Cardinal Daneels: A Wolf in Shepherd’s Clothing

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By John Zmirak

This week I read one of the sweetest Christian essays I've ever encountered. Written by a frail and elderly pastor who has spent decades shepherding souls, it was delivered to the ongoing Vatican Synod on the Family. Here is a snippet, but be sure and go read the whole thing yourself:

[D]eep in every man, in every woman, there is a hidden place where someone lives, someone who always listens and offers a saving word. It is the place where God lives; where His Spirit lives in us.

That place is called "the home of mercy."

The Hebrew word for mercy (rahamin) does not know the word "heart," but uses the word "womb" (uterus). For in that "womb of mercy" there is tenderness and security, which is even greater than marital intimacy. In God's house, man is secure as in the womb. Man is at home there. There is true listening and speaking there. God lives in the "home of mercy": He listens, speaks, heals and forgives with a mother's tenderness. Even when her child's situation is hopeless, a mother knows how to be a mother.

God lives there, as a shepherd, the great shepherd. But there are also "little shepherds." The priests in the first place, but there are also many lay people who are shepherds. Is there a man or woman to whom no lamb is entrusted? The little shepherds are part of the house staff of the "home of mercy." Thanks be given to all little shepherds — priests and laity — in God's field.

The consoling vision offered here of the love and mercy of God, and the role that mercy should play in our lives and in the Church, reached in and touched my soul. And the fact that it did is chilling.

Because the statement came from Cdl. Godfried Danneels of Belgium. In case you don't follow European Church politics, Danneels is one of the most destructive theological radicals in the Catholic Church. When Belgium legalized same-sex "marriage," the cardinal congratulated the government for doing so. As Vatican Insider reports, the cardinal went on to say: "The Church has never objected to the fact that there is a sort of 'marriage' between homosexuals." Of course, this is nonsense; the Catechism of the Catholic Church echoes Scripture in calling the conjugal behavior in such "sort of" marriages "acts of grave moral depravity" (CCC 2357).

Read the rest at The Stream.

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