U.S. bishop warns push for gay ‘equality’ will ‘destroy everything Christian’
A U.S. Catholic bishop is warning that the pro-LGBTQ lobby’s
fight for so-called “equality” has become so out of control that Christians
should expect increasing persecution for simply believing and living according
to basic Christian truths involving marriage, family, and morality.
“We've had bakers refuse to bake cakes for gay ‘marriages’ and
as a result, they are imprisoned or fined. They have to go out of business.
We've seen florists who don't supply flowers. I'm convinced that there is going
to be every effort made to destroy everything Christian that would in the least
bit oppose this kind of degeneration,” stated Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz, former
head of the Lincoln Diocese, in an exclusive interview in January with
LifeSiteNews’ John-Henry Westen.
Bishop Bruskewitz, considered by many as a hero in defense of
Catholic orthodoxy amidst the upheavals in the Church in recent decades, called
the push for the acceptance of homosexuality in the U.S. “devastating.”
“I can't believe that a tiny minority of the human race would
perpetuate and try to, not just seek tolerance, but actually seek acquiescence
and support for a perversion that is repulsive to normal human beings,” he
said.
The Catholic Church teaches that homosexual acts are always
wrong because they are “contrary to the natural law” and therefore
“intrinsically disordered.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that
such acts “close the sexual act to the gift of life” and they “do not proceed
from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity.” Numerous Christians hold
that they are loving homosexuals when they warn them about the dangers to both
body and spirit that accompanies homosexual behaviors.
Bishop Bruskewitz called it “preposterous” that folks are buying
the argument that the relationship of two men or two women who put organs into
the wrong orifice should be made into a matter of “human rights or racial
justice” and be equated with a sexual relationship between a man and woman that
produces children.
“But how can [this] link in the minds of manipulatable human
beings? Well, that's the case. And, if you dare to speak out, you are a bigot,”
he said.
He said that the persecution against Christians will especially
come swiftly to government-run institutions such as the military, where the
government will more easily be able to enforce its sexual ideology.
“There are military chaplains, those who administer the
ordinariate of the military in our country, who are fearful about what is going
to happen if two lesbians, who claim to be Catholic, come in and insist that
they be married by the Catholic chaplain. If he refuses, it is entirely
possible that he will be court-martialed and have to spend 40 or 50 years in
Leavenworth penitentiary.”
“So these persecutions are in the offing. And I think that
they're not going to go away. And the minute that one tries to protest, they
are denounced as a bigot, and as a racist, and God knows what else sort of
things are heaped upon you. So that's the danger of the persecution. So I think
it's probably coming,” he said.
The late Cardinal Francis George of Chicago famously once said:
“I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison, and his successor
will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards
of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the Church has
done so often in human history.”
Commenting on this, Bishop Bruskewitz said: “It sounds horrible,
but, right now, given what we've experienced in this cultural upheaval, I don't
see that it is that far off the mark.”
Archbishop Cupich's mistaken remarks on conscience
Archbishop Cupich's mistaken remarks on conscience
The bishop suggested that the attacks are not only coming from
without the Church, but also from within. He mentioned Chicago Archbishop Blase
Cupich by name as someone who he said publicly holds “mistaken” views on Church
teaching that are leading Catholics into error. The archbishop had put forward
arguments last year that divorced and remarried Catholics, as well as
homosexuals (here and here), should
be able to decide for themselves according to their own consciences if they
want to receive Holy Communion.
“I think Archbishop Cupich is mistaken in giving that kind of
sovereignty to conscience. Conscience is the supreme subjective criteria for
morality. But, there is an objective criteria for morality, as well. And, it's
the duty of those who inform consciences — including those who form their own
consciences — to conform their consciences to the objective norm of morality,
which is God's natural law written into the human heart – the laws which God
has revealed in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, the laws of the Church.”
“The law is the measure of objective morality. And there is such
a thing as objective morality, otherwise, we fall into complete relativism and
the nonsense that Pope Benedict XVI spoke against when he talked about the
despotism and tyranny of relativism.”
“No, conscience does not have that kind of solipsism, or
narcissism — if you want to call it that — that would allow one to say, ‘I
follow my conscience and I can do whatever I want.’ That is not correct any
more than saying, ‘2 and 2 are 5 because that is what I think it should be,’”
he said.
Denying communion to unrepentant public sinners
Denying communion to unrepentant public sinners
Addressing arguments that the Church must bend her teachings on
marriage, divorce, and worthiness to receive Holy Communion in order to be
“merciful,” Bishop Bruskewitz responded: “I think that if you detach morality
and truth, you are [creating] a very serious issue here – mercy isn't really
mercy. It's not merciful to tell a little child that, ‘Yes, 2 and 2 are 5.’
That's nonsense. It hurts the child ultimately, and it hurts the world by
asserting something that is not true, to be true – simply because the child
wants it to be true.”
Not allowing people living in grave sin, such as adulterers or
Catholic politicians who publicly support abortion, to receive Holy Communion
is not a punishment for the sake of causing the individual embarrassment, but
for the sake of helping them to realize that what they are doing is not
“synchronized with God's revelation, with the teaching of the Church, with the
word that God has given us, and with the deposit of faith,” he said.
“That's the purpose of ecclesiastical sanctions. It's always a
merciful undertone,” he added.
Lay people have the right and the duty to call things to the mind of the clergy
Lay people have the right and the duty to call things to the mind of the clergy
When asked what the lay Catholic faithful must do in the the
face of various high-profile Catholic leaders who openly dissent from
fundamental Catholic teaching and morality, Bishop Bruskewitz responded that
they have a “right and the duty to call things to the mind of the clergy and to
express themselves on issues.”
“More than ever, they're required to be brave and to live the
call that they received from their confirmation. That oil that was put on them
gave them Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Knowledge, Fortitude, Piety, and Fear
of the Lord. And it's especially that ‘Fortitude’ aspect that has to be there.
Not that we want to encourage people to be arrogant, to be disrespectful to the
hierarchy or to the clergy, but to be brave and strong.”
“And that (Fortitude) and Counsel gives to the lay people the
right and the duty to call things to the mind of the clergy and to express
themselves on issues — and they have rights, as long as it is done with
Christian charity, to do this, and sometimes they have a duty to do it,” he
said.
“I think laypeople perhaps have more of a role to play then they
might expect in this catastrophic degeneration of our culture and our
civilization in this 21st-century,” he said.
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