ACI Africa, Apr 15, 2024 / 13:30 pm (CNA).
A subset of Church leaders have aligned themselves with modern-day values in the name of a “contemporary culture” that is akin to paganism, Cardinal Robert Sarah said in an address in Cameroon last week.
Sarah, who was addressing members of the National Episcopal Conference of Cameroon (NECC) on April 9, said the Church was experiencing what he described as “practical atheism.”
“Many Western prelates are tetanized [paralyzed] by the idea of opposing the world. They dream of being loved by the world; they’ve lost the desire to be a sign of contradiction,” the Guinean-born cardinal lamented during his address to NECC members on the second day of their 49th Plenary Assembly at the headquarters of NECC in Mvolyé in the Archdiocese of Yaoundé.
“I believe that the Church of our time is experiencing the temptation of atheism,” he said. “Not intellectual atheism, but that subtle and dangerous state of mind: fluid and practical atheism. The latter is a dangerous disease, even if its initial symptoms seem benign.”
“We need to be aware of it; this fluid atheism runs through the veins of contemporary culture. It never says its name but infiltrates everything, even ecclesiastical discourse. Its first effect is a kind of lethargy of faith. It anesthetizes our ability to react, to recognize error and danger; it has spread throughout the Church,” he said.
In essence, the fluid and practical atheism, Sarah said, seeks “a compromise between truth and lies. This is the major temptation of our time.”
The cardinal, who until his retirement in February 2021 was serving as prefect of the Vatican Congregation (now Dicastery) for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, said he found it regrettable that Church leaders have given room to the vice of “fluid and practical atheism.”
“We are all guilty of accommodating, of complicity with this major lie that is fluid and practical atheism,” he said. “We pretend to be Christian believers and men of faith; we celebrate religious rites, but in fact we live as pagans and unbelievers.”
According to Sarah, “fluid and practical atheism is elusive and slimy. If you attack it, it will entangle you in its subtle compromises. It’s like a spider’s web — the more you struggle against it, the tighter it gets on you. Fluid and practical atheism is the ultimate trap of the tempter of Satan.”
He decried “dissension and suspicion,” saying that these vices are “everywhere” in the Church. “Fluid and practical atheism lives and feeds on all our little weaknesses, all our capitulations, and compromises with its lie.”
“We don’t have to create parties in the Church; we don’t have to proclaim ourselves the saviors of this or that institution. All that would contribute to the adversary’s game. But each of us can decide today: The lie of atheism will no longer pass through me; I no longer wish to renounce the light of faith; I no longer wish, out of convenience, laziness, or conformism, to allow light and darkness to cohabit within me,” he said.
The 78-year-old cardinal continued, referring to the decision to embrace the light of faith: “If everyone humbly decided to do so, the system of lies would collapse of its own accord, because its only strength is the place we give it within ourselves.”
“To keep the spirit of faith is to renounce all that compromises it, to refuse to see things in any other way than through faith. It means keeping our hand in God’s hand. I deeply believe that this is the only possible source of peace and gentleness,” the cardinal said.
“Keeping our hand in God’s hand is the guarantee of true benevolence without complicity, true gentleness without cowardice, true strength without violence,” he continued.
Sarah went on to decry “bitterness and partisanship” that he said have “infested” the Church.
“Only the spirit of faith can form the basis of genuine fraternal benevolence. The world is dying, eaten away by lies and rivalry. Only the spirit of faith can bring it peace,” Sarah said.
On April 4, Sarah called upon the lay faithful of Cameroon’s Diocese of Obala to prioritize prayer in their daily tasks.
The following day, on April 5, he presided over the priestly ordination of 12 men, whom he urged to live their vocation to priesthood “attentive to the flock.”
Sarah also urged Catholic bishops in Africa to be keen on defending the Catholic faith, voicing their opposition to defenders of “particular cultures” during the October session of the ongoing Synod on Synodality.
This story was first published by ACI Africa, CNA’s news partner in Africa, and has been adapted by CNA.
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A finely made distinction between intellectual atheism, when the faith is objectively lost, and practical atheism, when the faith is modified to gain accommodation. This is precisely what’s occurring for the most part with hierarchy and presbyters.
Cardinal Sarah’s notion of “fluid atheism” extends to all the ways we settle for compromise understood as understanding, flexibility, I would add the concept of concrete circumstances that beg compassion when grace is actually the resolution. As well as global issues that have their importance although they have been raised to the peak of priorities. Words like being expansive, the conflation of the principle, the common good. As this occurs it is also noticeable that more are becoming acutely aware of this danger, and are resisting this form of betrayal of the faith for the prophetic silver coins.
Well said, Father Peter.
This “accommodationism” with godlessness in the Church is insidious.
Fr. Morello identifies the common misuse of the term “common good” as conflated with globalism. Fluidity in definitions. When the Church uses this term, the definition is as given in the Catechism, n. 1906, through n. 1912 which reads:
“The common good is always oriented towards the progress of persons [e.g., as in, for example, not “irregular couples”!]: ‘The order of things must be subordinate to the order of persons, and not the other way around.’ This order is founded on truth, built up in justice, and animated by love.”
Another conflation, instructive but also capable of ideological misuse (a tilt into globalism?) is the fusion of Pope John Paul II’s distinct “human ecology” (as in souls and the “transcendent dignity of the human person,” then families, etc.) with the distinct but interrelated “natural ecology” (both, as addressed in Centesimus Annus, 1991) into a conflated “integral ecology” (in Laudato Si, 2015). And then, in 2024, there’s the co-incidence of Dignitas Infinita (“persons”) with the retained Fiducia Supplicans (blessing of “irregular couples”).
To deny that God, The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity, Through The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, Is The Author Of Love, Of Life, And Of Marriage, is to deny The True God, and is apostasy from God’s Truth.
Rendering onto Caesar or oneself what belongs to God, is a form of paganism, which is atheistic at its core.
We see both the intellectual and practical forms of atheism in the Vatican’s accommodation with the CCP for the appointment of bishops in China.
Cardinal Kasper in 2014 from Germania: “But they [Africa] should not tell us too much what we have to do.” https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2014/10/dont-listen-to-the-africans-says-catholic-cardinal
Cardinal Sarah from the Catholic Church, in Africa, now demeaned as a “special case,” and calling out today’s “fluid and practical atheism.”
Choose One…
I think it is not only “practical and fluid atheism”. The primary to it is loving one’s own nice image more than loving God and a fellow human. So, it is “a practical and fluid love of one’s own nice image”. NB: not oneself but self-image. I could not agree with Cardinal Sarah more when he calls it a spider net, the more one struggles the more one gets entangled. It is so because if one challenges “a nice person” about not so good things he is doing he will usually answer that whatever he does, he always does it for the good of others and so he is totally unselfish; if you do not see it you are a rigid scum devoid of Christian love. Christian ascetic tradition (desert Fathers) observed that such a reaction to a critique is a sure sign of a spiritual pride; they also teach us that it is impossible to prove to a proud one his wrongness. Hence the spider net.
I think that the Church had subscribed to a huge world’s slogan “for the good of others” for some time. In essence, it means that I can do anything providing it is “for the good of others” including trampling on their constitutional freedoms and religious rights (like we saw recently, when the unfortunate in the nursing homes could not see their relatives before death or receive the last rites – an unprecedented violation of freedoms about which no one spoken/speaks). Shutting out old people was for their own good apparently and for the good of others as well.
So, you can see how far that slogan can take us, being not preceded by the first part “for the love of God”. If one loves God, he understands that no matter what is going on, the dying is entitled to have the last rites.
Returning to the less extreme daily life of the Church, a priest who interrupts Mass with his “friendly and inclusive” inserts and cheerful innovations would claim that he does it “for the good of others” as well – while in reality he desperately wants a congregation to think that he is nice. God is out of this picture; he either does not see or care that he enforces himself onto the congregation and deprives them of God.
If the Church feared God more than it fears “not to be liked” by whoever, the believers would not be left without communion for many months; they would have an access to the ethical vaccines (not tainted by abortions); there would be no rampant liturgical abuse and so on. And so, I think that the practical and fluid atheism is secondary, the primary is self-worship and not even that – nice-self-image-worshiping, a Facebook and selfie type. Push God away, place own self-image into a freed place and inevitably one will have the most primitive cult, of own nicety (but not atheism; nicety is being worshiped; if I am nice I am also worshiped). But, because it is not “nice” for a Christian to worship himself, that secular cult is dressed in “for the good of others” (but never “for Christ’s sake”) clothes.
The problem is that Christ is not nice.
Anna, you speak the truth so succinctly and with clarity. I always look forward to your comments. Please keep ’em coming.
You’re so right Anna. Many Catholics would rather the unborn die than risk embarrassment among their liberal friends at cocktail parties speaking out against it.
My conversion from pro-life atheism to pro-life theism came about many years ago from finding intelligent design in physics. Finding my way into Christianity was hampered mainly by my own sins but also the lack of inspiration from Catholic clerics and theologians who embodied the same spirit H. Richard Niebuhr famously observed in liberal Protestantism: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.” Eventually, I did discover intelligent Catholic voices and authors.
Inventing a God in one’s preferred image, a false faith, is as old as authentic faith, and it even oscillates within an individual soul when we lie to ourselves about not incurring the wrath of God when we, who might often seek humility, will still compromise our moral lives from time to time.
The problem with prelates is that they can become divorced from reality living somewhat pampered lives. When we face temptations, we know it can hurt people. When they receive comfortable accommodations without having to pay for them, in any sense of the word, it is easy to become detached from the real consequences of sin.
Thank you Anna. Nice is not a virtue. Keep being “bitter” with Cardinal Sarah.
Yes, as Christians , yea Catholics, we must be IN the world not OF the world: the salt, the leaven, the light.
Cdl Sarah…a great man of the church….I for one pray he becomes our next pope….is it possible? I think so because I believe in miracles
…it’s unfortunate though I have zero faith in the assembly of cardinals as a whole…it will be interesting to see what our Lord has for his church in the future…..come Holy Spirit…
Cardinal Sarah’s diagnosis is for me somewhat disorienting. I’ve held this opinion myself for quite sometime and thought myself to be perhaps overreacting…it appears not.
We can be terribly grateful for the likes of Sarah, Burke, Müller, Viganò, Strickland — and others unknown to me. May God reward each of them abundantly and may He provide them the opportunity to step into positions to bring the prophetic corrective.
Cardinal Sarah’s words: “A subset of Church leaders have aligned themselves with modern-day values in the name of a ‘contemporary culture’ that is akin to paganism.”
(1) The “subset of Church leaders” who “have aligned themselves with modern-day values” seems to be a rather large “subset”—including the current pope, his entire Vatican bureaucracy, and the vast majority of other Church leaders who support the current pope’s alignment “with present-day values.
(2) Aligning oneself with present-day values in the name of contemporary culture” is a pretty good way of describing the seldom mentioned Heresy of Modernism, condemned by Saint Pius X in 1907 and resurrected in the Second Vatican Council a century and a half later.
(3) The Heresy of Modernism, whenever and wherever activated in the Church, leads to Church teachings that are not based on God’s revealed, Eternal Truth, but instead are grounded in times-conscious, trendy untruths, created in the chaos of fickle human social, political, and religious preferences—turning God into an image and likeness of us.
A large subset indeed…
Anti-religion scientific enlightened atheists are quite funny to me. They cannot disprove the existence of God by any scientific method or means, and so take it as an article of faith….making it the Religion Of No Religion, Church of No Church, and a life of contradiction and paradox…which likely explains them having the highest suicide rate of any religion.
His Eminence’s rhetoric is quite extreme, unjust, and uncharitable. To call practicing Catholics you disagree with atheists is a disservice to the discussion. It doesn’t bring about solutions. It heightens polarization.
And it’s rather unjust to misrepresent the precision of Cardinal Sarah’s actual words. And, of course, it’s not as if Cardinal Sarah is a stranger to the topic he addresses (but perhaps you have a wider and deeper knowledge of such things?). A longer quote from the full address, which is exceptional:
These insightful and on point remarks echo these comments, made a few years ago:
Those, of course, from Pope John Paul II, a quarter century ago this month.
For examples of “quite extreme, unjust, and uncharitable” rhetoric, consider some of the rhetoric here.
Your comment seems to hold the unjust premises you assume. Cardinal Sarah did not do as you claim. To formulate arguments that have downplayed a recognition that unchanging truth comes exclusively from God and none at all from His creation, an obvious shift toward faithless thought among many in the Church, should be a grave concern for all Catholics seeking the charity necessary towards preserving Catholic witness for the salvation of humanity.