The Response of Portuguese Leaders to the Pope
After the Mass at Fatima, which brought together 500,000 of the faithful, Benedict XVI received the representatives of social action organizations in Portugal. He encouraged “Initiatives aimed at protecting the essential and primary values of life, beginning at conception, and of the family based on the indissoluble marriage between a man and a woman”. They “help to respond to some of today’s most insidious and dangerous threats to the common good. Such initiatives represent, alongside numerous other forms of commitment, essential elements in the building of the civilization of love.” This was Thursday, May 13, 2010.
The following Monday, May 17, in a televised speech, the Portuguese president, Anibal Cavaco Silva, declared: “Today I have decided to promulgate a law that authorizes marriage between persons of the same sex”. One cannot imagine a more scathing affront.
On the plane that brought the pope to Lisbon, a journalist asked, “How is the faith to be proclaimed in a context which is indifferent and even hostile to the Church?” The Holy Father replied, “The opposition between secularism and a culture of faith is something anomalous and must be transcended.” Shortly before, he had affirmed: “Today we see that this very dialectic represents an opportunity and that we need to develop a synthesis and a forward-looking and profound dialogue.”
The response of the Portuguese president and of the members of parliament who in February passed the law legalizing homosexual union flouts a “forward-looking and profound dialogue”; their reaction manifests outrageously the opposition of secularism to the faith. This opposition is a fact, and such facts can be neither avoided nor overcome by arguments. One must ask, what is the cause of these effects, what tree bore these fruits, and act accordingly. All the rest is only pamphleteering, in the eyes of those who advocate the secularization of society.
Abbé Alain Lorans
