[Grem] Sarah bíboros: "A papi cölibátus elleni támadás az Egyház és misztériuma elleni támadás"

[Emoke Greschik]

 Attack on celibacy puts priesthood in ‘mortal danger,’ warns Cdl Sarah
The African cardinal said that by ‘attacking the celibacy of priests, you
are attacking the Church and her mystery.’
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/attack-on-celibacy-puts-priesthood-in-mortal-danger-warns-cdl-sarah
[image: Featured Image] Cardinal Robert Sarah speaks at the Summorum
Pontificum conference in Rome on September 14, 2017. LifeSiteNews
By Martin Bürge
ROME, Italy, February 10, 2020 (LifeSiteNews <https://www.lifesitenews.com/>)
– *Cardinal Robert Sarah has declared that the Catholic priesthood is “in
mortal danger” and “going through a major crisis” *because of the push from
various voices within the Church to abolish priestly celibacy. The African
prelate called out those who want to make celibacy optional.

*“By attacking the celibacy of priests, you are attacking the Church and
her mystery,” he said. *

Ahead of the publication of the post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation “Querida
Amazonia” on Wednesday, February 12, which has been rumored
<https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breaking-pope-francis-to-abolish-priestly-celibacy-according-to-leaked-amazon-synod-exhortation>
to open the doors to married priests, Cardinal Sarah told Edward Pentin of
the National Catholic Register
<https://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/cardinal-sarah-the-priesthood-today-is-in-mortal-danger>
that faithful Catholics are not asking for priestly celibacy to be
overturned.

*“The ordination of married men is a fantasy of Western academics who are
in search of violations. I want to affirm it forcefully: The poor, the
simple, rank-and-file Christians do not demand an end to celibacy,” he
said.*

Sarah, the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the
Discipline of the Sacraments, said *there are voices within the Church who
would like to “relativize the celibacy of priests.” *

“*That would be a catastrophe*! *For celibacy is the most obvious
manifestation that the priest belongs to Christ and that he no longer
belongs to himself. Celibacy is the sign of a life that has meaning only
through God and for him,” *he said,
U.S. Canada World Catholic

“To want to ordain married men is to imply that priestly life is not full
time, that it does not require a complete gift, that it leaves one free for
other commitments such as a profession, that it leaves time free for a
private life. But this is false. A priest remains a priest at all times.
Priestly ordination is not first of all a generous commitment; it is a
consecration of our whole being, an indelible conformation of our soul to
Christ, the priest, who demands from us permanent conversion in order to
correspond to him. Celibacy is the unquestionable sign that being a priest
supposes allowing oneself to be entirely possessed by God. To call it into
question would seriously aggravate the crisis of the priesthood,” he added.

*With a contribution by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, Cardinal Sarah has
recently published a book
<https://www.ignatius.com/From-the-Depths-of-Our-Hearts-P3550.aspx>
defending priestly celibacy. *

*Sarah pointed to Germany*, where married priests have been discussed for a
long time, and more forcefully
<https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/german-bishops-working-doc-calls-for-approval-of-contraceptionhomosexuality-womens-ordination>
since the launch of the “synodal path.”

“But I am uneasy. In Germany, *a strange synod clearly envisages the
questioning of* *celibacy.* I wanted to cry out my concern: Do not tear the
Church apart! *By attacking the celibacy of priests, you are attacking the
Church and her mystery,” he said. *

Explaining *that those who attack celibacy want to make the Church a purely
human institution, *“within our power, within our reach,” the cardinal
continued, “It means renouncing the mystery of the Church as God’s gift.”

If married men in the Amazon region were allowed to become priests, Sarah
argued, that “would prohibit the raising of vocations of unmarried priests.
The exception would become a permanent state.”

Asked about* priests within the Catholic Church who are married, namely as
part of the Anglican Ordinariate and the Eastern churches, *Sarah clarified
that* those exceptions constitute “a parenthesis in the normal and natural
state of things*.” At the same time, he said, “the lack of a priest is not
an exception,” especially in nascent or dying churches.

Cardinal Sarah also attempted to dispel a number of myths surrounding the
question of married priests*. Even though married priests did indeed exist
in the first few centuries of the Church, after their ordination, “they
were required to abstain completely from sexual relations with their
wives.”*

Referring to the Council of Elvira in 305, Sarah made clear that one of the
first concerns of the Church after the age of martyrdom was “to affirm that
priests must abstain from sexual relations with their wives.”

He quoted the council itself, which stated, “It was unanimously agreed that
bishops, priests and deacons, that is to say, all clerics constituted in
the ministry, should abstain from their wives and should not bear children;
whoever has done so (had sexual relations) should be declared to be
deprived of the clerical office.”

In January, Cardinal Gerhard Müller said
<https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/cdl-mueller-benedicts-words-carry-great-weight-in-the-church-hes-not-francis-antagonist>
that the Eastern churches, by allowing married priests, had departed “from
the tradition of the early Church.”

Cardinal Sarah echoed this assessment. “It was only much later, because of
the corruption of the texts, that the East would evolve in its discipline,
without ever renouncing the ontological link between priesthood and
abstinence.”

Apart from historical considerations, Sarah also sees *practical
problems **with
having married priests,* without doubting the holiness of married priests
in Eastern churches. *“If a priest is married, then he has a private life,
a conjugal and family life. He must make time for his wife and children. He
is unable to show, by his whole life, that he is totally and absolutely
given to God and the Church.”*

Starting with statements by former Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Sarah stated
that he has shown “that at the root of the abuses committed by clerics,
there is a deep flaw in their formation.”

“They wanted to make the priest a man like any other. Some priests were
formed without putting God, prayer, the celebration of Mass, the ardent
search for holiness at the center of their lives,” Sarah elaborated.

According to the African cardinal, priests were formed without teaching
them about God as their only support, “without making them experience that
their lives only have meaning through God and for him.” If God is taken out
of the equation, the priest is left with nothing but power, Sarah continued.

“*If a priest doesn’t daily experience (that) he is only an instrument in
God’s hands, if he doesn’t stand constantly before God to serve him with
all his heart, then he risks becoming intoxicated with a sense of power. If
a priest’s life is not a consecrated life, then he is in great danger of
illusion and diversion,” Sarah cautioned*.

Cardinal Sarah briefly commented on the rollout of the book From the Depths
of Our Hearts, to which Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI had contributed.

*Sarah accused the opponents of the priesthood of making the former Pope
out to be an old man. *He then asked, “But have you read what he writes? Do
you think one can write pages of such depth without having all one’s
faculties?”

He further accused “some people” of trying “to make us believe that our
publishers have manipulated us and have taken advantage of a
misunderstanding to mount I don’t know what kind of communication stunt.
This is totally false! There is no misunderstanding. Our French publisher
has simply implemented what I personally worked out with the Pope emeritus.”

In this context, Sarah praised his French publisher Fayard, with which he
had already worked on many other projects, including his trilogy of
interview books that were written together with Nicolas Diat. “All these
polemics are a diversionary tactic to avoid talking about the essential,
the content of the book,” Sarah is convinced.

French newspaper Le Figaro first reported on the book on January 12. The
cover of the original edition of the book on celibacy portrayed Benedict as
a co-author, including a photo of the former Pope the same size as that of
Sarah.

Archbishop Georg Gänswein, prefect of the Papal Household and private
secretary of the former Pope, said
<https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/archbishop-ganswein-benedict-xvi-wrote-text-but-did-not-agree-to-be-books-co-author-52484>
January 14 that he had called Cardinal Sarah “at Benedict’s request, to ask
the book’s publisher to remove the signature of the Pope emeritus from the
introduction and conclusion, because he had not co-authored them.”

Following the first backlash, Sarah said in a statement, “The polemic which
has aimed to tarnish me for several hours by implying that Benedict was not
informed of the appearance of the book ‘From the Depths of Our Hearts’ is
completely despicable.”

While the first edition of the book, for reasons of time, was still printed
portraying the Pope emeritus as a co-author, future editions were announced
as only referring to him as a contributor.

The publisher of the English version, Ignatius Press, maintains that
Benedict is a co-author. They argued: “Given that, according to Benedict
XVI’s correspondence and Cardinal Sarah’s statement, the two men
collaborated on this book for several months, that none of the essays have
appeared elsewhere, and that a joint work as defined by the Chicago Manual
of Style is ‘a work prepared by two or more authors with the intention that
their contribution be merged into inseparable or interdependent parts of a
unitary whole,’ Ignatius Press considers this a co-authored publication.”

Archbishop Gänswein later said the introduction and the conclusion were not
written by both, but only by the cardinal, even though the French publisher
said otherwise.

The German archbishop has not been seen
<https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breaking-pope-francis-puts-archbishop-gaenswein-on-leave-report-says>
with Pope Francis at his Wednesday audiences for almost a month, which the
Vatican claims is “due to ordinary redistribution of the various
commitments and duties.”
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