Europe: apostasy or faithfulness?
Marek Jurek
If someone thought that the anti-papal attacks after the remission of the excommunication of the Society of Saint Pius X was only an episode had to change his views quickly. For many weeks we have dealt with a permanent international anti-papal campaign. Its last episode was the attack on the recent visit of the Holy Father, which had began before Benedict XVI put his feet on the African land. The occasion to attack him was his short answer given to a journalist on the plane. The journalist asked the Pope about his evaluation of using condoms as prevention of AIDS. Benedict XVI answered that mass condom distribution only made the problem worse. And the attack started.
The former centre-right wing Prime Minister of France Alain Juppé stated that Benedict XVI became a problem and the culmination of the anti-papal campaign was the resolution of the Belgian Parliament, by the way the fruit of the ‘compromise’ between the leaf-wing and the liberals on the one hand and with the Christian Democrats on the other hand. The resolution included ‘moderate’ condemnation of the Pope. The Christian Democrats supported it, referring to the ‘softening’ of the left-wing party proposal, i.e. to replace the suggested statement about ‘dangerous and irresponsible views’ of the Pope by stating that ‘the views’ of Benedict XVI could ‘not be accepted.’ This is what the politics of compromise, i.e. crawling apostasy of nations (once) of the Christian West, looks like. It was easier for the Belgian Christian Democrats (since the Wallonian and Flemish parties behaved in the same way) to condemn the teaching of the Church than to condemn the counter-culture of death. Since as a rule the Christian Democrats regard this culture as a part of ‘pluralistic society.’ Therefore, one can more often see how the contemporary liberalism passes from religious indifference to active anti-religious politics, against Catholic orthodoxy. Unbelieving politicians tell Christians what and how they are to believe and exert open pressure on the Church to stop her teaching. The Belgian resolution is a precedent towards the person of the Pope but not towards the teaching of the Church as such. Last September the European Parliament explicitly overstepped this border, accepting the resolution in which (paragraph 20a) it condemned the Catholic Church for proclaiming views opposing the use of contraceptives. The interesting thing is that the resolution had some ‘ecumenical’ aspect because together with the Catholic Church it condemned all other Christian communities that agree with the Catholic sexual ethics. Christianity has always had opponents and the Gospel convinces us to accept calmly the consequences of this fact. The fundamental part of Christian life is spreading and defending faith, the experience of rejection and the necessity to express opposition. But ordinary realism is enough to realise about the political consequences of the silence of public opinion when the opponents of Catholicism want to form an opinion about the Church. Let us hope that both Houses of our Parliament: the Sejm and the Senate, will not remain silent. The nations that want to preserve faith and Christian civilisation should respond to the attacks on the Church by declaring a clear and evident solidarity with the Pope and thankfulness for his teaching. To overcome evil with good one must oppose apostasy to faithfulness, degradation of human dignity to respect to man’s nature and conformism to courage. May our Polish politicians have the courage to do that.
"Niedziela" 17/2009