Friday 21 September 2012

Pope Benedict to the French Bishops: Defend Marriage and Life

Vatican Radio reports today on the  ad limina visit of French bishops to Rome where, the Holy Father encouraged them to uphold life and marriage. This is the way out for France: a return to the Gospels, a return to natural law, a return to French traditions as guided by the bishops in union with the Pope. The secular press will - naturally - not report on this important event. Instead, they will concentrate on the recent buffoonery of a plethora of cartoons on Mohommed.  These drawings will not solve France's deep spiritual and moral problems. A return to the Gospels will, and with it the "problem" of Islam will be solved. As I have written in an earlier post, the problem is not so much with Islam as with us. I refer, in this context, to nations founded on and permeated (at least at one time) by the Gospels. If my memory serves me correctly, we are to evangelize the Muslims through a witness of an authentic Christian lifestyle: name-calling, idiocy, secularism, pornography, promiscuity, an explosion of venereal diseases, un-natural vice, and so on do not impress.  

The Church is called to defend the family and marriage from every possible misrepresentation of their true nature, said Pope Benedict on Friday, as he greeted the first group of Bishops from France to travel to Rome on their 5 yearly Ad Limina pilgrimage. Emer McCarthy reports: The group from western France – led by Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard - were received by the Holy Father in Castel Gandolfo, who focused his address on the role of the laity in the life of the Church as well as the risk of an excessive "bureaucratization" of ministry in the diocese. He urged the prelates to defend the family, which is threatened today by wrong conceptions of human nature. "Defense of life and the family in society - the Pope said - is not retrograde, but rather prophetic" because it helps to "promote the values ​​that allow the full development of the human person created in the image and likeness of God" ...

The full report may be read here.

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