News Item: : Even if I'm murdered for it, I think I have to speak up - Another fruit of the New Mercy
(Category: Torch of The Faith News)
Posted by admin
Friday 23 September 2016 - 13:25:24

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We've now had a chance to view parts of the articulate interview which Dr. Josef Seifert has given to Gloria.TV.

The eminent Austrian professor will be known to many readers as a close friend of St. Pope John Paul II and a Catholic thinker whose philosophical work has been greatly influenced by the life and writings of Dietrich Von Hildebrand.

Various websites like LifeSiteNews have already provided helpful summaries of the interview, in which Dr. Seifert explains his recent letter to Pope Francis. That letter is particularly courageous because Dr. Seifert calls upon Pope Francis to not only clarify the ''objectively heretical'' statements in Amoris Laetitia, but even to revoke them.

Dr. Seifert insists that this is necessary to avoid the danger of schism, heresy and ''the complete split in the Church.''

Whilst others have perhaps not yet spoken with such force, Seifert notes that several thinkers - like Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Pope Benedict XVI's friend Prof. Robert Spaemann and the Catholic University of America's Dr. Jude P. Dougherty - have also raised serious concerns relating to the problematic aspects of Amoris Laetitia.

We highly recommend that readers take some time to watch the on-line video coverage of Dr. Seifert's calm and precisely worded commentary during his interview with Gloria.TV.

There is one point in particular that we wish to highlight.

Towards the conclusion, Dr. Seifert reflects, albeit with a certain twinkle in his eye, that he must speak out regardless of the danger to himself.

His actual words are: ''Whatever happens to me... Even if I am murdered for it, I think I have to speak up because one cannot remain silent if one feels that important truths which are also very important for the eternal salvation of the faithful are obscured... even in the document.''

However lightheartedly Dr. Seifert starts to say those words - and in completing the sentence he does become somewhat more reflective - the fact that he utters them at all is very suggestive.

At the very least it reveals that a calm, rational and good humoured man with such a wealth of experience senses that such a danger may perhaps exist in the contemporary situation.

It is not nothing when a renowned philosophy professor and friend of former popes expresses a fear of being murdered for defending the Faith in a letter to a reigning Pontiff!

Whether Dr. Seifert's subjective fear is accurate or not, and where in particular he locates the perceived source of that danger, it only adds to the sense of an all-pervading culture of fear which is being felt by orthodox cardinals, bishops, priests and lay people everywhere in these times.

And that doesn't much seem like the fruit one would expect from a Year of Mercy to us.   



This news item is from Torch of The Faith
( http://www.torchofthefaith.com/news.php?extend.1415 )