“Apart from me, you can do nothing,” Christ said (Jn 15:5). On the subject of pedophilia, you speak about a “mystery of Judas”, explaining that this abominable betrayal of the priesthood was preceded by many others: what are they?Ī priest who has lost his bond with Jesus, does not pray, and does not take the time to be with Christ before the Blessed Sacrament, is a weakened priest. He does not entrust his Church to exceptional heroes, but to simple men, to show that He is the one who acts through them. These serious failings do not condemn the Church: on the contrary, it shows that God trusts even weak persons, so as to show the power of his love for us. There are men of the Church, some of them high-ranking, who have tarnished the Church, disfigured the face of Christ, but Judas must not lead us to reject all the apostles. Jesus told us: “If they persecuted me, they will persecute you” (Jn 15:20). Is it detested? Jesus Christ himself was not accepted, since he died on the Cross. But when we see the enormous number of faithful priests in the priesthood, we should remain calm and continue our witness of total self-giving to God through celibacy.
There are some who want to weaken the Church, to modify her teaching on sexuality.
If celibacy disappears, what dies will be the witness the Jesus intended to give. Abandoning celibacy would further aggravate the crisis of the Church and would diminish the position of the priest, who is called to be not only another Christ, but Christ himself: poor, humble and celibate. There is a persistent campaign to destroy the priesthood, and in particular to destroy celibacy, which is supposedly impossible and contrary to nature: because if they destroy celibacy, they irreversibly affect one of the greatest riches of the Church. But I think that there is a specially orchestrated plan to destroy the Church by cutting off her head: the cardinals, the bishops and the priests. What do you think about the book Sodom ? Do you think that we are presently witnessing an all-out offensive against the priest figure, who is a stumbling block for a hyper-sexualized society? Editor’s note: The following is the second half of a March 27, 2019, interview with Robert Cardinal Sarah, originally conducted in French by Laurent Dandrieu it is reprinted here with kind permission of Culture à Valeurs Actuelles. The first half of the interview can be read here.