Vatican City, Sep 4, 2020 / 05:00 am (CNA).- Cardinal Pietro Parolin told Lebanese Catholics at a Mass in Beirut Thursday that Pope Francis is close to them, and praying for them, during their time of suffering.
“It is with great joy that I find myself among you today, in the blessed land of Lebanon, to express to you the closeness and solidarity of the Holy Father and, through him, of the whole Church,” the Vatican’s Secretary of State said Sept. 3.
Parolin visited Beirut Sept. 3-4 as the representative of Pope Francis, a month after the city experienced a devastating blast which killed nearly 200 people, injured thousands, and left thousands without a home.
The pope has called for Sept. 4 to be a universal day of prayer and fasting for the country.
Cardinal Parolin celebrated Mass for around 1,500 Maronite Catholics at the Shrine of Our Lady of Lebanon, a major pilgrimage site in the hills of Harissa, north of Beirut, on the evening of Sept. 3.
“Lebanon has suffered too much and the past year has been the scene of several tragedies affecting the Lebanese people: the acute economic, social and political crisis which continues to rock the country, the coronavirus pandemic which has worsened the situation and most recently, a month ago, the tragic explosion of the port of Beirut which ripped open the capital of Lebanon and caused terrible misery,” Parolin said in his homily.
“But the Lebanese are not alone. We accompany them all spiritually, morally and materially.”
Parolin also met with Lebanon’s President Michel Aoun, a Catholic, in the morning of Sept. 4.
Cardinal Parolin brought the president greetings from Pope Francis and said that the pope was praying for Lebanon, according to Archbishop Paul Sayah, who is responsible for external relations for the Maronite Catholic Patriarchate of Antioch.
Parolin told President Aoun that Pope Francis “wants you to know that you are not alone in these difficult times that you are experiencing,” Sayah told CNA.
The Secretary of State will conclude his visit with a meeting with Maronite bishops, including Cardinal Bechara Boutros Rai, the Maronite Catholic patriarch of Antioch, during lunch Sept. 4.
Speaking via phone from Lebanon the morning of Sept. 4, Sayah said that the patriarchs have a deep appreciation and gratitude to the Holy Father for his closeness “in such difficult times.”
“I’m sure today [Patriarch Rai] will express those sentiments to Cardinal Parolin face-to-face,” he noted.
Commenting on the Aug. 4 Beirut explosion, Sayah said “it’s a huge disaster. The suffering of the people… and the destruction, and the winter is coming and people will certainly not have the time to rebuild their homes.”
Archbishop Sayah added, however, that “one of the beautiful things about this experience is the influx of people volunteering to help.”
“Young people especially have really flocked in the thousands into Beirut to help, and also the international community which has been present offering assistance in various ways. It’s a good sign of hope,” he said.
Cardinal Parolin also met with religious leaders at the Maronite Cathedral of St. George in Beirut.
“We are still shocked by what happened a month ago,” he said. “We pray that God may render us strong to care for every person who was affected and to accomplish the task of rebuilding Beirut.”
“As I arrived here, the temptation was to say that I would have liked to meet you in different circumstances. I said, ‘no,’ however! The God of love and mercy is also the God of history and we believe that God wants us to accomplish our mission of caring for our brothers and sisters in this present time, with all its difficulties and challenges.”
In his homily, delivered in French with Arabic translation, Cardinal Parolin said the Lebanese people can identify with Peter in the fifth chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel.
After fishing all night and catching nothing, Jesus asks Peter “to hope against all hope,” the Secretary of State noted. “After objecting, Peter obeyed and said to the Lord: ‘but at your word I will let go of the nets… And having done so, he and his companions caught a great multitude of fish.’”
“It is the Word of the Lord which changed the situation of Peter and it is the Word of the Lord which calls today the Lebanese to hope against all hope and to move forward with dignity and pride,” Parolin encouraged.
He also said that “the Word of the Lord is addressed to the Lebanese through their faith, through Our Lady of Lebanon and through Saint Charbel and all the saints of Lebanon.”
Lebanon will be reconstructed not only on a material level, but also on the level of public affairs, according to the secretary of state. “We have every hope that Lebanese society will be based more on rights, duties, transparency, collective responsibility and the service of the common good.”
“The Lebanese will walk this path together,” he said. “They will rebuild their country, with the help of friends and with a spirit of understanding, dialogue and coexistence that has always distinguished them.”
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Peter Seewald has developed an intimacy with Benedict apparent in his interviews, and book. His judgment should be trusted. If our blessed loved Benedict XVI departs he’ll remain an advocate. Of course his final testament will be interesting. A true and faithful witness I’m confident he will be rewarded with beatific knowledge of his beloved Jesus of Nazareth. It will end the moot controversy of who is pope. The contrast with Francis is remarkable. Nowhere do we find in Benedict since his spiritual maturity any ambiguity, any preposterous suggestion, any abrogation as pontiff in witnessing to and defending the faith as revealed. Unlike our present experience. I refuse to judge Pope Francis because I am not equipped to do so. God is the judge of his conscience. No one is equipped to accompany and discern the truth of a person’s soul. Nonetheless I can and must pass judgment on a person’s works. There I address with full confidence that there are deceptive features, said in passive tense not active as one intending to deceive. For example Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia 303 quotes Saint Thomas Aquinas in ST 1a2ae 94 4, Although there is necessity in the general principles, the more we descend to matters of detail, the more frequently we encounter defects. Aquinas addresses Justice in this passage to emphasize the need to deliberate the conditions on the ground so to speak in determining what is just. He’s posing a hypothetical to demonstrate a point, not that we can never determine what is just – if for example we take it literally that we will always find exceptions. Instead Francis proposes that we will always find exceptions to an intrinsically evil act like Adultery [or abortion, homosexuality, cohabitation] which demolishes the reality of intrinsic evil. Aquinas holds there is no virtuous mean between excess and defect for such an evil. Murder, abortion, homosexuality are always evil. Consequently Francis underscores a doctrine of mitigation that affects all morality leaving culpability indeterminate and subject to discernment and resolution. He references in 302 the Catechism that mitigation may reduce to a minimum moral culpability (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2352). Mitigation cannot become a theological category that eliminates mortal sin as warned by John Paul II. Especially if we remain in a continuous state of repeated intrinsically evil acts, as if the serial fornicator, adulterer, sexual deviant diminishes culpability, is even freed from mortal sin. Insofar as abortion the overwhelming majority are convenience decisions, rarely under extreme conditions of duress. Mitigation as employed by the Pope Francis places personal conscience as the determinant of what is a moral good or evil. Indeterminate moral standards due to exceptions, mitigation, and conscience are the three levers that overturn traditional Apostolic morality, a first in Church history and a deceptive doctrine he commends to all clergy to employ by accompaniment and discernment. Thereby placing the onus on the priest to grant the benefit of the doubt. As in Malta tacitly approved by this Vatican that anyone may now approach the sacraments at will regardless of manifest sin, with the proviso they follow the guidelines, the three levers of deliberation and dissolution of culpability provided in Amoris Laetitia. I submit this commentary in conscience as priest and my obligatory witness to the truth.
Does possibly mitigated subjective culpability ever elevate conscience as the determinant of what is moral good or evil, or eliminate objective morality? Pope Benedict wrote directly and unambiguously to this point, and to the widespread deadening of conscience in the West:
“I have been absolutely certain that there is something wrong with the theory of the justifying force of the subjective conscience . . . Hitler may have had none (guilt feelings); nor may Himmler or Stalin. Mafia bosses may have none, but it is more likely that they have merely suppressed their awareness of the skeletons in their closets. And the aborted guilt feelings . . . Everyone needs guilt feelings. The loss of the ability to see one’s guilt, the falling silent of conscience in so many areas, is a more dangerous illness of the soul than guilt that is recognized as guilt (see Psalm 19:12). [‘But who can discern their own errors? Forgive my hidden faults.’]
“To identify conscience with a superficial state of conviction is to equate it with a certainty that merely seems rational, a certainty woven from self-righteousness, conformism, and intellectual laziness. Conscience is degraded to a mechanism that produces excuses for one’s conduct, although in reality conscience is meant to make the subject transparent to the divine, thereby revealing man’s authentic dignity and greatness” (Values in a Time of Upheaval, 2006).