São Paulo, April 19, 2010
Anniversary of the election of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to the Chair of Peter
Anniversary of the election of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to the Chair of Peter
After each campaign of attacks against her, the Church
always emerges stronger and more splendorous than before.
Msgr. João Scognamiglio Clá Dias, EP
The barrage of reports which, in recent weeks, has attempted to stain the Catholic Church, using the abuses of children committed by a portion of Catholic priests as a pretext, has reached an inconceivable climax. Bent on fanning the flames, various agencies of social communication have delved into the past, in search of new allegations involving the Vicar of Christ on Earth, Pope Benedict XVI, in which, however, they have roundly failed.
That there are disordered and unworthy priests, no one can deny; that horrible abuses have been committed, and certainly even in a number greater than recorded, must be acknowledged. But to use the very grave, yet isolated offences of a minority of clerics to tarnish priests at large, is an injustice. And to employ this as a guise to attempt to overthrow the Church is diabolical.
However, the more the Church is infiltrated by the libertarian, relativistic and neo-pagan spirit of our age, the more it may be feared that crimes of paedophilia will occur. From this stems the need to implant a rigorous selection system in seminaries, so that only those who do not have a propensity to conspire with the world, but who want to teach the practice of Catholic doctrine in all its purity and to serve as an example may be admitted as candidates to the priesthood.
The present publicity campaign against the Church undermines a truth of which history provides an unequivocal testimony: it was the Catholic Church that freed the world from immorality, and it is because the world is rejecting the Church that it has once again sunk into the mire from which it was rescued.
The pagan world was a veritable hell
The majority of Western population tends to take it as a given that the world has always cultivated the values to which we are accustomed. The most sacrosanct of these values continue to be cherished, although they have suffered a generalized decadence in the last 50 years, heightened since the beginning of the new millennium. These include the traditional family, protection of childhood innocence, sense of modesty, good manners, decency of dress, honour, mutual respect, a spirit of charity, human dignity, and solidarity.
However, such standards were not always prized by humanity. Before Our Lord Jesus Christ preached the Good News of the Gospel among men, the world was submerged in a prolonged and terrible night, in which moral licentiousness, egoism, cruelty, inhumanness and oppression reigned, as history illustrates.
From this picture, it cannot be surmised that all Romans, Greeks, and “barbarians” were profligates. There were minorities at variance with that situation, and they were prepared to receive the evangelical preaching with the eagerness of a castaway who finds a lifeline. Hence the rapid expansion of the Catholic Church through the Roman world, and, finally, the conversion of the Empire in the year 313 of the Christian era.
Degrading religions
That which is held in horror today by the sound portion of Western public opinion, was, in the world dominated by paganism, par for the course. It suffices to recall what Grecian-Roman mythology says of the various gods of its pantheon.
These gods formed a fearful and violent band of miscreants. They were adulterers, liars, thieves, oppressors and murders guilty of patricide, matricide and fratricide. They were cruel, selfish, treacherous, slothful, false, shameless and incestuous, and included fornicators, degenerates, and paedophiles. Zeus (the Jupiter of the Romans), the chief deity of this crew, was not only a brute who practiced cannibalism, devouring one of his daughters and murdering other close relatives, but he was also an uncontrollable adulterer who victimized many single and married “gods”, violated his sisters and daughters-in-law, ravished his own daughter and even his mother, and who, moreover, kept a young boy whom he had abducted as a lover.
Accounts of these infamies were retold in texts used for the instruction of children in grammar, rhetoric, and poetry in the schools of that era, as pointed out by Christian apologists in their epoch.
The pagan religion, therefore, exercised a malefic dominion over society, proposing the iniquities of the gods as examples to be imitated. On the other hand, society influenced religion so that the myths reflected the customs then in vogue.
The full document may be found here:
http://www.arautos.org/desagravo/?lang=en
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Msgr. João Scognamiglio Clá Dias, EP, is Honorary Canon of the Papal Basilica Saint Mary Major in Rome, Supernumerary Apostolic Protonotary, Doctor of Canon Law from the Angelicum, Master of Educational Psychology from the Catholic University of Columbia, Doctor Honoris Causa from the Italo-Brazilian University, Member of the Thomas Aquinas International Society (SITA) and of the Pontifical Academy of the Immaculata, Founder and Superior General of three entities of Pontifical Right: International Association of the Faithful, Heralds of the Gospel; Clerical Society of Apostolic Life, Virgo Flos Carmeli; and the Society of Apostolic Life, Regina Virginum.
