But Inculturation Has a Place

Latin traditionalists who believe in ecclesial empire and external uniformity as unity will never agree.

« I am an African. Let me say clearly : the liturgy is not the place to promote my culture. Rather, it is the place where my culture is baptised, where my culture is taken up into the Divine. » The power of silence, against the dictatorship of noise. pic.twitter.com/MrS34lIiKQ

— Cardinal R. Sarah (@Card_R_Sarah) July 20, 2021

Two Responses

Doing good includes the pursuit of justice, especially a proper punishment, and security of the French people, and closing their borders. But probably not according to Jorge Bergoglio.

I am close to the Catholic community of #Nice, mourning the attack that sowed death in a place of prayer and consolation. I pray for the victims, for their families and for the beloved French people, that they may respond to evil with good.

— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) October 29, 2020

L’islamisme est un fanatisme monstrueux qui doit être combattu avec force et détermination. Il n’arrêtera pas sa guerre. Nous africains le savons hélas trop bien. Les barbares sont toujours les ennemis de la paix. L’Occident, aujourd’hui la France, doit le comprendre. Prions. +RS

— Cardinal R. Sarah (@Card_R_Sarah) October 29, 2020

Robert Sarah and Pope Francis Ideologically Aligned?

CLJ: Cardinal Sarah's Warning to the West by Chase Padusniak

While the African prelate sometimes sounds not unlike a vocal America-first Catholic, a thoughtful reading of his statements make clear that these are incidental similarities, not ideological concurrences. Take, for example, his stance on the European refugee crisis. In an interview with the French magazine Valeurs Actuelles, he appeared to contradict Pope Francis’s position on immigration, saying “It is better to help people flourish in their culture than to encourage them to come to a Europe in full decadence . . . It is a false exegesis to use the word of God to promote migration.”

His reasoning, however, is not that migrants pollute or corrupt the cultures they enter. Instead, in The Day is Now Far Spent, he notes that Europe displays oligarchic tendencies.

Sarah is concerned that migrants will be corrupted by the host societies; but he is concerned with the ethnic and cultural changes that mass migration brings as well. The choice of "pollute" or "corrupt" to characterize the odiousness of "America-first" Catholics or conservatives is most likely deliberately, but even Aquinas warns against having too many foreigners in a polis in terms of the harmful effects they will have on the rule of law.

As for "oligarchic tendencies," those tendencies are much more than that, they are the system and the state. In fact, Sarah himself would probably use stronger language than that to describe the state. Similarly, many "America-first" American patriots are also concerned with the oligarchy in this country, and how it profits off importing foreign workers. Are "America-first" Catholics aligned with Pope Francis, then? Does Pope Francis see things that way?

This is the sort of fluff piece aimed at downplaying what might be taken as "extremist views" from a churchman yet untouched by scandal and who is popular among "conservative" Catholics.

Sarah vs. Bergoglio on the Question of Mass Immigration

First Things: On Loving Thy Neighbor by John Waters

No need for the mental gymnastics to reconcile the two. On this issue Sarah is right, Francis is wrong.

Square Notes Interview with Cardinal Sarah, Part 2

Square Notes Podcast


(Part 1 here)

Square Notes, Season 2

Interview with Cardinal Sarah

NCReg: Cardinal Sarah’s Cri de Coeur: The Catholic Church Has Lost Its Sense of the Sacred by Edward Pentin
Exclusive interview with the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.

Now Available

The Day Is Now Far Spent

Honored to have been asked to provide a blurb for the English edition of Cardinal Sarah's new book--

"Cardinal Sarah is a latter-day Christian prophet, and this book is his most urgent wake-up call yet to a West sleepwalking toward a paganized dystopia." https://t.co/VAHqS0PWHg

— Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) May 27, 2019

Apropos to Notre Dame Burning

CWR: Cardinal Sarah and Sunset of the West by Dr. Samuel Gregg
Cardinal Robert Sarah’s new book offers a bracing assessment of the state of Western culture, seeking to awaken Western societies to the truth about themselves.

Catholic Herald Interview with Cardinal Sarah

here, via Rod Dreher. Did Dreher see his endorsement of European ethnonationalism in his other interview?

Cardinal Sarah Sounds The Alarm

More Based and Papabile than Most European Bishops

or even Western bishops, including the current bishop of Rome. May God grant him many years.

Cardinal Sarah: every nation has a right to distinguish between refugees and economic migrants

CWR Blog: Cardinal Sarah: In facing liturgical East, we experience "the primacy of God and of adoration" by Carl E. Olson