ‘ father’. Of those who think that faith is like the coccyx, a body part that no longer participates in evolution because man no longer needs a tail and can stand on his own. And so on.
Or, to consider the political side of the war of the secularists against Christianity, barbarism will be the destruction of Europe. Because once Christianity is brought down, what’s left is: Multiculturalism, which maintains that each group has a right to its own culture. Relativism, which thinks that every culture is as good as another. Pacifism, which denies that evil exists.
This war against Christianity would not be so dangerous if Christians understood it. Instead, many of them participate in the incomprehension.
Those theologians frustrated by the intellectual supremacy of Benedict XVI. The insecure bishops who believe that to compromise with modernity is the best way to update the Christian message. The cardinals in a crisis of faith who insinuate that priestly celibacy is not a dogma and it would be best to rethink it. The sneaky Catholic intellectuals who think that there is a feminine question within the Church and an unresolved problem between Christianity and sexuality. The bishops' conferences who mistake the order of the day, and even as they hope for n open-door policy to everyone, do not have the courage to denounce the aggressions that Christians have to undergo and the humiliation they are forced to endure because they are all placed indiscriminately, together, in the dock as accused.
Or those chancellors who originated in the East who show off a good-looking homosexual foreign minister even as they attack the Pope on every ethical issue, or those born in the West who think that the West should be secular, namely, anti-Christian. .
The era of the secularists will go on, if only because a Pope like Benedict XVI, who smiles but does not step back a a millimeter, goads them.
MARCELLO PERA
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/03/2010 12:46]