Corpus Christi Blog

“We must rebuild the cathedral… We do not need to invent a new Church” Part III

07-28-2019Weekly ReflectionCardinal Sarah

(Continued).

(2) The Pillars: Catholic Doctrine
And then, dear friends, what else does our cathedral need? It needs solid pillars to support the vaults. What are these pillars? What foundation is needed to support the graceful slenderness of the Gothic rib-vaults? The Catholic doctrine we have received from the apostles is the only solid foundation we can find.

If everyone defends his own opinion, theological hypotheses, novelties, or a pastoral approach that contradicts the demands of the Gospel and the perennial Magisterium of the Church, then division will spread everywhere.

I am wounded when I see so many pastors selling off Catholic doctrine and sowing division among the faithful. We owe the Christian people a clear teaching, firm and stable. How can we allow bishops and episcopal conferences to contradict one another? Where confusion reigns, God cannot dwell! For God is Light and Truth.

Unity of faith assumes the unity of the magisterium across space and time. When we are confronted with a new teaching, it must always be interpreted in continuity with the teaching that preceded. If we introduce ruptures and revolutions, we destroy the unity that governs the holy Church across the ages. This does not mean that we are condemned to a theological fixism. But all evolution must lead to a better understanding and deepening of the past. The hermeneutic of reform in continuity that Benedict XVI so clearly taught is a condition sine qua non of unity. Those who loudly proclaim change and rupture are false prophets! They are not seeking the good of the flock. They are mercenaries let in by deceit into the sheepfold!

Our unity is forged around the truth of Catholic doctrine and the moral teaching of the Church. There are no other means. To try to win media approval at the price of the truth is to do Judas’ work! Do not fear! What greater gift is there for humanity than the truth of the Gospel? What more precious treasure than the light of the Gospel and the Wisdom of God, who is Jesus Christ (1 Cor 1:24)?

Some Christians seem to want to deprive themselves of this light and wisdom. They limit themselves to looking at the world with secular eyes. Why? Is it the wish to be accepted by the world? The wish to be like the world?

I wonder whether, deep down, this attitude masks a fearful refusal to listen to what Jesus himself told us: “You are the salt of the earth, you are the light of the world.” What an honor, but also what a responsibility! What a duty! To renounce being the salt of the earth is to condemn the world to remain bland and tasteless. To renounce being the light of the world is to condemn it to darkness and abandon it to the shadows of its rebellion against God! We must not let this happen!

Indeed let us turn toward the world: in order to bring it the only light that does not deceive. When the Church turns toward the world, this cannot entail that she hides the scandal of the Cross, but only that she makes it accessible once again in its naked reality. Dear friends, I was deeply moved spiritually by a photograph published the day after the fire at Notre-Dame of Paris. In the photo, the interior of the church is visible, heaped with debris and still smoking. But above these heaps of shattered stones, the luminous cross installed by Cardinal Lustiger is still standing! “Stat Crux, dum volvitur orbis – the Cross stands while the world turns.” The world is turning and falling, only the Cross remains stable and shows us the way to salvation. Only the truth of the Cross remains, the truth of Catholic doctrine.

If turning toward the world means turning from the Cross, that will not lead to a renewal but to death!

Among many Christians there is a fear and repugnance of witnessing to the faith or carrying the light of the Gospel to the world. Our faith has become lukewarm, like a slowly fading memory. It is becoming like a cold fog. We no longer dare to claim that it is the only light of the world. We have to give witness not to ourselves, but to God who has come to meet us and revealed himself in Jesus Christ, true God and true Man.

It is therefore urgent to insist on the teaching of catechism to adults and children. We have a wonderful tool for that purpose: the Catechism of the Catholic Church and its Compendium.

The failure of catechetics leads many Christians to hold only a vague idea of the faith or even a kind of religious syncretism. Some chose to believe one article of the Creed and reject another. We have even started taking surveys regarding Catholics’ acceptance of various truths of the faith…Faith is not a merchant’s booth where we choose the fruit and vegetables we like! When we receive it, it is God that we receive, whole and entire! I solemnly call upon Christians to love the dogmas and articles of faith, to cherish them. Love our catechism! If we accept it with our hearts and not only with our lips, then the formulas of faith let us enter into true communion with God. It is time to rescue Christians from the ambiguous and confused speech of certain prelates and from the current relativism that anaesthetizes hearts and banishes love! Remember the clear and firm testimony of Peter: “there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved, than by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth” (Acts 4:10-12). Let us think of all the Christians of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East who are butchered for the name of Jesus!

It is time that the faith became for Christians their most intimate and most valuable treasure. We can measure the lukewarmness that has spread in our ranks by our apathy in the face of doctrinal deviations. We often see grave errors taught in Catholic universities or officially Christian publications. No one reacts! And we, the bishops, we are content with cautious and fearful corrections. Beware! One day the faithful will demand an account of us. They will accuse us before God for leaving them to the wolves, and deserting our posts as pastors when we should have defended the sheepfold.

Understand well: My cry is a cry of love! Our faith informs our love for God. To defend the faith is to defend the weakest and simplest, and permit them to love God in truth. Dear friends, we must burn with love for our faith. We must not dilute it with worldly compromises. We must not falsify it or corrupt it. It is a matter of the salvation of souls, ours and those of our brothers! The day we no longer burn with love for our faith, the world will be cold, deprived of its most precious good. It is our task to defend and announce the faith!

Who shall rise to proclaim the faith in the cities of the West? Who shall rise to announce the true faith to Muslims? They seek it unconsciously. They turn to Islamism because, in the way of religion, all the West has to offer them is the consumer society.

Which of you will be the missionaries the world needs? Where are the missionaries who will teach the whole faith to so many Catholics who are ignorant of what they believe? Do not place the light of faith under a basket any longer, do not hide this treasure given freely to us! Dare to proclaim, to witness, to catechize! We can no longer call ourselves believers and live in practice like atheists!

The faith enlightens our family, professional and cultural life, not only our spiritual life. In the West, some call for tolerance or secularity, and impose a form of schizophrenia between private and public life. Faith has its place in public debate! We must speak of God, not to impose him but to reveal and propose him. God is an indispensable light to mankind.

(3) The Stained Glass: Fellowship with the Saints
My dear friends, to finish our cathedral, we still need the stained glass. They let in the luminous presence, joyful and multi-colored, of the saints in heaven.

We need saints who dare to look at all things with the eyes of faith, who dare to be enlightened by the light of God. My friends, will we be these saints the world awaits? You, Christians of today, will you be the saints and martyrs the nations groan for, will you lead a new evangelization? Your homelands are thirsting for Christ! Do not disappoint them! The Church entrusts this mission to you!

I think we are at a turning point in the history of the Church. The Church needs a profound, radical reform that must begin by a reform of the life of her priests. But all these means are at the service of sanctity. The Church is holy in herself. Our sins and our worldly concerns prevent her holiness from diffusing itself. It is time to put aside all these burdens and allow the Church finally appear as God made Her.

Some believe that the history of the Church is marked by structural reforms. I am sure that it is the saints who change history. The structures follow afterwards, and do nothing other than perpetuate the what the saints brought about. When God calls, he demands something radical! He goes all the way, down to the root. Dear friends, we are not called to be mediocre Christians! No, God is calling our whole being, asking for a total gift even to the martyrdom of our body and soul! He is calling us to sanctity: “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy” (Lev 19:2).

In the conclusion of my book, I speak about a poison from which are all suffering: a virulent atheism. It permeates everything, even our ecclesiastical discourse. It consists in allowing radically pagan and worldly modes of thinking or living to coexist side by side with faith. And we are quite content with this unnatural cohabitation! This shows that our faith has become diluted and inconsistent! The first reform we need is in our hearts. We must no longer compromise with lies. The Faith is both the treasure we have to defend and the power that will permit us to defend it.

Today from the bottom of my heart as a pastor, I wish to invite all Christians to conversion. We do not need to create parties within the Church. We cannot proclaim ourselves the saviors of this or that institution. All of this will aid the enemy in his game. But each of us can take this resolution: I will not accept the lie of atheism. I do not want to renounce the light of faith, I do not want light to live side by side with darkness in my soul, through laziness, convenience, or conformism! It is a very simple decision, both interior and concrete. It will change our life in its smallest details. It is not about going off to war. It is not about denouncing enemies. It is not about attacking or criticizing. It is about staying firmly faithful to Jesus Christ, to his Gospel and to the mystery of the Church. Though we cannot change the world, we can be changed ourselves. If each person would take this resolution humbly, then the system of lies would crumble of its own accord, because its only strength is the place we give to it in ourselves!

My dear friends, the West has built awesome cathedrals. Today they are in danger of becoming museums without a soul. But the day when the cathedrals will have become mere carcasses of stone will be a sad day, and the world will lose all sense and purpose.

Man needs an appeal, addressed to his soul, that can carry and sustain him. He needs a place for his soul. That is what a cathedral symbolizes. But a building only becomes a cathedral thanks to men who construct this space for the soul, men who transform the stones into a cathedral and thus open for everyone a way to the infinite, an appeal without which man suffocates. Humanity needs “cathedral builders” whose pure and disinterested life makes God credible.

My dear friends, I invite you, for my part, to be these cathedral builders.

We must find places where the virtues can flourish. It is time to rediscover the courage of non-conformism. Christians must create places where the air is breathable, or simply where the Christian life is possible. I call upon Christians to bravely open oases of freedom in the midst of the desert created by rampant profiteering. Indeed you must not be alone in the desert of a society without God. A Christian who stays alone is a Christian in danger! He will end up being devoured by the sharks of the market society. Christians must regroup in communities around their cathedrals: the houses of God. Our communities must put God in the center. At the center of our lives, our thoughts, our actions, our liturgies, and our cathedrals.

Amidst the avalanche of lies, we must be able to find places where truth is not only explained but experienced. In a word, we must live the Gospel: not merely thinking about it as a utopia, but living it in a concrete way. The Faith is like a fire, but it has to be burning in order to be transmitted to others. Watch over this sacred fire! Let it be your warmth in the heart of this winter of the West.

When a fire glows in the night, men slowly gather around it. This is our hope. This is our cathedral.

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