WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect emeritus of the Congregation for Divine Worship, praised the heroic witness of the Catholic Church in Africa for rejecting Pope Francis’ proposal to “bless” homosexual “couples” and warned against heretical attempts to change Church doctrine through the Synod on Synodality.
Naming the Vatican’s document Fiducia Supplicans, published by Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández as prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and signed by Pope Francis, Sarah denounced the “misguided document” and lauded the African Church for resisting its “grave error.”
Setting the African Church as an example for the Church in America, Sarah called on Catholics in the U.S. to similarly witness to the faith before the whole world.
Contrasting the vitality of the faith in America with its loss in many parts of Europe, Sarah said, “The United States is unlike Europe. The faith here is still young and maturing. This young vitality is a gift to the Church. Just as we saw the African Church, which is also young, provide a heroic witness to the faith in the wake of that misguided document, Fiducia Supplicans, and save the Church from grave error, the Church here in the United States can also be a witness to the rest of the world.”
The comments came in a talk Cardinal Sarah offered at the Catholic University of America (CUA) on Thursday, June 14, at an event titled “An Evening with Robert Cardinal Sarah,” sponsored by the Napa Institute and the Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C.
Sarah’s lecture was titled “The Catholic Church’s Enduring Answer to the Practical Atheism of Our Age.” In it, the cardinal lamented the rejection of God that has taken hold of much of the west, especially once-Christian Europe. He said this rejection of God takes the form of not so much intellectual atheism but a practical atheism by which modern man acts as if God does not exist or does not matter.
Calling on the Church in America to resist the atheism that is sweeping the west, Sarah declared, “The cultural atheism that has taken over the West does not have to take over the Church here. You have good episcopal leadership, good young priests, communities with young, vibrant Catholic families. You must foster the growth of all of this for the sake of your families but also for the sake of the global Church.”
Sarah has been outspoken in leading the African bishops in their rejection of homosexual “blessings,” commending them for their adherence to the faith in the face of the novel heterodox proposals of Fiducia Supplicans.
The December 21 text from Cameroon’s bishops, responding to Fiducia Supplicans, remains one of the strongest interventions against the Vatican document. They were joined by numerous African episcopal conferences and dioceses – along with Sarah himself – as nearly the entire continent rejected the Vatican’s document proposing blessings for homosexual “couples.”
READ: Cardinal Sarah strongly rejects Fiducia Supplicans, ‘heresy’ of same-sex ‘blessings’
Such opposition has been labeled by secular media outlets, and crucially by Pope Francis himself, as coming from “small ideological groups,” with Francis adding that the Church in Africa is “a special case” because of its culture.
But Sarah has rejected this depiction. “Some in the West wanted to make believe that you acted in the name of an African cultural particularism. It is false and ridiculous to attribute these purposes to you,” he said in April to the Cameroon bishops, insisting that they “have spoken for the whole Church ‘in the name of the truth of the Gospel and for the human dignity and salvation of all humanity in Jesus Christ.”
“This vision of a faith adapted to cultures reveals to what extent relativism divides and corrupts the unity of the Church,” he added at the time in a thinly veiled attack on the Pope’s own slight toward Africa’s bishops.
In his June talk in Washington on “practical atheism,” Sarah also took aim at the Synod on Synodality, which has been used to promote immorality, such as LGBT ideology and heresy, such as the proposal to ordain women to the diaconate.
READ: Dissident priest tells pro-LGBT parishioners he hopes 2024 Synod will approve ‘women deacons’
Exposing the claim that the Synod is expressing the sensus fidei, the sense of faith, Sarah warned, “There are voices at the Synod that are not speaking from within the sensus fidei. Just because someone identifies as Catholic does not mean they are part of the sensus fidelium.”
“To be Catholic is more than a cultural identification,” he declared, “it is a profession of faith. It has a particular content of faith. To move outside that content, both in belief and practice, is to move outside the faith. And it is a grave danger to consider all voices legitimate. This would lead to a cacophony of voices that amount to noise, which seems to be growing louder these days.”
Referring to Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, the relator general of the Synod on Synodality who has voiced support for the “ordination” of women as deacons, Sarah denounced the Luxemburg cardinal’s position as impossible and contrary to the faith.
He said, “Some prominent prelates have expressed openness to the prospect of women’s ordination, suggesting doctrine can change. This is the sort of thing that Catholics should believe is impossible and yet we have a senior ranking official espousing an ecclesiology that rejects the stability of doctrine. The implication, of course, is that we are free to define the faith as we see fit. This is not Catholic, and it is a source of great confusion that is harming the Church and the faithful.”
Sarah concluded his remarks with a call to bishops and Catholics in America to oppose the practical atheism of the world, even when it appears within the confines of the Church, saying, “This requires a willingness to be a sign of contradiction (see Lk 2:34) to the contemporary world and, yes, to parts of the contemporary church.”
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