THE NAME OF THE CONTEMPORARY HEROD IS: GENDER IDEOLOGY
A PASTORAL LETTER ABOUT FAMILY
BISHOP KAZIMIERZ RYCZAN
In the pastoral letter about family bishop of Kielce calls for defence of family against the contemporary Herod, whose name is: gender ideology. The letter is addressed to believers of the Kielce diocese on the occasion of Sunday of the Holy Family celebrated on 29 December 2013
The whole letter has been printed below
Beloved in Lord Christ,
In the octave of December, on the Feast of the Holy Family, I am kneeling on the threshold of the Bethlehem cave and adoring God who gifted us with the family.
My friend Janek did not see his mother because she dies after his birth. He did not see his father - partisan because he was killed in a forest by Germans. He was shown a photo: here your father with his crashed face was buried. Brother Janek – and you all, who were deprived of your fathers and mothers by the fate, kneel in front of the cave in Bethlehem. Here Mary and Joseph are looking at Jesus. Think that they are looking at you in this way. Dear brother, who were saying farewell to your parents in a graveyard, kneel in front of the Bethlehem family. You are not an orphan.
Family as a gift from God our Father
In poor Bethlehem, little Jesus confirmed the eternal gift from God the Father, that there is not a better community of maturation in love, than family.
In family devoting oneself is not a sacrifice, but a gift of oneself.
In family a child is not a burden but blessing.
In family material difficulties are mortification and do not touch honesty.
In family, difficulties are testing love, make it resistant, but do not destroy it.
In family a prayer builds love and arouses relations of the community. Are you speaking about all families, where mother and father are bending over their child, who is looking at every reaction of their heart. I am speaking about families from thousand years ago and the contemporary families. About families of Europe, Africa and Asia, about families of people who are believers and non-believers. The gift of family given us by God becomes lively in every woman and a man. It is a great and important gift, therefore God protects it with the three commandments: ‘Respect your father and your mother’, ‘Do not do adultery’ ‘Do not desire wife or husband of your neighbour’. These commandments were up-to-date yesterday and will always be up-to-date. They will stand on the guard of family.
Jesus and family
What does Jesus bring into the life of marriage and family? Jesus raises the marriage contracted between a woman and a man to the rank of sacrament. When two baptized single people, a woman and a man, are contracting marriage and are vowing love, loyalty and marital honesty to each other, lasting irreversibly till death, Christ is giving them a sacramental grace for their whole life. Christian believers come to the altar and ask for blessing, for grace.
- Bless our love, our devotion.
- Bless our fertility because life depends on You.
- Bless our home, so that nobody or any sin would destroy it.
- Bless everybody who will visit our home.
- Bless our joy and our cry today, as well as our life at old age, as it will come. Rule our home.
Catechism of the Catholic Church says that in the sacrament of marriage ‘spouses receive the Holy Spirit (…). He is a seal of their alliance, always a lively source of their love, power thanks to which their faithfulness will be renewed’(CCC 1624)
Preparation for marriage is the paramount matter
This Catechism of the Catholic Church emphasizes that ‘the paramount matter is preparation for marriage so that marital ‘yes’ would be a free and responsible act and the marital alliance would have proper and solid human and Christian basis’ (CCC 1632). Dear believers, do not have any pretense to a parish priest that he demands preparation for the Christian marriage. Today nobody will be employed without a suitable preparation for it. An ordinary certificate is not enough. Suitable professional preparation must be proved.
Doesn’t the decision for the whole life require serious preparation, talks, formation, discussions or a prayer? After all, marriage life will not be taught by serials where divorce and betrayal are an ordinary adventure. Love will not be taught by websites showing intimate matters. It is pathological pornography. Love and life will not be taught by flyers about art of love. Sex does not cover marriage vocation. We cannot justify children and grandchildren with a lack of time for preparation for marriage.
- Grandma, do not be upset with the parish priest, do not settle a matter according to your grandson’s intention, who phoned to ask for birth certificate because he does not have time and also to ask for reservation of the wedding day because he will come for a few days to get married. – He is so busy – said a loving grandmother….Let’s leave this case without any comment. The Catechism of the Catholic Church still says that ‘the paramount matter is preparation for marriage’.
Family in danger
Today the Gospel shows dangers lurking against the Holy Family. Who would think that after the visit of the significant rich guests from far East Józef had to run away with Jesus to Egypt. Józef as a shadow of a father is saving Jesus from death which Herod is bringing.
- Saint Józef what do you want to tell us, taking Jesus and Mary for a long journey?
- Today I want to tell families that they have a duty of defending their children and wives. Who will defend life, when women unite together in feminist organizations in order to get free of marriage and be free to have abortion? Who will defend life when armies of contemporary Herods and Heriorads, also in Poland, despise of a child’s life? You, fathers, have this duty.
Saint Józef says: - Fathers! Stand in one army to defend family. Fathers of your sacramental and non-sacramental families! Stand together in defence of family against contemporary Herod, whose name is the gender ideology.
Newspapers write, journalists argue on TV that people of the Church are oversensitive. Archbishop Michalik is not an expert. Archbishop Hoser from Warsaw cannot govern his diocese. And, generally, bishops and priests are pedophiles and undereducated. After all, the gender ideology is study on sexes, on equality between men and women.
We must not tell lies to the society. The Church has a duty to unveil a lie, hypocrisy, bad intentions of a theory contradictory with the common sense and which destroys values lying at the base of the culture of Europe, an intention to build a new order on the fundament of sexes and sex.
Bishops of Slovakia in a letter for Advent write: ‘They want to persuade us to think that nobody of us is a woman or a man by nature, they want to deprive a man of a right for his identity as a man, and a woman of a right to her identity as a woman and family of its right to identity as family (…). They want to impose a relationship of two men or two women on the equal level with marriage. Using noble slogans, in the society they are destroying family life, which is holy’. One would like to say that a cow and a dog are happy because none of sexologists imposes any sexes on them.
We should not think that it is a theory on paper. Our educational authorities are beginning to implement this theory. In Silesia, three children were removed from a kindergarten, whose parents did not agree on equal sexual education in the kindergarten, on dressing up boys as girls and girls as boys.
It is not only a theory. A journalist of ‘Gazeta Wyborcza’ Mrs. Ewa Siedlecka writes that parents do not have ‘legal and moral monopole to form the worldview of a child’ (Catholic Informative Agency, 14 December 2013). It was commented by Mr. Terlikowski: ‘Supporters of the sex-depravation are liberals only superficially. They do not care about freedom but about promoting their extremely leftist worldview, and allegedly promoting freedom, they want to deprive parents of their right to bring up their children’(Catholic Informative Agency, 16 December 2013). All this is for EU money.
It is not only a theory. It is the beginning of a fight. On 5 December at the Economics University in Poznań, during a lecture entitled ‘Gender – devastation of the man and family’, supporters of feminists and gender ideologists entered an auditorium in order to disrupt the lecture. A young man wearing a golden dress jumped onto a desk, shouting: ‘We invite everybody for the collapse of family’.
Saint Józef and Mary defend Jesus against insane Herod. – Parents! Defend your children against cruel contemporary Herod. You have a right for it! Who gives food to your children? A political party? A political coalition? Who buys them clothes? The Ministry? Who buys them books and educational materials? Journalists, lobbyists? Who pays taxes in Poland? Atheist citizens? Who is an employer at primary schools, junior high schools and secondary schools? Aren’t they voivods, mayors, city presidents? Aren’t they fathers or mothers? Follow Saint Józef. When you are defending family – you are defending the Homeland, your are defending Bethlehem, where God-Man was born.
- It is easier for you to write about it. We feel helpless towards the power of television! -Be followers of Józef. Be witnesses. He entered a church with Jesus and Mary. Go to church with your children. There you will get stronger with God. You will teach your son and daughter, where to find the truth of life. It is not all. During elections, take an election card and vote for people who love children, family, Homeland, God. Do not look at a political party. Vote for people. You have still got this right. We will not lose the fight for family with the help of Józef. Amen.
(AA)
"Niedziela" 2/2014