Your Holiness, Synod Fathers, Brothers and Sisters:1
I represent the Association of Catholic Doctors from Bucharest. I am from the Romanian Greek Catholic Church. My father was a Christian political leader who was imprisoned by the communists. My parents at that time were engaged to be married, but their wedding took place 17 years later because my father was in confinement for 17 years. My mother waited all those years for my father, although she didn’t even know if he was still alive. They had been heroically faithful to God and to their engagement.
Their example shows that God’s grace can overcome terrible social circumstances and material poverty. We, as Catholic doctors defending life and family, can see that the crisis in the family is, first of all, a spiritual battle. Material poverty and consumerism are not the primary cause of this crisis.
The primary cause of the sexual and cultural revolution is ideological. Our Lady of Fatima had said that Russia’s errors would spread all over the world. These errors commenced in the early 20th century in a violent form, classical Marxism, with the killing of tens of millions. Now this destruction persists mostly by cultural Marxism. There is continuity from Lenin’s sexual revolution, through Gramsci and the Frankfurt school, to the current gay-rights and gender ideology.
Classical Marxism pretended to redesign society through violent take-over of property. Now the revolution goes deeper; it pretends to redefine family, sexual identity, and human nature. This ideology calls itself progressive. But it is nothing else than the ancient offer from the insidious serpent: that man take control, replace God, and arrange salvation here, in this world. It is an error of religious nature.
The task of the shepherds is to recognize it, and warn the flock against this danger:
“Seek ye therefore first the Kingdom of God, and His justice, and all these things shall be added unto you.”
The Church’s mission is to save souls. Evil, in this world, comes from sin. Not from income disparity or “climate change.” The solution is: evangelization and conversion, not an ever- increasing governmental control. Not a world government. These are nowadays the main agents imposing cultural Marxism on our nations, under the form of population control, reproductive health, gay rights, gender education, and so on.
What the world desperately needs now is not the limitation of freedom but real freedom, liberation from sin: salvation. Our Church was suppressed by the soviet occupation. But none of our 12 bishops betrayed their communion with the Holy Father. Our Church survived thanks to our bishops’ determination and example in resisting the prisons and the terror. Our bishops asked the community not to follow the world, not to cooperate with the communists!
Now we need Rome to tell the world: “Repent of your sins and turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near”.
Not only us, the Catholic laity, but also many Christian Orthodox are anxiously praying for this Synod. Because, as they say, if the Catholic Church gives in to the spirit of this world, it is going to be very difficult for all the other Christians to resist it.
1 http://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/pt/bollettino/pubblico/2015/10/16/0790/01735.html#e