WASHINGTON — Cardinal Robert Sarah delivered a stirring defense of the beauty of the Catholic Church’s teaching on marriage and the family and warned 1,300 Washington-area Catholics, “Today we are witnessing the next stage of the effort to build a utopia without God.”

Cardinal Sarah, the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, was the keynote speaker at the 12th annual National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington. He said that when societies try to create utopias without God, “Good becomes evil, beauty is ugly, love becomes the satisfaction of sexual primal instincts, and truths are all relative.”

The Guinean cardinal’s remarks were frequently interrupted by applause. The program also featured Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Wis., Little Sister of the Poor Constance Veit, who gave a meditation, and Father Paul Scalia of the Diocese of Arlington, Va., leading a recitation of the Divine Mercy Chaplet.

Bishop Paul Loverde of Arlington gave the invocation and blessing at the breakfast.

Cardinal Sarah stressed that cultural developments in the United States have a profound effect on the rest of the world. “Whatever happens in the United States,” the cardinal said, “has repercussions everywhere.”

The cardinal cited the legalization of same-sex “marriage” and the current movement to allow men and women who identify as a member of the opposite sex to change their gender identities as signs that “God is being eroded, eclipsed, liquidated” in the United States, and he urged U.S. citizens to make use of the freedom “bequeathed by your Founding Fathers, lest you lose it.”

But the cardinal, who quoted George Washington, along with Pope St. John Paul II, Pope St. John XXIII and Pope Francis, as well as St. Catherine of Siena, did not mince words about what he sees as the state of advanced societies such as the United States.

“Advanced societies, including, I regret, this nation,” Cardinal Sarah said, “have done and continue to do everything possible to legalize such situations [as cohabitation and same-sex relationships]. But this can never be a truthful solution. It is like putting bandages on the infected wound. It will continue to poison the body until antibiotics are taken.”

“All manner of immorality is not only accepted and tolerated today in advanced societies, but even promoted as a social good,” he continued. “The result is hostility to Christians, and, increasingly, religious persecution. Nowhere is [this] clearer than in the threat that societies are visiting on the family through a demonic ‘gender ideology,’ a deadly impulse that is being experienced in a world increasingly cut off from God through ideological colonialism.”

“This is not an ideological war between competing ideas,” Cardinal Sarah said. “This is about defending ourselves, children and future generations from the demonic idolatry that says children do not need mothers and fathers. It denies human nature and wants to cut off an entire generation from God.”

 

The Centrality of Marriage

The overriding theme of the cardinal’s address was the centrality of marriage in Christian life. “Every human being, like the Persons of the Trinity, has the capacity to be united with other persons in communion through the … bond of charity of the Holy Spirit,” said Cardinal Sarah. “The family is a natural preparation and anticipation of the communion that is possible when we are united with God. … This is why the devil is so intent on destroying the family. If the family is destroyed, we lose our God-given anthropological foundations and so find it more difficult to welcome the saving good news of Jesus Christ: self-giving, fruitful love.”

He added, “The rupture of the foundational relationships of someone’s life — through separation, divorce or distorted impositions of the family, such as cohabitation or same-sex unions — is a deep wound that closes the heart to self-giving love [unto] death, and even leads to cynicism and despair.”

“These situations cause damage to little children through inflicting upon them a deep existential doubt about love. 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.”

The cardinal characterized the family as “a natural preparation and anticipation of the communion that is possible when we are united with God.”

The cardinal said that there is a move to “neutralize and depersonalize Christian conscience” and seemed almost perplexed that today in the U.S. some believe that people who are biologically one sex must have the right to use the restrooms of the opposite sex. The cardinal said that people should use the restrooms of their correct sex. “How [much] simpler can that concept be?” he asked as the remark was greeted with applause.

While the cardinal painted a picture of perilous times, he also sounded a note of Christian hope. “Perhaps only the beauty of the family can re-awaken the longing for God … and heal the wounds inflicted on our humanity by sin.”

To combat the attacks on the family and Christianity, Cardinal Sarah offered “three humble suggestions” — he urged Catholics to “be prophetic,” “be faithful” and “pray.” “Do not be afraid to proclaim the truth with love, especially about marriage according to God’s plan,” Cardinal Sarah said. “In the words of St. Catherine of Siena, ‘Proclaim the truth, and do not be silent through fear.’”

Charlotte Hays writes

from Washington.

A longer version of this story

is available at NCRegister.com.