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SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano has told the University of Notre Dame that there is a concrete “menace” to religious liberty in the United States that is advancing in part because some influential Catholic public figures and university professors are allied with those opposed to Church teaching.
“Evidence is emerging which demonstrates that the threat to religious freedom is not solely a concern for non-democratic and totalitarian regimes,” he said. “Unfortunately, it is surfacing with greater regularity in what many consider the great democracies of the world.”
The apostolic nuncio, who serves as the Pope’s diplomatic representative to the U.S., said this is a “tragedy” for both the believer and for democratic society.
Archbishop Vigano’s Nov. 4 speech keynoted the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Church Life conference. He discussed martyrdom, persecution and religious freedom, with a particular focus on the United States.
He cited Catholics’ duties to be disciples of Christ, not elements of a political or secular ideology. He lamented the fact that many Catholics are publicly supporting “a major political party” that has “intrinsic evils among its basic principles.”
“There is a divisive strategy at work here, an intentional dividing of the Church; through this strategy, the body of the Church is weakened, and, thus, the Church can be more easily persecuted,” the nuncio said.
Archbishop Vigano observed that some influential Catholic public officials and university professors are allied with forces opposed to the Church’s fundamental moral teachings on “critical issues” like abortion, population control, the redefinition of marriage, embryonic stem-cell research and “problematic adoptions.”
He said it is a “grave and major problem” when self-professed Catholic faculty at Catholic institutions are the sources of teachings that conflict with Church teaching on important policy issues rather than defend it.
How Persecution Begins
While Archbishop Vigano noted that most Americans believe they are “essentially a religious people” and still give some importance to religion, he also saw reasons this could change.
He said that the problem of persecution begins with “reluctance to accept the public role of religion,” especially where protecting religious freedom “involves beliefs that the powerful of the political society do not share.”
The nuncio said it is “essential” to pray for a just resolution to religious-freedom controversies, including the controversy over the new federal mandate requiring many Catholic employers to provide morally objectionable insurance coverage for sterilization and contraception, including some abortion-causing drugs.
The issues that the Catholic bishops have identified in this mandate are “very real” and “pose grave threats to the vitality of Catholicism in the United States,” Archbishop Vigano said.
The nuncio also discussed other religious-liberty threats.
He cited a Massachusetts public-school curriculum that required young students to take courses that presented same-sex relations as “natural and wholesome.” Civil authorities rejected parents’ requests to exempt their children from the “morally unacceptable” classes.
“If these children were to remain in public schools, they had to participate in the indoctrination of what the public schools thought was proper for young children,” the archbishop said. “Put simply, religious freedom was forcefully pushed aside once again.”
Catholic Charities agencies have also been kicked out of social-service programs because they would not institute policies or practices that violate “fundamental moral principles of the Catholic faith.”
Archbishop Vigano cited several countries that have witnessed severe persecution, like China, Pakistan, India and the Middle East. He praised the martyrs past and present who would not compromise on “the principles of faith.”
While some forms of persecution are violent and cruel, others aim to incapacitate the faith by encouraging people to renounce their beliefs or the public aspects of their faith in the face of “great hardships.”
Fidelity to God and the Church has “hastened martyrdom and persecution for many believers of the past and of today,” he said.
“In all of these instances, we see that the faithful persist in their fidelity to Jesus Christ and his holy Church. For, throughout her history, the Church has gained strength when persecuted,” the archbishop said.
Religious liberty is a human, civil and natural right that is not conferred by the state, he said, adding that “religious freedom is the exercise of fidelity to God and his holy Church without compromise.”
Said Archbishop Vigano, “What God has given, the servant state does not have the competence to remove.”
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I have been saying for along time… there is no conservative church and there is no liberal church. There is only the RCC and its doctrine and that which lays outside of the umbrella of mother church. The church is the body of christ and the body orf christ can never and will never be divided against its self..
Wow! Thank you for this beautiful testimony of Faith, Archbishop Vigano.
The liberals are the ones undermining the church from within. First step is for bishops to come down hard on those undermining the church. Stop giving Holy Communion to pro-abortion politicians would be another step to take. I also think the church may have to give up its tax exempt status. Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. That’s the main way to keep the government out of the church’s business. Our Lord gave us the advice but we refuse to take it.
In the United States, we are witnessing a crumbling of both the Church and State. For the Church we see people who consider themselves “Catholic” but who are not practising their faith - hence they no longer are Catholic in the sense that we have X number of catholics in America. For the State, we see religious liberty being denied by this admin and we see our liberties taken away one by one as the gov’t and voters continue to betray the constitution as it was envisioned by our Founding Fathers. The Judeo-Christian tenets, natural law, etc are all being ignored or denounced either directly or slowly by a gradual decline in the moral frabric of our society. We have noone to blame but ourselves for not educating our children on the tenets of our faith and of the unique, exceptual nature of our constitution. Its time the hierarchy start being serious in the Sunday homily about useing it as a teaching moment whether the flock likes it or not. If they don’t, they will leave - but they are anyway. (and it’s time to ensure our church and Catholic causes are being supported by the faithful)
Has Archbishop Vigano considered that it may be the Church that has it wrong rather than the Catholic faculty at Catholic institutions? There has to be a reason why the second largest denomination in the USA today is ex Catholics. Surely these people can’t all be professors?
Of course without the necessary dialogue with the ‘opposition’ the Church may never know what really is causing the current division?
Strangly it seems the Roman Catholic Church prefers dialogue with previously excommunicated ultra orthodox communities such as the Society of St.Pius X, over those who have left the church.
This is not a battle between liberals and conservatives, Republicans Versus Democrats, or who is right and who is wrong, who belongs and who doesn’t, etc. It is about God’s gift of faith which reveals the Truth. God’s free gift cannot be taken away when it is found in the heart - not on a piece of paper! No one’s religious or spiritual freedom is at peril except when we speak out of the ego.
The RC Church is definitely under attack - but only due to its failure to honestly address its self-inflicted wounds. It needs to stop playing ‘victim’ and once again become a place of healing. But healing can begin only when the institution is willing to humbly admit and learn from its errors. Until then it cannot give away or share what it doesn’t have.
Eliminating Clericalism might be a good place to start, see: http://whenreligionfails.blogspot.ca/2012/11/clericalism-and-its-culture.html
This is not just happening at the University level. The shepherds of our Catholic grade school in Maryland recently forced out the Dominican Sisters of St Cecelia who are known worldwide for their defense of the Truth and have publicly taken a stand against the HHS Mandate.
Our Cardinals and Bishops must enforce Canon 915, or formal excommunication if necessary.
They need to effectively handle public SCANDAL by all those who profess to be Catholic.
This is to teach the scandalizer, and to slow the loss of the Souls by those scandalized.
When heretics and schismatics receive Holy Communion and the Bishops do nothing, they participate in the Sacrilege.
Who are you kidding; you should own up to what the clergy is saying and doing. They are telling us who to vote for and yet spending Billions of dollars given to the church by the poor to teach us the good book, but instead the use monies to defend clergy and church for molesting children. The church does not talk about the monies that the clergy and staff steal from the collection.
I was told as a child I was not allowed to sit in a coffee shop becuase of my race, and now the church is telling if I dont vote as they want me to I will not be allow in the church.
alfromfl, we can learn our Faith better by following the instruction of Pope Benedict. Although better homilies are very important, there is too much to cover in a few minutes on Sunday.
In Porta Fidei - he has asked us to read the “Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition”.
For more info on the Year of Faith (including links for verification), on the net see: ” What Catholics REALLY Believe SOURCE “.
” In order to arrive at a systematic knowledge of the content of the faith, all can find in the Catechism of the Catholic Church a precious and indispensable tool.
It is one of the most important fruits of the Second Vatican Council.
In the Apostolic Constitution Fidei Depositum, signed, not by accident, on the thirtieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, Blessed John Paul II wrote: “this catechism will make a very important contribution to that work of renewing the whole life of the Church. ....... I declare it to be a valid and legitimate instrument for ecclesial communion and a sure norm for teaching the faith. ” - Pope Benedict
I believe that God has now abandoned the American people to our will because we have forsaken his will, and soon the hedge of his mercy will disappear and we will be under his justice, also called his wrath. We place our concept of social justice above his law. We have grieved the Holy Spirit and we will reap the consequences. Still, even in these dire circumstances, those of us who repent can change things and mitigate those consequences.
Fine article,BUT the Archbishop’s use of the word “laments”(far too gentle) many Catholics supporting “a major political party”(the Democrat Party), his failure to name the party endorsing intrinisic evils and his failure to specify possible consequences to such Catholics falls far short of the language leading clerics and lay Catholics need to lead the flocks. I strongly prefer Bishop Thomas Paprocki’s statement, “The Democrat Party “explicitly endorses intrinsic evils, abortion and same sex marriage and that a vote for a candidate who promotes intrinsic evils makes one morally compliant & places the eternal salvation of one’s own soul in serious jeopardy.”
When the Church cleans house by excommunicating dissenters of whatever stripe, It will have my attention. Ex Corde Ecclesiae, which affects all Catholic colleges and universities, was issued in 1990 and was immediately dead on arrival.
Just to add to the article’s argument that there is a strategy to “divide and conquer” by “allied forces” against the Church from without and from within, there is an alarming report by the American Life League on the USCCB’s CCHD (Catholic Campaign for Human Development) funding of anti-Catholic groups that “support abortion, birth control, homosexuality, and/or Marxism either directly or through coalitions” and it is up on the web: http://reformcchdnow.com/
Here’s the report: http://reformcchdnow.com/cchd-2011-2012-grants-report/
Our bishops and ourselves have much to do to put our “house in order”! I don’t think we should give to the CCHD collection anymore until things get really cleaned up! Check out if these scandalous groups singled out on the list are in your diocese and let people know what’s going on. I pray that the US bishop now in their general meeting decide to come up with a unanimous decision to uphold a Zero-Tolerance pastoral policy against dissent and dissenting Catholics and institutions. Enough is enough! I can now foresee Catholic hospitals and colleges closed or stripped of their Catholic title, and watch them become institutions of the state! I can also imagine dissenting religious congregations and/or communities being denied canonical status or permission to do any ministry in a particular diocese, and watch them leave the Church and/or create there own secular ministries parallel to the Church. I hope they finally realize that by being tolerant they have become tacitly complicit with the dissent and the division in the Catholic Church in the US.
Message to all commentators from Jesus:
I was born to Jewish parents. I practiced my Jewish faith throughout my life and died as ‘King of the Jews’ but never spoke about politics, especially the Roman rulers - I never excluded anyone - including non-Jews. My trust in the father is all that I needed to be FREE. I did not call for the building or construction of a religious institution be it Jewish, or otherwise. How could I and separate my self from my parents and disciples? The only thing I ask is that you follow me and BUILD a life based on the UNCONDITIONAL LOVE OF GOD, your neighbor and yourself. You honor this gift whenever you love your enemy and most importantly yourself.
I came so that you may have life to be lived to the full. Free of pain and suffering. No one can come to know the truth whenever they open their hearts to my presence. Remember, the life you live is not about you, it is about God the Father experiencing Himself through you.
@trebert: I agree about the clericalism, but the clerics who have wrecked such havoc are liberals, not “conservatives.” The radical changes that took place in the Church were driven by priests and bishops without much consultation with the laity except the most liberal. They drove away millions of Catholic from the Church, who then either fell into infidelity or went to the fundamentalist churches, where the teaching was closer to traditional Catholic teaching than what they found in their former parishes.
In all the apparitions of Jesus and Mary to various visionaries at the present time, we are being told to prepare for a great persecution. The Present Pope will be attacked and forced to leave and then the Real Presence will be abolished.
CORRECTION to my posting of Wednesday, Nov 14, 2012 7:32
Last Par. reads: No one can come to know the truth whenever they open their hearts to my presence.
Should read: Everyone can come to know the truth whenever they open their hearts to my presence.
Archbishop Vigano, well done. U have spoken well n I urge u not to stop or get tired of preaching the word of God. Sometime, I wonder whether dis group of elite solicitating 4 dis evil act. Remember, God is watching U and I from a distance. Do not ever promote same sex, Abortion and other population reduction. Flee 4rm it because it leads to death. The blood of those innocent children dat was shed will now seek vengeance on man. The city living wit Gay will look lk Sodom and Gomorah wen d Gods’ anger falls. BE VERYYYYYYYYYYY CAREFUL, BECAUSE D DAYS ARE EVIL.
The “SECRET MEMOIRS OF A PRIEST ON A PILGRIMAGE OF FAITH “ is about the PDP sponsorship of Terrorism and Corruption in Nigeria as official weapons against every opposition. I pray General Buhari to prevail on Sahara Reporters to publish the Report on Terrorism and Corruption in Nigeria. And I ask the Publishers/Editors at the Sahara Reporters Website to live up to the Presidential Compliments they have won about being “an authentic source of news” despite the criticisms and resentments that trail many of the articles, reports, e.t.c. published by the Sahara Reporters. President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan is an honorable man, even as Chief Mathew Olusengun Obasanjo is, as reported by the Nigerian NewsWorld(current edition), playing the Ostrich. So what is stopping us hearing The News about Nigeria? http://revfrkennethevurulobi.blogspot.com/2012/12/from-blesssed-virgin-maryour-lady-of.html
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