Transcript:
Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ!
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, dear family fathers, dear family mothers, beloved grandparents, spouses, young men and women preparing for the sacrament of marriage, dear boys and girls, innocent children, welcome.
You are gathered here in Dublin for the Conference of Catholic Families, organized by the Lumen Fidei Institute. It is a profound joy for me to greet you all and to offer you the spiritual nourishment drawn from the ever beautiful and ever valid, unchanging truth of the faith regarding marriage and family.
You have rightly come together to proclaim this truth about marriage and family, to share it with one another, to defend it courageously, and to live the joy that springs forth from it.
This conference is a meritorious act of courage. It stands firm in resistance against the totalitarian and worldwide ideology of gender that so many have either succumbed to or, tragically, willingly accepted. Such surrender to gender ideology is, in its essence, a betrayal of Christ and an apostasy from the integral, divinely revealed Catholic and Apostolic faith.
Dear brothers and sisters, even if you are few in number, even if you lack the favor of the powerful in this world, and even if you do not always receive support from some official structures within the Church, know that you are mighty in the eyes of God and in the eyes of eternity.
Why? Because you possess the true and undistorted faith. You can say to others, ‘You have wealth and all the administrative and organizational structures.’ You have the applause of the anti-Christian world. But we have the faith, and that is what truly matters.
Let us then look, with the eyes of faith and with the gift of reason and common sense, upon the beauty of the divinely created order of marriage and family.
We live in a time when one of God’s most beautiful creations, marriage and family, is under a general and relentless attack. On one side, we face a neo-Marxist dictatorship that hides behind the artificial and bizarre name of LGBT, which has gained almost universal power through the media.
What is most enigmatic and sorrowful is that even within the ranks of the clergy, we find collaborators in this widespread assault against marriage and family. The Christian family today faces a new Goliath: the ideology of homosexuality and gender, which has become so widespread and influential.
Tragically, some clergy have become activists and promoters of this so-called LGBT ideology, which in reality is a form of apostasy from the Christian faith.
But now, more than ever, we are called to be faithful to the unchangeable truth of our Catholic and Apostolic faith, a faith that our fathers and forefathers faithfully transmitted to us. We have the opportunity to be courageous witnesses to the divine truth and the profound beauty of marriage and family.
To this end, receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit, especially in the Sacrament of Confirmation. This virtue has bestowed the faithful during 2000 years with the ability to prefer death rather than to betray the baptismal vows, to die rather to sin, to die rather than to betray the wedding vows to die rather than to betray the priestly religious vows of celibacy, the family and the entire human society will flourish only on the condition when the divine truth on marriage and family will be observed, As taught Pope Leo, the 13th whom I quote from the beginning of the world.
Indeed, it was divinely ordained that things instituted by God and by nature should be proproed by us to be the more profitable and salutary, the more they remain unchanged in their full integrity, if the rushness or the wickedness of human agency venture to change or disturb that order of things which has been constituted with fullest foresight, then the designs of infinite wisdom and usefulness begin either to be hurtful or cease to be profitable, partly because through the change undergone, they have lost their power of benefiting and partly because God chooses to inflict punishment on the pride and audacity of man. Now those who deny that marriage is holy and who relegate it stripped of all holiness among the class of common secular things uproot, thereby, the foundations of nature, not only resisting the designs of Providence, but so far as they can destroying the order that God has ordained. No one, therefore, should wonder if from such insane and impious attempts, there spring up a crop of evils, pernicious in the highest degree, both to the salvation of souls and to the safety of the Commonwealth.
So Pope Leo the 13th, in order to remain faithful to the divine commandments. There are, in our days, families, young people, priests, and bishops who are, for this reason, oftentimes marginalized and ridiculed because of their fidelity to the integrity of the Catholic faith and of the divine worship according to the tradition of our forefathers. In order to remain faithful to their vocation, the Catholic family must practice especially the daily common prayer. Pope Pius the 12th spoke to newly married couples, I quote, We beseech you, take it to heart to keep this beautiful tradition of Christian families, the common prayer in the evening.
The family gathers at the end of each day to implore the divine blessings and to honor the Immaculate Virgin through the praises of the Rosary. For all who sleep under the same roof, the hard and inexorable exigencies of modern life do not give you the leisure to dedicate some blessed moments of gratitude towards God, nor read, according to an ancient custom, a short biography of the saint whom the Church proposes to us each day as a model and as a special protector. Strive to sanctify this even short moment, dedicating it to God in order to praise Him and to present to Him your desires, your needs, your sufferings, and your occupations. The center of your home must be the Crucified Lord or the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. May Christ reign over your home and gather you around Him every day. So Pope Pius the 12th and Pope Leo the 13th gave us a very concise explanation about the original and first duty of parents concerning the education of their children, and in the first place, concerning the education in the Catholic faith.
This duty has its foundation in the natural order of the divine creation. I quote, the common sense of mankind is in such complete accord that they would be in open contradiction with it who dared maintain that the children belong to the state before they belong to the family, and that the state has an absolute right over their education. Untenable is the reason they are Jews, namely, that man is born a citizen, and hence belongs primarily to the state, not bearing in mind that before being a citizen, man must exist, and existence does not come from the state, but from the parents. And therefore, the father’s power is of such a nature that it cannot be destroyed or observed by the state, for it has the same origin as human life itself. And Pius the 11th speaks about education in the following manner.
I quote, by nature, parents have a right to the education of their children, but with this added duty that the education and instruction of the child be in accord with the end for which God, by God’s blessing, it was begotten. Therefore, it is the duty of parents to make every effort to prevent any invasion of their rights in this matter, and to make absolutely sure that the education of their children remain under their own control in keeping with their Christian duty, and above all, to refuse to send them to those schools in which there is danger of imbibing the deadly poison of impiety. So, Pius the 11th, already more than 70 years ago, and Pope Pius the 12th made an appeal to the Christian families to be new crusaders in spreading and defending the true Catholic faith in the midst of the general and heavy corruption into which the drugs of false ideas widely diffused have sunk the human family in the 20th century.
This diagnosis that Pius the 12th made is fully applicable to our times. Pius the 12th said, I quote, it is for the best and most distinguished members of the Christian family, filled with the enthusiasm of crusaders to unite in the spirit of truth, justice, and love to the call God wills, ready to serve, to sacrifice themselves like the Crusaders of old. If the issue was then the liberation of the land hallowed by the life of the Incarnate Word of God, the call today is, if we may so express ourselves, to traverse the sea of errors of our days and to march on to free the Holy Land of the Spirit which is destined to sustain in its foundation the unchangeable norms and laws on which we raise a social construction of solid internal consistency.
So, Pius the 12th, my dear brothers and sisters, the first and most holy goal and end of matrimony and family consists in giving birth to new citizens of heaven and to educate them in their Catholic faith. Pope Leo the 13th said, I quote, by the command of Christ, it not only looks to the propagation of the human race but to the bringing forth of children for the Church, fellow citizens with the saints and the domestics of God, so that a people might be born and brought up and educated for the worship and religion of the true God and of our Savior Jesus Christ. So Leo the 13th, the family is therefore the first and original place where the integrity and the beauty of the Catholic faith should be taught to the children, and in this way handed over to future generations. Indeed, from this transmission of the faith depends the spiritual health of a nation, as taught by Pope Pius the 12th, the family is holy.
It is the cradle not only for the children but for the entire nation and for entire nations. Men and women should pass on the torch of the physical and also spiritual, of the moral, and of the Christian life to the future generations. One of the main causes of the moral, spiritual, and religious crisis of the current time consists in religious ignorance, in ignoring the truth of the faith, and in an erroneous knowledge of the faith. St Pius the 10th very rightly observed these connections, saying the enemy has indeed long been prowling about the fold and attacking it with such subtle cunning that now more than ever before the prediction of the apostle to the elders of the church of Ephesus seems to be verified. I know that fierce wolves will get in among you and will not spare the flock.
Those who still are zealous for the glory of God are seeking the causes and reasons for this decline in religion, coming to different explanations, each points out, according to his own view, a different plan for the protection and restoration of the kingdom of God on earth. But it seems to us that while we should not overlook other considerations, we are forced to agree with those who hold that the chief cause of the present indifference and, as it were, infirmity of soul, and the serious evils that result from it is to be found above all in ignorance of things divine. This is fully in accord with what God himself declared through the prophet Hosea, and there is no knowledge of God in the land. There is nothing more effective, said Pope Benedict the 14th already in the 18th century, there is nothing more effective than catechetical instruction to spread the glory of God and to secure the salvation of souls. The beauty of the Catholic truth manifests itself in a special manner in large families. We possess one of the most striking and illuminating affirmations of the magisterium on this theme in the following words of Pope Pius the 12th, addressed to the associations of large families, I quote, Large families are the most splendid flower beds in the garden of the church.
The brows of the fathers and mothers may be burdened with scars, but there is never a trace of that inner shadow that betrays anxiety of conscience or fear of an irreparable return to loneliness. Their youth never seems to fade away as long as the sweet fragrance of a child remains in the home, as long as the walls of the home echo to the silvery voices of children and grandchildren. Their heavy labors multiplied many times over, their redoubled sacrifices, and their renunciation of costly amusements are generously rewarded even here below by the inexhaustible treasury of affection and tender hopes that dwell in their hearts without ever tiring them or bothering them. The parents of large families, namely, and the hopes of a large family soon become a reality when the eldest daughter begins to help her mother to take care of the baby, and on the day the oldest son comes home with his face beaming with the first salary he has earned himself. Children in large families learn almost automatically to be careful of what they do and to assume responsibility for it, to have respect for each other and help each other, to be open-hearted and generous. For them, the family is a little proving ground before they move into the world outside, which will be harder on them and more demanding.
So Pope Pius the 12th states that the family is the original place of the beauty of the Catholic faith. We can also see in the following edifying witness in the autobiography of St Therese of the Infant Jesus, I quote, there was one feast most dear to me, and it came every week, Sunday, our Lord’s own day, a wonderful day, a day of rest. We all went to high mass, and when it was time for the sermon, I remember we had to leave our place because it was so far away from the pulpit and go all up the nave to find places nearer. I would really listen, but I am afraid I kept my eyes on my father far more than on the preacher because I could read a lot in the noble face of my father. Sometimes his eyes would fill with tears he could not keep back. And when he was listening to the eternal truth, he seemed to be already in another world and no longer in these scenes of the Infant Jesus. The analysis of the modern world made by St Pius X, already 100 years ago, is fully applicable to our time.
I quote the great movement of apostasy being organized in every country for the establishment of a one world church which shall have neither dogmas nor hierarchy, neither discipline for the mind nor for the passions, and which under the pretext of freedom and human dignity would bring back to the world, if such a church could overcome the reign of legalized cunning and force and the oppression of the weak and of all those who toil and suffer. Indeed, the true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries nor innovators. They are traditionalists, so far pious. The tense, my dear brothers and sisters, the Catholic family represents the first bulwark against the current Great Apostasy.
The two most efficient weapons against the modern apostasy outside and inside the life of the church are the purity and integrity of the faith and the purity of a chaste life. The admonition which St Louis the Ninth, the King of France, left to his son remains always valid. I quote my dearest son. My first instruction is that you should love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your strength. Without this, there is no salvation. Keep yourself, my son, from everything that you know displeases God. That is to say, from every mortal sin. You should permit yourself to be tormented by every kind of martyrdom before you would allow yourself to commit a mortal sin. Work to remove all sin from your land, particularly blasphemies and heresies. So far, St Louis the Ninth, King of France. One of us once a member of an anti-Christian movement, who later converted to the Catholic Church, said to Father Matteo Crowley, the apostle of the enthronement of the Sacred Heart, the following. We have only one goal in mind: to de-Christianize the family. We leave to the Catholics gladly the churches, the chapels, the cathedrals.
For us, it is enough to have the family in order to corrupt society. If we have control over the family, our victory over the church is guaranteed. End of quotation. True Catholic families and desirably large families will strengthen the church of our day with the beauty of the Catholic faith. From that faith will come out new Catholic fathers and mothers, and from them will come out a new generation of zealous priests and intrepid bishops and Christian politicians who will be ready to give their lives for Christ and for the salvation of souls. Christianity was born out of the family, the Holy Family, so that the family may be born again out of Christianity. The first fruit of the redemption is the Holy Family, just as the first blessing of the creator was given to the family. Indeed, what the current world and the church mostly need are true Catholic families, the original places of the beauty of the Catholic faith. God bless you all.