L'Occident déboussolé: nos politiciens se vautrent dans la « normalité » comme dans une fange miraculeuse.

Poutine, Orban : pourquoi les autocrates séduisent à l'Ouest

Par Caroline Galactéros


FIGAROVOX/TRIBUNE - Pourquoi donc Vladimir Poutine est-il si populaire ? Pour Caroline Galactéros, le président russe incarne la figure de l'homme d'Etat autoritaire alors que les dirigeants occidentaux apparaissent de plus en plus impuissants.

Comme les grands fauves, survivants incompris et pourchassés d'un temps révolu, ils se sentent, se reconnaissent, se respectent, même dans l'opposition farouche, et d'une certaine façon aussi se serrent les coudes. Ils méprisent souverainement la faiblesse de leurs interlocuteurs qui leur parlent morale pour masquer leur idéalisme impuissant ou leur cynisme au petit pied. Ils tiennent pour indispensable la centralité de la décision et l'autorité sur leur «peuple» qu'ils ne réduisent pas à une «population» mais entendent guider vers un horizon de puissance et d'influence peut-être contestable mais au moins défini et clair. Pour eux, le collectif est plus que la somme des intérêts particuliers ; il doit incarner quelque chose de plus grand que soi. Ils ont compris que la clef de la popularité durable réside dans le courage de l'impopularité immédiate.

Le Moyen-Orient ensanglanté est désormais le théâtre central de l'affrontement de deux modèles d'hommes politiques, et dans ce combat, les démocraties européennes ne tiennent plus le manche. Elles prétendent incarner le stade abouti du Progrès humain, du Vrai, du Juste et du Bon, mais sont en pleine crise sociale, morale et politique. Une crise aigüe de la représentativité et de la crédibilité de leur personnel politique lui-même. Elles prennent de plein fouet l'affirmation de pouvoirs plus directs, confiants et déterminés qui leur jettent le gant et remportent la mise. La Russie, la Chine, l'Iran, les figures autoritaires d'un Assad, d'un Erdogan ou d'un al Sissi incarnent chacune à leur manière ce renversement des modèles de pouvoir.

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Lire la suite: www.lefigaro.fr


Caroline Galactéros est docteur en sciences politiques, polémologue et colonel dans la réserve opérationnelle des armées. Spécialiste en intelligence stratégique, elle a écritManières du monde, manières de guerre paru en 2013 aux éditions Nuvis.

Tthe tyrants in power employ the Machiavellian approach to history in which those who control the present control the past

The BBC: Writing Christianity Out of History
by Joseph Pearce



A few days ago I had the slimy experience of listening to a forty-minute discussion on BBC radio purporting to show the history of Britain through the medium of poetry. I describe the experience as slimy because I felt, having listened to it, that I had been slimed, finding myself covered spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally in a decaying, mendacious goo.

Let me explain.

A poet friend of mine sent a link to BBC Radio’s celebration of National Poetry Day on October 8, which included several forty-minute discussions of British history, seen through the eyes of the poets. Fearing the worst, I thought I’d dip my toe in the water, or my ear in the airwaves, somewhat tentatively at first. Feeling that the first discussion, which was on the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon roots of Britain, should be fairly safe, being far removed from the wasteland of modernity, I tuned in to learn more.

It was horrible.

Presented by Andrew Marr, the veteran broadcaster, who describes himself as a “pampered white liberal” and as being resolutely secular, i.e. non-religious, I should have expected the worst. Here is Marr on his religious position: “Am I religious? No. Do I believe in anything? No.” Since, however, it is simply not possible for a human being not to believe in anything, let’s look at what he does believe in. Having turned his back on his parents’ Presbyterianism as a young man, he became involved with the International-Communist League as an undergraduate at Cambridge, earning the nickname “Red Andy.”

“The BBC is not impartial or neutral,” Marr stated in October 2006. “It’s a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities, and gay people. It has a liberal bias, not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias.” Rephrased, Marr was effectively saying that the BBC was biased against rural populations, old people, the ethnic majority, and heterosexuals.

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Read more: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

Family Matters

The Data Show, Again, That Family Matters

by JONAH GOLDBERG


It’s been a good month for champions of the traditional family, but don’t expect the family wars to be ending any time soon. 

In recent weeks, a barrage of new evidence has come to light demonstrating what was once common sense. 

“Family structure matters” (in the words of my American Enterprise Institute colleague Brad Wilcox, who is also the director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia). 

Princeton University and the left-of-center Brookings Institution released a study that reported “most scholars now agree that children raised by two biological parents in a stable marriage do better than children in other family forms across a wide range of outcomes.” 

Why this is so is still hotly contested. Another study, co-authored by Wilcox, found that states with more married parents do better on a broad range of economic indicators, including upward mobility for poor children and lower rates of child poverty. 

On most economic indicators, the Washington Post summarized, “the share of parents who are married in a state is a better predictor of that state’s economic health than the racial composition and educational attainment of the state’s residents.” 

Boys in particular do much better when raised in a more traditional family environment, according to a new report from MIT. 

This is further corroboration of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous 1965 warning: 

“From the wild Irish slums of the 19th century Eastern seaboard, to the riot-torn suburbs of Los Angeles, there is one unmistakable lesson in American history: a community that allows a large number of men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future — that community asks for and gets chaos.”

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Read more: www.nationalreview.com

A sign of the catholicity of the Church is that throughout the entire world her teaching is one

Ukrainians React to Papal Calls for “Decentralization”

By Alexander R. Sich


Recently, there was a positive development during an interview with Bishop Borys Gudziak (President of the Ukrainian Catholic University—UCU) by Crux regarding the issue of “decentralization,” which was proposed in a favorable light by the Holy Father during the recent Synod on the Family. Bishop Gudziak echoed the position of the Head of the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church (UGCC), His Beatitude Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, who expressed his support for decentralization—with an important distinction: decentralization should not apply to “the fundamental human issues… For example, I support a devolution in terms of the selection of bishops.” On the Kasper proposal, however, Gudziak said “it would be very problematic, to put it lightly.”

In a subsequent interview, Bishop Gudziak noted that the president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, apparently would not support the removal of language from the draft of Ukraine’s new constitution that defines marriage as being exclusively between a man and woman, and that good, strong arguments must be provided to politicians to support the president’s pledge. Nonetheless, it appears UCU still has not dealt directly with three of its faculty (in the School of Journalism) who publicly promote homosexuality as “normal” and homosexual “marriage” as a “human right”—one of those faculty members being a member of Parliament. On this point, the teaching of the Universal Church, as stated by His Beatitude Sviatoslav Shevchuk, is crystal clear and worth quoting at length:

In the working document the question of homosexuality was raised. However, the [Synod] Fathers immediately noted that it has no relation to the issue of the family because the life of a same-sex couple cannot be termed a marriage. And, no matter the pressure whatever international lobby may exert upon the Church, the Church—in accordance with its conscience and being faithful to the teaching of Scripture—can never change its teaching on this issue. For this reason some of the Fathers noted assertively that the issue of homosexuality must be removed from the final document, inasmuch as this issue has nothing in common with the subject of the Synod, that is, the call and role of the Christian family in the Church and the world. The issue of the distinct teaching of the Church regarding such matters of sexuality absolutely has no place here.

On the other hand, what was discussed was the notion that the individual person, irrespective of which sin by which he or she is burdened, is and remains created in the image and likeness of God. We must always respect the person [as person] no matter their acts. We respect the sinner but assertively warn them against their sins and can never approve of their sins. This distinction was always present during the discussions of the Synod Fathers. For this reason, on the issue of homosexuality the Fathers are absolutely unanimous.

It is a great tragedy and a great moral evil to propagandize homosexuality as some kind of model for relations or even the attempt, at the legislative level, to compare such a lifestyle with the family. Such pressure is an expression of great disdain toward the family and marriage as institutions. (Emphasis added.)

It is de rigueur these days that one must rarely (if at all) speak about the objective nature of the sin (for example, inherently disordered homosexual inclinations acted out as grave sin). Rather, one must fully accept the person with the sin all but affirmed, in the “hope” that one’s non-condemnation of sin will somehow lead the sinner to repentance. I am a direct witness of a UGCC bishop taking precisely this approach regarding a person who for years clung (and continues to cling) to the notion that the Church is “wrong” about homosexual marriage … because homosexuality, this person believes, is “natural.” Predictably, that accommodationist tree bore no fruit.

Moreover, in this light, it is difficult to understand part of the Holy Father’s closing remarks—widely interpreted as a blanket castigation of those who hold to the Church’s teaching on the traditional understanding of the family, and which angered many: “[The Synod] was also about laying bare the closed hearts, which frequently hide even behind the Church’s teachings or good intentions, in order to sit in the chair of Moses and judge, sometimes with superiority and superficiality, difficult cases and wounded families.” Clearly, there are those with superiority complexes on both sides of official Church doctrine … who, while vociferous, are relatively few in number.

Yet, is it not true that precisely because significant representatives of the clerical hierarchy either kept silent or actively shielded sexual offenders in their ranks, that only now is the Church slowly emerging from the diabolical destructiveness of the pedophilia scandals? Is it not true that fearful clerical silence in the face of the promotion of homosexuality, euthanasia, abortion, etc. has led to scandals among the faithful and a weakening of the Church’s moral stature to deal with these issues—including the weakening of the institution of the traditional family? Cardinals Kasper and Marx are examples of those who would compromise Church doctrine while hiding behind “pastoral reforms,” and who “lead” eparchies collapsing from a certain lack of Magisterial oxygen … in the context of the “radical individualism” and “sex-saturated hedonistic culture of the West.” Is this not, at least partly, the case at UCU as it struggles with its serious identity crisis?

Why is it that significant numbers of lay people and pastors have succumbed to the zeitgeist—making them unable (or unwilling?) to consider both the pastoral and doctrinal elements as crucial, that is, speaking the truth to sin, while accepting and loving the sinner precisely as a fallen human being? The unfortunate outcome is completely backwards, or as Robert Royal points out in the context of the current Synod on the Family, such an accommodationist approach grants “communion before repentance and reconciliation.” Why is it so difficult to understand that the Church’s position is not a restrictive “either … or” but an inclusive “both … and” in its doctrinal and pastoral messages? That is, why is it so difficult to hold in one’s mind—and even more difficult to proclaim—that there is no love without truth, forgiveness without acceptance of one’s fault, conversion without repentance, and mercy without reconciliation and justice?

Unfortunately, in this regard, the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Bishop of Edmonton, David Motiuk, is unabashed in his communion-before-state-of-Grace approach, as he supports offering communion to an unrepentant and highly confused transgendered man—with repentance and reconciliation at best presented as a rain check. That is, Motiuk is effectively acting against the Head of his own particular church, His Beatitude Sviatoslav Shevchuk, and against Catholic teaching—both doctrinal and pastoral.

Returning to the issue of “decentralization,” there is more here than meets the eye. What many don’t realize is how deeply one of Cardinal Kasper’s particularly pernicious ideas has been absorbed by some in the UGCC … and I don’t have in mind Kasper’s mischief in the context of the recently-concluded Synod on the Family. There is a distinct possibility that the Pope will decree that bishop’s conferences take on more responsibilities previously held by the Curia in a more “decentralized church.” This is not new, and to the extent it has to do with administrative issues at the level of particular churches or countries with significant numbers of Catholics, the idea is a healthy one.

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Read more: www.crisismagazine.com 

 

What the New Left has mastered most, is the ability to transform political language, its meaning and its use

Roger Scruton on the New Left:
From Jargon To Incantation

 

BY LAETITIA STRAUCH-BONART

Roger Scruton has a striking sense of timing. He was in Paris during les événements of May 1968. His last novel, The Disappeared, dealt with sex trafficking in a northern city in England just as the child abuse cases in Rotherham and Oxfordshire were making headlines. His latest book, Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left, appears at the very moment when the Labour party has chosen as its leader a man whose political beliefs, from crypto-Marxism to egalitarian Newspeak, are much inspired by New Left thinkers. Jeremy Corbyn’s success shows that the New Left is still a major intellectual current in Britain and elsewhere.

The New Left is the wave of European and American left-wing intellectuals who gained prominence in the post-war era, especially from the 1960s, in a context of dramatic social and cultural change, a new yearning for emancipation and the continuing influence of Marxism despite the decay of the Soviet Union. In 1985 Scruton, eager to target these Pied Pipers, published a first version of Thinkers of the New Left; it was greeted with contempt by much of the intellectual establishment. Thirty years later, the book is back, enriched with new details and brought up to date. All the big names are there, and no one escapes the scrupulous and devastating Scrutonian laser.

Scruton possesses a rare quality: that of being able to describe and judge at the same time. Each chapter deals with a specific time and country, and deploys the same strategy: describe, analyse, save a little piece of truth and kill the rest. The journey is very intense, from Hobsbawm’s Marxist view of history to Galbraith’s liberal disdain for consumer culture; from Sartre as rigid servant of Communist ideology to Foucault and his paranoid obsession with power; from the horrifying Lukàcs, for whom “the bourgeoisie possesses only the semblance of human existence”, to Habermas’s appeal for “a wide dialogue excluding most of his detractors”, as Scruton puts it. The French have developed their own brand of delirium: Althusser, in language that was obscure even for a Marxist, struggled with superstructure and infrastructure; Lacan preferred to deny any meaning and truth; and Deleuze, determined to fight capitalism in the name of desire, developed a curious “syntax without semantics”, in Scruton’s words.

The final firework is worth the wait: Badiou and Žižek and their worship of revolution. Why pay attention to the vast sufferings that the French, Russian and Maoist revolutions caused, when “fidelity” to the event — their trademark concept — is “a sufficient justification for carrying on regardless”?

Encompassing all those thinkers under the umbrella of the New Left is inevitably limiting and doesn’t capture all the nuances of their thoughts. Some are Marxists, others Structuralists or Keynesians, still others sui generis. But they have many features in common, the first being that they represent everything that a conservative like Scruton dislikes. They have inherited from the Old Left an enduring quest for liberty and equality, without any acceptance of the possible contradictions between them. They interpret all institutions as features of domination and oppression, and their purpose is always to change everything. They see the state as the main instrument for the new order “that will rectify the ancient grievance of the oppressed”. For them, politics is everything while civil society or the rule of law doesn’t interest them much. They are utterly negative: they are often filled with resentment.

What the New Left has mastered most, Scruton argues, is the ability to transform political language, its meaning and its use. It has created an imaginative narrative where abstractions such as “bourgeois” and “capitalism” are pilloried, while the “workers” are invoked — even when most of these workers have actually ceased to exist. Instead of trying to understand and describe how capitalism really works, how the classes are really constituted, and how people live, develop customs and use institutions, the New Left deals with a world without any substance. Some of these thinkers have even decided to exclude the use of argument and reason. When Scruton quotes Lukàcs, Althusser or Deleuze, it is absolutely clear that most of their sentences make absolutely no sense. And when Lacan and Badiou pretend to use mathematics as a proof for their crazy systems, it is not in order to save reality but to bury it.

As a matter of fact, reality is what they want to escape. According to Lukàcs, empiricism is “an ideology of the bourgeoisie”. That’s why, as Scruton explains, “anyone who actually consults the ideas of ordinary working-class people commits a heinous communist error, the error of ‘opportunism’.” Here lies the deep negativity of the dogmatic Left. It explains how and why a large part of the leftist intelligentsia was reluctant to condemn the crimes of Communism, despite its millions of deaths. It explains also why the New Left still manages to attract people despite the lessons of experience. It is because its ideal is not supposed to be realised: it is here to be dreamed about, and so never to be questioned. These thinkers will never describe anything practical that they wish to achieve. They will cast spells, as in the sentence attributed to Stalin that “the theories of Marx are true because they are correct.” These ideas meet a desire that lies in every human being: the need for religion and for an eternal justice that will compensate for all the perceived injustice in this world. Just as these spells are repeated as prayers, their authors have been worshipped as gurus. Visit Highgate Cemetery in London, and you will see that people leave roses, notes and presents at the foot of Marx’s grave, under his awe-inspiring statue.

Nevertheless, Scruton is still able to demonstrate a degree of sympathy for some of these thinkers. Not only does he make the effort to find something — however small — interesting in each of them, he sometimes sincerely agrees with his opponents. This is the case when he discusses the American criticism of consumer culture, where he shares their starting point but not their conclusion, when he praises Sartre as a great writer, or when he recognises the beauty of Foucault’s last work, The History of Sexuality. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, the British Left ends up relatively spared from attack, as British socialism, according to Scruton, shares with conservatives a love for home and territory, and may have been less influenced by Marxism as a consequence.

This is an outstanding and very necessary book. I may be biased, as I am the author’s translator into French, but I like his work because it is true, not the other way around. The only fault of the book is that it gives so much space to the sticky prose of the New Left. But that is a necessary evil. And Scruton’s fluid and lively sentences are such a relief. No wonder: you are at least reading something human.

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 Read more: standpointmag.co.uk

Mgr Anatrella: Il ne s’agit pas de juger pour condamner, mais de juger pour discerner

Synode sur la famille: "Le chantier est encore devant nous"
Propos recueillis par Anita Bourdin

Mgr Anatrella (*) analyse le document final


« Ce sont les personnes qui sont l’objet de la pastorale et non pas des situations singulières, même légales, que nous aurions à valider alors qu’elles sont contraires au sens de la famille », explique Mgr Anatrella.

Le synode sur la famille vient de s’achever, après la publication du Rapport final, samedi 24 octobre 2015 : dans cette 3e interview, Monseigneur Tony Anatrella, riche de son expérience clinique et de sa connaissance des sciences humaines, analyse ce document.

Il fait notamment observer que lorsque le pasteur pose un jugement « il ne s’agit pas de juger pour condamner, mais de juger pour discerner et faire œuvre de compréhension ».

Mgr Anatrella met en garde contre « la séduction pastorale qui est une déviance du sens biblique de la miséricorde rappelé par le Pape François ». Et il fait observer l’attitude du Christ : « Sans chercher à séduire, le Christ ne tenait pas des propos méchants, ni humiliants à l’égard des autres, mais il savait nommer les exigences inhérentes au salut. »

Il conclut : « Le chantier est encore devant nous. »

Voici le deuxième des quatre volets de cet entretien à propos de la synthèse finale du synode 2015 sur « la vocation et la mission de la famille dans l’Église et dans le monde contemporain ».

Zenit - Il y a également la question relative aux divorcés remariés ?

Monseigneur Tony Anatrella - Oui. La Relatio synodi envisage que soient traités par les Conférences des Évêques de chaque pays ou aire culturelle, les problèmes posés par la situation des divorcés remariés (n. 53). Il est proposé d’envisager dans chaque diocèse « des parcours de discernement et d’implication de ces personnes, pour aider et encourager la maturation d’un choix conscient et cohérent ». Le texte évoque quelques critères sans préciser davantage et sans évoquer la réception des sacrements (n. 85). À aucun moment le texte n’évoque l’hypothèse que ce discernement prépare à la réception des sacrements. Laisser à l’appréciation des diverses conférences épiscopales ce discernement et sa finalité, est peut-être insuffisant s’il n’y a pas une régulation dans l’Église universelle. Ce devrait être le rôle de la Congrégation pour la Doctrine de la Foi ou du nouveau dicastère pour la Famille. Sinon, nous risquons de voir apparaître des réflexions et des décisions divergentes en la matière, surtout si elles ne reposent pas sur la théologie du mariage. On a d’ailleurs vu apparaître chez certains Pères synodaux une attitude parfois anti-intellectuelle et anti-juridique en voulant opposer les idées et les lois de l’Église aux personnes. L’Évêque ne devrait plus être le pasteur qui gouverne son diocèse selon les concepts et les lois de l’Église mais avant tout, être proche des personnes et des situations particulières. Une attitude qui est à l’image de ce qui se faisait, il y a quarante ans, lorsque des pères de famille voulaient davantage être le « copain » de leurs enfants que l’adulte qui représente la loi symbolique permettant à la famille de se structurer. À ne voir que la relation aux personnes, on risque de passer à côté des idées qui mènent le monde et structurent les psychologies individuelles. En agissant de la sorte, les pasteurs sont sans doute très gentils et seront gratifiés par le monde, mais ils ne font pas leur travail pour éduquer l’intelligence de la foi et des mœurs qui en découlent.

Le travail de discernement est un projet très délicat qui nécessite, répétons-le, des prêtres particulièrement formés au sens de l’écoute, du discernement et de l’évaluation morale des situations particulières. Il est difficile de séparer ces trois attitudes conjointes. Ce qui est une ancienne pratique d’évaluation pastorale de l’Église qui s’inspire de la théologie morale et des règles de droit (cf. Code de droit canonique) pour le salut des personnes, mais qui a souvent été oubliée. Le risque est de vouloir écouter pour écouter. Or l’écoute n’est jamais une fin en soi ! Elle s’effectue toujours en vertu d’un objectif précis. L’écoute du prêtre, du directeur spirituel ou du confesseur, l’écoute du commerçant, l’écoute de l’agent d’une administration ou encore l’écoute d’un psychothérapeute n’est pas la même et n’a pas le même but. Au nom de l’écoute on peut simplement s’arrêter à la demande, voire à la plainte du demandeur sans se croire autorisé à dire une parole qui incline à prendre telle ou telle décision morale dans le domaine qui nous concerne ici et qui est pastoral.

Les Pères synodaux n'ont-ils pas été guidés par l’anxiété de la non-discrimination et le refus de tout jugement ?

Monseigneur Tony Anatrella - En psychiatrie sociale nous étudions l’impact des idées, des faits et des clichés sociaux sur les psychologies et sur les pathologies. Tout le monde est concerné par ce type d’influence qui induit les raisonnements et les comportements. À l’issue de ce Synode, il y a une sorte d’euphorie journalistique à dire « enfin, nous sortons du permis et du défendu » parfois à l’image du désir des adolescents qui sont dans l’illusion de vouloir s’émanciper de toutes les lois. Les pasteurs de l’Église doivent-ils être pris au piège de cette méprise ? Certes, pour revenir à votre question, il ne s’agit pas de juger pour condamner, mais de juger pour discerner et faire œuvre de compréhension. La perspective de l’écoute est sans doute généreuse, elle n’en demeure pas moins très exigeante de la part des pasteurs et implique une formation très singulière. Nous avons à découvrir ce que représente le sens du discernement à travers la casuistique, l’une des disciplines classiques de l’Église où chaque cas est retenu pour lui-même, par exemple afin de préciser les modalités de son accès aux sacrements.

Il a également été dit à propos des divorcés remariés qu’ils doivent « être intégrés dans les communautés chrétiennes selon les divers modes possibles, en évitant toute occasion de scandale… Il faut discerner quelles formes d’exclusion actuellement pratiquées dans le domaine liturgique, pastoral, éducatif et institutionnel peuvent être dépassées » (cf. les n. 77, 84, 85).

Là aussi, comment prendre ce type de décision sans être enfermé dans telle ou telle situation et en oubliant que la rupture avec l’économie des sacrements implique de ne pas être en mesure d’exercer des responsabilités ecclésiales ? Vaste question que l’on ne peut pas résoudre sentimentalement pour simplement faire plaisir aux uns et aux autres, voire en sacrifiant à l’air du temps qui ne supporte ni « discrimination », ni exclusion. Il y a des situations objectives qui provoquent cet état de fait et qui n’est pas l’expression d’un rejet de la part d’un prêtre ou de l’Église. Le risque ici est de s’abandonner au subjectivisme et encore davantage lorsqu’on fait référence au « for interne » qui serait le lieu des ultimes décisions du sujet face aux exigences de l’Évangile et lui permettrait ainsi de décider intérieurement, par lui-même, de la validité de son mariage.

Le recours au « for interne » (n. 86) a encore besoin, là aussi, d’être travaillé car dans les mentalités actuelles il risque d’être compris dans le sens où chacun fait ce qu’il veut. Un principe qui est cher aux conférences épiscopales d’Allemagne, d’Autriche et de Suisse qui cherchent une voie de passage, relativement démagogique, face à la sortie de l’Église de personnes divorcées qui ne paient plus l’impôt religieux. Certes, le Pape Benoît XVI avait évoqué cette hypothèse du « for interne » chez ceux qui s’étaient mariés religieusement sans adhérer à la foi chrétienne, qui se sont séparés, se sont convertis et remariés civilement, et, souhaitant se marier chrétiennement, pensent intérieurement que leur premier mariage était frappé de nullité. Mais après avoir travaillé cette question et pris conseil, Benoît XVI s’est ravisé en disant « que le problème est très difficile et doit être encore approfondi » (Conférence aux prêtres du diocèse d’Aoste, 25 juillet 2005). Peut-il être vraiment résolu de cette façon ?

Le chantier est encore devant nous. Dans l’alacrité actuelle, il faut éviter les fausses solutions qui coûteraient cher à la cohérence de la foi chrétienne et à l’unité de l’Église. Autrement dit, dans ce besoin quasi obsessionnel de vouloir à tout prix décider de tout, il faut aussi être capable de reconnaître humblement que, dans certains cas, il n’y a pas de solution. On ne peut qu’assumer le manque et la privation, là où tout doit être légitimé. Dans ce cas, il s’agit d’ouvrir à une spiritualité adéquate marquée sous le signe de la pauvreté qui est aussi un chemin d’espérance et de confiance au Christ.

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(*) Monseigneur Tony Anatrella, est psychanalyste et spécialiste en psychiatrie sociale, Consulteur du Conseil Pontifical pour la Famille et du Conseil Pontifical pour la Santé. Il est enseignant à Paris et expert auprès des Officialités en France. Il est l’auteur, pour le thème de cette interview, des livres : Le règne de Narcisse, le déni de la différence sexuelle – Éditions Presses de la Renaissance et Mariage en tous genres, Éditions l’Échelle de Jacob. Il vient de publier : Développer la vie communautaire dans l’Église, l’exemple des Communautés nouvelles, Éditions l’Échelle de Jacob. Et a participé à l’ouvrage collectif : La famille : enjeux pour l’Église, aux Éditions Lethielleux.

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- Lire la suite: www.zenit.org 

- Source: lesalonbeige.blogs.com

Silence from Catholic colleges ... “makes it more difficult for them to hear and live by the truth of the Gospel"

‘Coming Out Day’ at Catholic Colleges Risks Betraying the Faith, Harming Students

By Adam Cassandra |


While many Catholic colleges and universities are using the occurrence of “National Coming Out Day” to sponsor events promoting lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) identities and lifestyles throughout the month of October, such events could actually be harmful to the students and risk betraying the Catholic faith, according to information from the Catholic Medical Association and Courage International, a Catholic apostolate that ministers to persons with same-sex attraction.

“Events like ‘Coming Out Day’ run the risk of equating a person's identity with his or her sexual attractions, which, although they form a significant part of a person's experience, are only one factor in the whole complex reality of what it means to be a human being,” said Father Philip Bochanski, associate director of Courage International, in an interview with The Cardinal Newman Society.

“Promoting events that reduce a person's identity to his or her sexual attractions betrays our Catholic faith in the dignity of the human person, and does a disservice to those it claims to defend,” he said.

Georgetown University, along with several other Catholic colleges, recently promoted “Coming Out Day” on campus, encouraging students to be proud of and embrace LGBTQ identities.

According to Georgetown’s description of the event online, “This event will feature a door through which students ‘come out’ as proud LGBTQ Hoyas and Allies.”

In addition to “Coming Out Day,” Georgetown is sponsoring a “six-week long celebration of the LGBTQ community” dubbed “OUTober.” OUTober events at Georgetown are organized by the University’s LGBTQ Resource Center and the student group GU Pride in partnership with the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, Campus Ministry and 28 other University departments and programs.

None of the OUTober event descriptions include discussions of chastity, Church teaching or rejecting LGBTQ identities and lifestyles in any way. The Newman Society asked Georgetown to provide examples of specific University-sponsored events or materials promoted by the University that stress rejection of same-sex attraction (SSA), but no response was received by time of publication.

The student newspaper, The Hoya, describes the OUTober events as helping students feel “proud” about embracing LGBTQ identities. And while these events last over a month, the paper claims the University isn’t doing enough in this regard: “As we continue to celebrate OUTober and the importance of accepting all identities, the Georgetown community would do well to recognize how far we still have to go.”

But in its publication “Homosexuality and Hope,” the Catholic Medical Association (CMA) stresses the need for individuals with same-sex attraction to seek out treatment, not embrace LGBTQ identities or lifestyles. And CMA emphasizes the responsibility of educators in helping those individuals to obtain treatment.

Teachers, along with parents and priests, “have a serious responsibility to communicate the fullness of the Church’s teaching on sexual morality, to counter false information about SSA, and to encourage people with SSA to obtain help,” according to CMA.

“Therapy can help a client to identify the underlying causes of his or her SSA, which often include low self-esteem, anxiety, anger, sadness, and loneliness, and to resolve emotional pain,” CMA states. “Treatment can then help the person work toward freedom to live chastely according to his or her state in life.”

“True compassion toward those with SSA requires communicating to them the scientific truth about treatment,” the CMA publication says.

The Newman Society asked Georgetown to respond to questions about University-sponsored OUTober events potentially harming students in any way, physically, psychologically or spiritually, but no response was received by the time of publication.

Fr. Bochanski said Catholic colleges should strive to combat unjust discrimination of students with SSA, but agreed that educators have a responsibility to reject acceptance of LGBTQ lifestyles and to emphasize Church teachings on human sexuality.

“Catholic institutions of all sorts ought to be the first to identify and repudiate unjust discrimination, and Catholic colleges and universities are right to welcome all students, including those experiencing same-sex attractions, and to accompany them along the way of holiness,” he told the Newman Society. But he said, “It is not charitable or loving to withhold or obscure the truths of faith, even when this is done in an effort to be compassionate or welcoming.”

For guidance on welcoming students with SSA into the Catholic community on campus, Fr. Bochanski pointed to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 1986 letter to bishops on the pastoral care of those with same-sex attraction:

No authentic pastoral programme will include organizations in which homosexual persons associate with each other without clearly stating that homosexual activity is immoral. A truly pastoral approach will appreciate the need for homosexual persons to avoid the near occasions of sin.

We would heartily encourage programmes where these dangers are avoided. But we wish to make it clear that departure from the Church's teaching, or silence about it, in an effort to provide pastoral care is neither caring nor pastoral. Only what is true can ultimately be pastoral.The neglect of the Church's position prevents homosexual men and women from receiving the care they need and deserve.

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Read more: www.cardinalnewmansociety.org