.-
Archbishop
Hector Aguer of La Plata, Argentina, has exhorted Catholics to avoid
laziness and to respond with “noble firmness” to the “dominant and
shameless” wave of hatred against Jesus Christ and the Church which he
says has spread across the world.
During Palm
Sunday Mass at the archdiocesan cathedral, Archbishop Aguer noted that
a wave of hatred against Jesus Christ has been unleashed upon the
world. “We not talking about isolated incidents,” he said, but
rather a series of simultaneous events that bear the “markings of a
conspiracy.”
The archbishop
mentioned several examples of attacks on Christianity, such as a recent
issue of Rolling Stone magazine in which a famous rapper appears
wearing a crown of thorns; a short movie on Christmas in which Jesus
and Santa Claus get into a fist fight; obscene cartoons about Jesus in
a French newspaper, and the logo of a popular Swedish brand of jeans
depicting a skull with an inverted cross.
“More than
200,000 pairs of the jeans have been sold and the designer has said his
intention was to speak out against Christianity,” the archbishop stated.
Other examples
sited by Archbishop Aguer included the “infamous fables of ‘The Da
Vinci Code,’ which will gain new strength with the upcoming release of
the film,” and the so-called Gospel of Judas, a Gnostic writing that
was refuted by St. Iraneus in the year 180. “It has been
presented as something new by National Geographic Magazine, thus taking
advantage of the occasion of Holy Week. It also promises to be a
successful economic move.”
“To all this one
can add the numerous profanations of the Sacred Scriptures, the
blasphemies against the Most Holy Virgin and the growing, ubiquitous
pressure to remove crosses and other Christian symbols from public
places,” the archbishop added.
He noted the
widespread condemnation and rejection of recently published cartoons
depicting Mohammed, as well as the rapid activation of democratic
mechanisms condemning discrimination and infringement upon religious
freedom whenever there is the slightest attack against the Jewish
community.
And yet, he
continued, “the apathy, the leniency, the suspicious silence in
response to attacks on the Christian faith stands out. It seems
that Christianity, and specifically Catholicism, can be attacked with
impunity,” Archbishop Aguer said.
He said the lack
of response by Christians to the insults and attacks upon the Lord are
even more surprising and are a “sad sign of how the faith has been
weakened” in cultures that once were proud of their link to the Church
of Christ.
Lastly,
Archbishop Aguer exhorted Christians to “offer serene and cordial
witness to the truth, which does not exclude when necessary a noble
firmness in demanding that the sacred treasure of catholicity be
respected in accord with decency, justice and the law.”
Archbishop calls for reaction against ‘shameless wave’ of hatred toward Jesus and the Church
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