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Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Vaticans Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments

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June 23, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – As a same-sex attracted man who practices his Catholic faith, I can state unequivocally that Robert Cardinal Sarah, and not the likes of pro-LGBT Jesuit priest Fr. James Martin, is the Church’s greatest champion for the same-sex attracted.

I said so in The Wall Street Journal in 2017: 

While Cardinal Sarah is often described by detractors as being an enemy of LGBT rights, the contrary is true. Those who experience same-sex attraction have no greater advocate, no greater pastor, no greater friend than this man who is uncompromising with the truth.

Cardinal Sarah rightly warns that we cannot be more compassionate or merciful than Jesus. 

Yet forces within the Church — powerful western prelates, celebrity priests, and those within the vast bureaucracy of the Roman Catholic Church — increasingly seek to normalize homosexuality and even have the Church bless same-sex relationships. They display more faith in modern secular political correctness than they do in Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word of God.

In his recent book, The Day Is Now Far Spent, Cardinal Sarah analyzes the spiritual, moral, and political collapse of the Western world.  He pays particular attention to how the Church cares for those who experience same-sex attraction and gender dysphoria. He has harsh words for clergy who depart from the Church’s clear sexual teachings and instead promote “ambiguities.”

“I think that the first victims of the LGBT ideology are the persons who experience a homosexual orientation,” writes Sarah “They are led by its militants to reduce their whole identity to their sexual behavior.”

“I beg Catholics who are tempted by homosexuality not to let themselves be shut away in this prison of LGBT ideology,” he urges.  “You are a child of God by baptism! Your place is in the Church, like all Christians. And if sometimes the spiritual combat becomes too hard, fraternal charity will support you.” 

I know from experience that this is true.  

Cardinal Sarah then turns his attention to clergy who dim the light of the Gospel’s perfect message for the same-sex attracted.  He does not mince words. 

“As for the churchmen who deliberately entertain ambiguities about the Christian view of homosexual behavior by saying that, morally speaking, all forms of sexuality are strictly equal, I tell them that they are doing the work of the prince of lies,” asserts Sarah. 

“They lack charity toward the persons involved,” he adds. 

“Why such statements?” he wonders.  “Is it to justify their own behavior? Is it because they seek popularity?  How can they offer ideological talk to those who ask us for the Word of God?”

These are questions that many chaste same-sex attracted Catholics have for such clerics.   

“We do not have the right to abandon those who expect us to show them the way to holiness, including in the area of sexuality,” he emphasizes.

“Using one’s authority to preach a human doctrine and not the Catholic faith,” writes Sarah, is a behavior that denies the profound truth of the priesthood and endangers the salvation of the faithful.  

“When the faith of the clergy grows weak, something like an eclipse takes place: the world is plunged into dark shadows,” declares Sarah. 

Sarah asserts that conversely, priests and religious who faithfully live out their vows and promote the Gospel day in and day out are “unbearable to the prince of lies” and “make the world tremble.”

“Satan has a fierce hatred of priests. He wants to defile them, to make them fall, to pervert them,” he explains.  “Why? Because by their whole life they proclaim the truth of the Cross. Priests and consecrated persons cannot leave the world indifferent. They proclaim down to the flesh this truth of the Cross. They will always be a subject of scandal for the world. They take Christ’s place.”

“All you hidden and forgotten priests and religious, you whom society sometimes despises, you who are faithful to the promises of your ordination, you make the powers of this world tremble! You remind them that nothing can resist the strength of the gift of your life for the sake of truth. Your presence is unbearable to the prince of lies. You are not the defenders of an abstract truth or a party. You have decided to suffer for love of the truth, for Jesus Christ. Without you, dear brother priests and consecrated religious, humanity would be less great and less beautiful. You are the living rampart of the truth because you agreed to love it even to the Cross”

Cardinal Sarah is the Vatican’s most senior African prelate and has served as prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship since 2014.

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Doug Mainwaring is a journalist for LifeSiteNews, an author, and a marriage, family and children's rights activist.  He has testified before the United States Congress and state legislative bodies, originated and co-authored amicus briefs for the United States Supreme Court, and has been a guest on numerous TV and radio programs.  Doug and his family live in the Washington, DC suburbs.