A Bishop unlike others
“I am far from closing my eyes to all these seeds of death which infest our society. I am incapable of remaining insensitive to the statistics which tell me that there are more than 250,000 abortions each year in my country, 250,000 crimes, do you realize? I cannot remain silent! We must denounce the intolerable, which our society justifies, we are not judging persons, as God alone knows the hearts of men; but a crime remains objectively a crime (…).
It is equally impossible not to cry out in indignation in the face of the legalisation of euthanasia in several European countries, or to remain silent in the face of a newspaper article which marvels at the moral strength of such-and-such a person who has put an end to his life. Life does not belong to me, I have received it as a wonderful treasure and I know that death will open up for me also on an Easter morning.
Neither can I fail to react to a theologian who claims that Jesus did not know that he was the Son of God, or to another who ended his article on the virgin birth of Christ with a question mark. No, Jesus is the Word Incarnate, and in him there is one person, the divine person, there is no human person in Christ, and Jesus knew who he was! (…)
Equally I cannot support the Edition of a Bible which has seems to have deliberately erased all the vocabulary that the Church has coined throughout its history in order to give an account of the richness of the Mystery; faith is quite a different thing from a mere vague trust; the verb to believe opens my eyes to the invisible and allows me, right here and now, to discover the presence and the action of Jesus Christ at the center of my life, as at the center of the world. No, this Bible is not that of the Church!
Finally, with much sorrow, I have to say that I do not understand why two of my fellow bishops got involved in the publication of a book, entitled, L’Eglise et l’art d’avant-garde. De la provocation au dialogue [The Church and avant-guarde art. From provocation to dialogue. This book is appropriately titled: a provocation; on the other hand, I wonder if the photographs which illustrate this book really come under the heading of art, as Jacques Maritain defined it in his work, L’Intution créatrice dans l’art et dans la poésie [Creative intuition in art and poetry]. I am tempted to answer no, as these illustrations are nothing more than the reflection of morbid and sexual urges which inhabit the heart of man, wounded and disfigured by sin, and could never lead me to perceive the transcendence of Beauty. Besides, all this research into “The Flesh and God” deserved better, and I know artists who have refused to participate in this pretence of art. In any case, I cannot be one of those who are ready to get on any band wagon for fear of no longer being in tune with modernity."
