In a rare intervention, Cardinal Robert Sarah has said that “the crisis of the Church has entered a new phase: the crisis of the Magisterium.”
Speaking to a standing-room only crowd on 26 October in Rome, at the launch of Bishop Athanasius Schneider’s new book “Credo: Compendium of the Catholic Faith” (Sophia Press, 2023), the former prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments observed that “a true cacophony reigns today in the teachings of pastors.”
Bishops and priests “seem to contradict each other” and impose their personal opinions “as if [they] were a certainty”. The result, the Guinean cardinal said, “is confusion, ambiguity, and apostasy. Great disorientation, deep bewilderment and devastating uncertainties have been inoculated in the souls of many Christian believers”.
Yet stressing a crucial distinction, Cardinal Sarah told those present and watching via live-stream (video here): “When we speak of a crisis in the Church, it is important to point out that the Church, as the Mystical Body of Christ, continues to be ‘one, holy, catholic, and apostolic’… The Church, as the continuation and extension of Christ in the world, is not in crisis. It is we, her sinful children, who are in crisis,” he said.
Continue reading at the Catholic Herald