News

COLOGNE, August 11, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – With the pervasiveness of the condom doctrine in government, media and education it is perhaps understandable that Germany’s police union would have thought that distributing condoms at World Youth Day was a good idea.

Prrotests from Church officials caused the GdP union to back off. The police include condom distribution at any event where large crowds are expected to gather. A bewildered sounding GdP union spokeswoman said, “We don’t want to offend anyone,” and said the decision to cancel the distribution was “an issue of sensitivity.”

Other plans to distribute condoms and anti-Catholic literature at WYD are still in place however. The group, Catholics for a Free Choice, has said it will not back off and is going ahead with an expensive advertising campaign pushing sexual immorality to WYD pilgrims.

In related news, Catholic dissident Hans Kung has complained that the current movement of enthusiastic young people reclaiming their Church from the grip of the dissidents of the 1960’s is “triumphalistic.” Europe’s cadre of aging leftist “Catholic” activists has grown increasingly estranged from the modern Church and, as in Toronto in 2002, have organized a “parallel” protest event to which Kung is rumoured to have been invited.

Cardinal Joachim Meisner of Cologne, who has dismissed Kung’s complaints and the protest event, sees them as the sour grapes of a failed revolution. The incredible success of World Youth Day – which in Manila in 1995 drew the largest crowd of human beings ever recorded – has infuriated Catholic dissidents such as Francis Kissling and Kung.

Many consider that the greatest legacy the late John Paul II left the Church and the world was the revival of Christian orthodoxy, particularly among the millions of young people who have attended World Youth Days. The rise of the self-proclaimed, “JPII Generation,” was wholly unforeseen by the greying radicals whose glory days were spent systematically dismantling traditional Catholic institutions and attempting to re-write Catholic teachings, particularly on sexual morality.

Meisner told Catholic News Agency that the day of the bitter anti-Catholic liberal theologians is over. Calling them the “people of yesterday,” he said, “The entire event is oriented to be an encounter for young people and not for ‘seniors’.”

Cardinal Meisner said, “There is nothing for them (Küng and Drewermann) here, as young people are not interested in the silliness they fostered for so long. We don’t need any Drewermann or Küng or anything else stale at WYD.”

World Youth Day preliminary activities open today in Germany’s Catholic dioceses.

Read CNA interview with Cardinal Meisner:
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=4585

hw