Cardinal Robert Sarah has said the Devil is “intent on destroying the family”, and that Christians must fight ideologies which deny the importance of children having a mother and father.
Speaking at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC, Cardinal Sarah, head of the Vatican’s liturgy commission, said the world was “increasingly cut off from God through ideological colonialism”.
The Guinean cardinal quoted Pope St John Paul II as saying the family is where the Gospel is first preached. The cardinal also hailed the “generous and responsible love of spouses, made visible through the self-giving of parents”. But he said the Devil wanted to destroy the family to make it harder for people to hear “the Good News of Jesus Christ: self-giving, fruitful love”.
He said divorce, cohabitation and gay marriage “cause damage to little children through inflicting upon them a deep existential doubt about love”, adding: “They are a scandal – a stumbling block – that prevents the most vulnerable from believing in such love, and a crushing burden that can prevent them from opening to the healing power of the Gospel.”
Cardinal Sarah said that legalising these situations – as, he said, the US has done – could not resolve social problems.
It was necessary to “fight to protect the family”, he said.
He said that Pope Francis “openly and vigorously defends Church teaching on contraception, abortion, homosexuality, reproductive technologies, the education of children and much more”. The cardinal said that restrictions to religious freedom were equivalent to violent persecution and advised the audience: “Be prophetic. Be faithful. Pray.”
Boston parishioners to break away from archdiocese
Parishioners who have maintained a presence in a closed church in the Archdiocese of Boston since 2004 have said they plan to form an independent Catholic community after the US Supreme Court rejected their appeal.
A representative of the Friends of Frances X Cabrini, the organisation that has occupied the church, said members would meet on Sunday to “finalise their transition”.
The group previously said its members would leave the church within 14 days of the court’s ruling.
An archdiocesan spokesman said he hoped the group would end its vigil as promised. “The parishes of the archdiocese welcome and invite those involved with the vigil to participate and join in the fullness of parish life,” he wrote.
Jon Rogers, a spokesman for the friends, said the group had promised from the start that it would “exhaust every level of recourse, be it canonical or civil”, and that it would stay together as a faithful community and “go on with or without the Archdiocese of Boston”. The group began an around-the-clock presence in the church on October 24 2004.
Pope appeals for Chinese harmony
Pope Francis has expressed his hope that the Year of Mercy will see charity and reconciliation for Catholics and people of other religions in China.
Speaking after leading the Angelus in Rome, the Pope encouraged a culture “of encounter and harmony for all of society – that harmony that the Chinese spirit loves dearly”. The World Day of Prayer for the Church in China was observed on May 24.
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