BENEDICT XVI SPEAKS OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

Prophetic Intelligence Briefings BY: Pastor Hal Mayer

Benedict XVI Speaks of Religious Liberty · February 09, 2012

“Pope Benedict XVI warned today of a “grave threat” to religious liberty in the United States that requires American Catholics to respond with intelligence and courage.”
The pope was referring to legal efforts in the United States to “deny the right of conscientious objection on the part of Catholic individuals and institutions with regard to cooperation in intrinsically evil practices,” and government attempts to limit freedom of conscience that regard adoptions to same-sex couples, contraceptive policies and other conscience issues.

The pope was speaking to Mid-Atlantic U.S. bishops during their regular ad limina visit to Rome recently.

Pope Benedict said these issues… “delegitimize the Church’s participation in public debate,” he said. Religious freedom, he said, has been eroded “in the face of powerful new cultural currents” which are “not only directly opposed to core moral teachings of the Judeo-Christian tradition, but increasingly hostile to Christianity.”

“Pope Benedict said he appreciated the efforts of the U.S. bishops to maintain contacts with Catholics involved in political life and help them ‘understand their personal responsibility to offer public witness to their faith.’”

“He concluded on an optimistic note by observing the rise of ‘a new generation of Catholics’ in the United States whose ‘experience and convictions will have a decisive role in renewing the Church’s presence and witness in American society.’”

“The hope promised by this younger generation should be reason enough ‘to renew our efforts to mobilize the intellectual and moral resources of the entire Catholic community in the service of the evangelization of American culture and the building of the civilization of love.’”

Would that “civilization of love” be Catholic, or be dominated by Catholicism? Has Rome changed? The pope’s words, no doubt, were intended to mobilize the clergy and laity to defend Rome’s strongly held convictions in American society.

“The Romish Church now presents a fair front to the world, covering with apologies her record of horrible cruelties. She has clothed herself in Christ-like garments; but she is unchanged. Every principle of popery that existed in past ages exists today. The doctrines devised in the darkest ages are still held. Let none deceive themselves. The popery that Protestants are now so ready to honor is the same that ruled the world in the days of the Reformation, when men of God stood up, at the peril of their lives, to expose her iniquity. She possesses the same pride and arrogant assumption that lorded it over kings and princes, and claimed the prerogatives of God. Her spirit is no less cruel and despotic now than when she crushed out human liberty, and slew the saints of the Most High.” Great Controversy, page 570 and 571

Pope warns of ‘grave threat’ to religious freedom in US