Fr. Berardelli was a man of self-sacrifice, but reports of a donated respirator are not true

Rome Newsroom, Nov 16, 2020 / 10:04 am (CNA).- Catholics in France gathered outside churches in multiple cities this weekend calling on the government to allow them to attend Mass during the national lockdown.

Protests took place across France, including in Nantes, Strasbourg, Bordeaux, Rennes, and Versailles, Nov. 14 and 15. A Sunday protest planned in Paris in front of the Church of Saint-Sulpice was prevented by police after authorities said that it violated an order against praying in the streets, according to the AP.

Under France’s second lockdown, all public religious gatherings throughout the country, including public Masses, have been suspended until at least Dec. 1. All non-essential businesses, including restaurants, are closed, but schools remain open.

A legal appeal by the French bishops’ conference was rejected by the Council of State Nov. 7. The bishops had argued that the prohibition of public Masses violates freedom of worship.

At the outdoor gatherings, Catholics sang hymns and prayed the rosary under police supervision.
Catholic demonstrators can be seen in photos holding signs that read “We Want Mass” and “God the King.”

In Nantes, nearly 300 people stood in the rain in front of a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary Nov. 15 and chanted: “Give us back the Mass.”

“Normally we should be at mass this Sunday morning. But we don’t have the right. We are deprived of this right for the second time in a row,” Marc Billig, one of the organizers of the Nantes protest, told local media.

French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said that he would meet religious representatives Nov. 16 after French bishops proposed the resumption of Masses with attendance limited to 30% of each church building’s capacity. The French daily Le Monde reported Nov. 16 that the current restrictions are not expected to be lifted until early December at the earliest.

In some dioceses, bishops urged Catholics not to gather outside in protest in light of the coronavirus lockdown.

“Let’s be patient,” Bishop Michel Dubost, apostolic administrator of Lyon, said Nov. 13.

“Let us not come together, neither outside nor inside churches, and show our ability to respect the frameworks given to us in the name of public health,” Dubost said.

Europe is currently experiencing a second wave of coronavirus cases, which has led Ireland and England to impose lockdowns and suspend public Masses, while Italy and Spain have implemented regional restrictions and curfews.

There have been more than 1.9 million coronavirus cases in France this year which has led to the deaths of 42,603 people, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center.

French health authorities reported Nov. 15 that the number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care has fallen since France implemented its lockdown, but these patients still take up 96% of the country’s ICU beds, AP reported.

In response to the French bishops’ appeal, a judge specified that churches can remain open during the lockdown and that Catholics can go to a church near their homes regardless of distance if they carry the necessary paperwork. Priests will also be allowed to visit people in their homes and chaplains to visit hospitals.

Catholic weddings can take place with a maximum of six people and funerals with no more than 30 people in attendance.

This was the second week of Catholic protests for some French cities. On Nov. 8 more than 500 Catholics gathered in front of the cathedral in both Nantes and Versailles, according to French RTL.

“They sang hymns, there was the prayer of the rosary, it lasted an hour, ” Bishop Bruno Valentin, auxiliary bishop of Versailles, told AFP.

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Rome, Italy, May 29, 2018 / 10:08 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Cardinal Gerhard Müller reflected recently on the rise of gender ideology, saying it flourished in the vacuum left by the collapse of fascism and Soviet communism as a “new religion”.

“Marxism and fascism, anti-Christian ideology, fell. Capitalism is in crisis. There was room for true philosophy, for theology, for Christian religion. But people preferred to invent a new religion, which believes in the human being rather than God,” the prefect emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith told CNA May 25.

The cardinal spoke before the presentation of the Italian edition of Why I Don’t Call Myself Gay, by Daniel Mattson.

“People cannot be classified according to their sexual orientation,” Cardinal Müller said. “We do not have human beings who are more special than others. Man must be described according to his persona and the fact that he is created in the image and likeness to God and his vocation to eternal life.”

This character fits “every human being.”

Speaking about pastoral care for homosexuals, the cardinal noted that “the Church has always had respect toward every human person, beyond any categorization.”

He also emphasized that “in gender ideology you can count dozens of genders, while human being is created as man and woman: this is our nature, and the God cretor’s will is expressed in this nature.”

Cardinal Müller underscored that people “must resist those who organize as an ideological group and want to change all the society, imposing their thought on every people.”

That is “an imposition of a unique thought,” as ideological groups “attack all those who do not think their way, they insult, they even destroy the human dignity of people who think differently from them.”

He said these people “are a lobby, an organization with their own interests.”

Cardinal Müller praised Mattson for not labeling himself as gay, but as “Son of God.”

“We can talk about anything in the secret of confession and with pastoral care, but no man can identify himself with a category that does not exist in reality,” Cardinal Müller said.

He also stressed that this construction comes from Marxist thought, because “the Marxist rationale claims that mind does not recognize reality, but it builds reality: when the communist party says that 2+2 is 5, everybody must believe it.”

Gender ideology and pastoral care for homosexual people are among the most discussed topics in the Catholic Church.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued in 1986 a Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, which said, “We encourage the Bishops to provide pastoral care in full accord with the teaching of the Church for homosexual persons of their dioceses.”

“No authentic pastoral programme will include organizations in which homosexual persons associate with each other without clearly stating that homosexual activity is immoral. A truly pastoral approach will appreciate the need for homosexual persons to avoid the near occasions of sin,” it added.

And Benedict XVI discussed gender ideology in his final Christmas Greetings to the Roman Curia, on Dec. 21, 2012.

In the speech, he said that “the profound falsehood of (gender) theory and of the anthropological revolution contained within it is obvious. People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given by their bodily identity, that serves as a defining element of the human being. They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves.”

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Isabel Vaughan-Spruce / ADF UK

Denver, Colo., Feb 3, 2023 / 15:45 pm (CNA).
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