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Cardinal sarah8/17/2023 ![]() He pointed out in a conversation in “Merely Catholic” , the Catholic Herald’s podcast (to be released on December 8 th )( ) that Catholics should be much more focussed on preserving the sanctity of the individual conscience than on democracy itself. Monsignor Michael Nazir Ali reflected on Cardinal Sarah’s admonition to both use democracy to preserve religious freedom and also to fight it to preserve our freedom. The bias is implicit in some areas of our cultural life, but it bursts out explicitly enough the moment a Catholic expresses belief in Christian sexual and cultural ethics in the professional or cultural space.Īny attempt to defend the normality of heterosexual marriage, any preference for biology over imaginative gender, any hesitation about the hygiene, stability or sterility of same-sex attracted coupledom, any repudiation of the defining categories of collectivism and the preference for the sanctity of the individual, and implicit becomes swiftly explicit. “It is not often an overt threat, or hatred of the faith,” he added, but an “implicit bias against Christianity.” Countless martyrs continue to die for the faith around the world…but religious liberty is under threat in the West, too.” “Threats against religious liberty take many forms. In his interview, Cardinal Sarah reminded Christians in the West that they should be alert to threats to Catholic integrity: “Religious liberty is not to be taken for granted, or compromised, or neglected,” he said. It quickly slips into utopian mode as extremists grab the political steering wheel, and then it veers off the straight and narrow into the ditch of totalitarianism. It has wanted to defend it as an environment where human freedom can flourish, but is has also had to fight to keep it clean. So the Church finds itself in an ambiguous place when it comes to democracy. Marx quite liked democracy because for him it was a means to an end. All utopians have fixated on this and as the left wing revolutions demonstrated there was no limit to the number of people they were willing to murder to make it happen. ![]() The great temptation since the Enlightenment has been to try to stifle humanity’s longings for an afterlife and instead offer the diversion of heaven on earth now. Liberal democracy must not forget God.”īut liberal democracy is forgetting God. “Liberal democracy requires debate, but never can the importance of our worship of God be forgotten or neglected in the course of debate. Not everyone is starry eyed about it as a system: “democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve,” wrote George Bernard Shaw.ĭuring an interview with EWTN news recently ( ), Cardinal Robert Sarah reminded Christians in the West that they should not take religious liberty and freedom of worship for granted. The Church has never expected from democracy more than it can deliver, but it has valued it for the freedom of conscience that is a usual by-product of it. Less famously, he went on to say that the best argument against it is a five minute conversation with the average voter. “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others,” insisted Winston Churchill.
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