THE PRAYER
On this day when we celebrate the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, under whose patronage France has been placed, let us present to God, through the intercession of Our Lady, our trustful prayers for our nation:
1. In these times of economic crises, many of our fellow citizens are victims of various constraints and see the future with unease. Let us pray for those who have the power to decide in this field, and let us pray to God that he may make us even more generous in solidarity with those like us.
2. For those who were recently elected to legislate and govern: That their sense of the common good for society may prevail over special requests and that they may have the strength to follow what their conscience says.
3. For families: That their legitimate expectation of support from society may not be in vain; that their members support each other with faithfulness and tenderness throughout life, especially in sorrowful moments. Let the commitment of spouses towards each other and towards their children be a sign of the faithfulness of love.
4. For children and young people: That we can all help them to find their own way to progress to happiness; that they may cease to be the object pf adult desires and conflicts so that they may fully benefit from the love of a mother and a father.
Lord our God, we entrust the future of our nation to you. Through the intercession of Our Lady, let us have the courage to make the necessary choices for a better quality of life for everyone, and for the blossoming of our young people thanks to strong and faithful families. Through Jesus Christ, our lord.
L'Osservatore Romano today, which reports the Holy Father's Angelus remarks last Sunday and his message to the C&L-sponsored 33rd Meeting for Friendship among Peoples in Rimini, features a front-page commentary by a French author on the big controversy in France - calling it 'an inexistent scandal' - over a national Prayer on the Feast of the Assumption composed by Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois, Archbishop of Paris and president of the French bishops' conference. The prayer was read from most French Catholic pulpits on Assumption Day... As this was one of the topics I failed to post about in the past few days, here first is a general but hardly non-partisan background from the French news agency AFP.
Catholic prayer implicitly opposing
gay marriage angers secular France
By Ben MCPARTLAND
Cardinal Vingt-Trois and his call to prayer.
PARIS, August 16 (AFP) - A centuries-old tradition was revived on August 15th when a “Prayer for France” was read out at Catholic churches across the country. The text, which attacks government plans to legalise same-sex marriage, has angered French gay rights groups.
Gay rights groups in France have reacted angrily to the Catholic Church after it issued a call to prayer to
protect the sacrament of marriage from same-sex couples.
The controversial “Prayer for France” was sent out to churches across the country to be read out on August 15 to mark the feast of the Assumption.
The prayer’s subject matter is designed to mobilise Catholics against François Hollande’s Socialist Party government, which recently affirmed plans to open up marriage and adoption to gay couples.
In a thinly veiled reference to the proposed gay marriage bill, Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois asked churchgoers to pray for “newly elected officials” to put their “sense of common good over the pressure to meet special demands”.
[I really don't see the reason for leftists to be so militant about overturning all of human history to grant special rights to any group of people whose propensities are not shared by most human beings, even by those who understand that deviation from normality is possible. And the norm in the Church is that God created man and woman and urged them to go forth and multiply.]
These words have angered gay rights groups across France, who have slammed the church for "homophobia" and for interfering in politics.
“François Hollande is committed to these reforms and they have been reaffirmed by his government,” Nicolas Gougain of the Inter LGBT activist group told FRANCE 24.
“We can count on getting a majority in Parliament and no prayer will be able to block this necessary legislation. Religion has no place in politics,” he added.
The annual “Prayer for France” was a centuries-old custom that died out after World War II. It was first uttered in the seventeenth century after King Louis XIII decreed all churches would pray on August 15 for the good of the country.
Church spokesman Monsignor Bernard Podvin said its revival was timed to “raise the consciousness of public opinion about grave social choices”.
Minister for Families Dominique Bertinotti told French media this week that a bill legalising gay marriage will be voted on in parliament in early 2013.
As well as opposing gay marriage, the prayer also makes clear the Catholic Church’s resistance to gay adoption.
The cardinal invites congregations to pray that “children cease to be objects of the desires and conflicts of adults and fully benefit from the love of a father and a mother”.
These words provoked the wrath of Inter LGBT.
“He is implying that it is dangerous for a child to be brought up by same-sex parents," Gougain said. "The text of the prayer is homophobic. The church’s definition of family is far from the reality of the diverse families we see today – same-sex, mixed or single parents."
“We are asking that all different types of families are recognised, in the interests of both child and parent.”
The Prayer for France follows the hardline stance taken by the leader of the Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI, who in January said gay marriage threatened “the future of humanity itself”.
[Because the Western world is already experiencing serious negative birth rate, and only heterosexual couples can beget children!]
Gay Christian groups have also reacted angrily to the Cardinal’s prayer.
“Most of our members are really upset by this terrible prayer, which reinforces the fears certain Catholics have towards homosexuals,” Elisabeth Saint-Guily of gay Christian group David and Jonathan told Europe1 radio.
“France’s bishops, and above them the Vatican, are using homophobic language. The Bible says, 'Love thy neighbour as yourself'. We would like the bishops to apply this maxim. They should love all their neighbours, including homosexuals,” she said.
Cardinal Philippe Barbarin of Lyon defended the church’s position, saying marriage, defined at the start of the Bible, was created by God to join man and woman.
“Nobody should be surprised if we Catholics think that the first page of the Bible is right, even more so than a parliament,” he told Europe1.
And here's the OR commentary:
An inexistent scandal -
Rather, the need to explain the truth
by Patrick Kechichian
Translated from the 8/20-8/21 issue of
Editor's Note:
On the controversy stirred up in France about the Catholic Prayer for Assumption Day, we republish here an article that appeared in Le Monde on August 19. The author is the literary critic of that Parisian daily, and also writes for La Croix and La Revue des Deus Mondes. In 2009, he wrote a book called Petit eloge du catholicisme (A small eulogy for Catholicism).
"The Church is used to being the doormat on which everyone else tries to clean their feet". Cardinal Barbarin has said. Indeed, any occasion is a good one to do that [for the enemies of the Church].
At issue is a prayer composed by Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois, Archbishop of Paris and president of the French bishops' conference, for the Feast of the Assumption. One can immediately note the flagrant disproportion between the delicacy of the text and the violent accusations it has provoked.
This prayer does not attack nor take anyone to task, and certainly not homosexuals. Let us look at its fourth 'petition' which has given rise to all the hostility, but also remember that it comes after three earlier petitions, one of which was for "those who were recently elected to legislate and govern".
Here is the 'scandalous' sentence that has caused trembling and fear among virtuous souls certain of their absolute rights:
"For children and young people, that all of us may help each one to discover his own way towards happiness; that they may cease to be objects of adult desires and conflicts and fully enjoy the love of a father and a mother".
I do not wish to analyze the text, but is it not obvious that
what the prayer implicitly defends is not accompanied by a condemnation of any persons or groups who do not share the same view of humanity and its laws?
And if these groups and persons are free to express themselves, who should not the Church express its thinking on an issue which is a priority among her concerns? No offense meant to those who confuse secularism and anti-clericalism.
On the one hand, we have an opinion, very much current but dated, whose eventual relevance will be measured by opinion polls, which are in themselves a summation of convergent opinions.
On the other hand, we have a consistent thought, faithful to twenty centuries of religious anthropology (far longer, if we go back to Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament).
It is here that the misrepresentation, with a good dose of dishonesty, become quite patent. Of course, it is possible to elevate an evolution of 'customs' to the level of 'inviolable law', by claiming this to be 'progress', which Charles Peguy has defined as a 'theory of deception and disillusionment'.
But it cannot be ignored that the Church is merely stating, with gentleness and humility, and with holy obstination, the permanence of a an anthropological world view in which the inviolable rights of every man and every woman are rooted.
This is a world view that did not originate from a whim, a fancy or a 'special interest'. It was born with the divine Revelation handed down to us by Sacred Scriptures and all of human tradition.
And is the Church acting out of bounds when it recalls this part of the truth of which she is the depository? If the French government and Parliament give their opinion on matrimony and decide to change its nature, is it not legitimate for the Church - which learned from Christ the dignity of marriage and the link it creates between man and woman, a dignity elevated to the status of a sacrament - to also make her voice heard?
It is a voice that does not seek to drown out other voices, but the Church cannot accept that she becomes inaudible and unheard because of sarcasms or unfounded accusations.
And of what do they accuse Cardinal Vingt-Trois? That he said words he had the task and the duty to say, not just pent up within sacristy walls, but to make them heard in the open?
He did not invent those words, which are not that of a party or an opinion group nor about circumstantial interests. All he did was to find the words, the most appropriate words that would not be hurting. And it is what he did, I repeat, with great delicacy.
But what the words contain, the position of the Church, cannot change. Her strength as well as her weakness is in this intangible immutability. Then each one is free to decide according to his conscience.
[But for Catholics, such conscience must be formed by what the Church teaches, not "My conscience, right or wrong, and it is always right".]
Because whatever else others might say,
the role of the Church is not to evolve with time. If it had done so in the past centuries, it would have ceased to be heard at all.
Nor is her role to cover her eyes and just be horrified by the evolution of customs and practices, but to maintain her vigilance, her constant attentiveness, by virtue of the truth she has received.
In order to be able to defend and explain this truth, always and everywhere, in good times or bad, and even under insults.
Then where is the scandal? And where are the prejudices? Certainly not where the clamor of ill will insists they must be found.
Frankly, one may find the language of Cardinal Vingt-Trois's prayer too careful in trying not to offend those concerned, robbing it in that way of some forcefulness. One might argue that those concerned took great umbrage anyway - were always going to and always will - so why bother to soft-pedal the message? But perhaps, in these times, it is good the cardinal set an example of thoughtful consideration for the other side, even if they are incapable of appreciating the spirit of Christian charity in which it it is given.
In yet another Western country that's all set to legalize 'gay marriage', this development about another mebattled bishop who has made the Catholic position clear:
Edinburgh cardinal suspends
dialog with the Scottish government
which is determined to pass
same-sex marriage law in any case
Translated from the 8/22/12 issue of
EDINBURGH, August 21 - It is a symbolic but eloquent gesture. Cardinal Keith O'Brien, Archbishop of Edinburgh and president of the Scottish bishops' conference, has suspended direct communications with the Scottish government to protest the support of the latter for legislation wich will legalize same-sex marriage.
The cardinal has refused an invitation for further discussions, letting his functionaries attend instead.
The Socttish government has decided to enact the new law even if public opinion appears to deem it unnecessary. But the government has made it known that it is committed to carry the project forward, and expects the first such marriages to be legally contracted by the start of 2015.
Cardinal O'Brien has also opposed a similar enterprise underway in England and Wales, saying his was not simply a Catholic position but one of reason and good sense.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 22/08/2012 16:27]