Act As the Lord Would Act: Cardinal George's Final Address as President of U.S. Bishops Conference

We should not fear political isolation; the Church has often been isolated in politics and in diplomacy.

"Orthodoxy is necessary but not enough; the devil is orthodox. He knows the Catechism better than anybody in this room; but he will not serve, he will not obey. The voice of Christ speaks always from a consistent concern for the gift of human life...from the use of artificial contraception to the destruction of human embryos to the artificial conception of human beings in a Petri dish to genetic profiling to the killing of unwanted children through abortion."

P>BALTIMORE, MD (Catholic Online) - In his last pronouncement as the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Francis Cardinal George of Chicago gave a stirring and serious address to his brother Bishops Monday morning, November 15, 2010. At the end of the address he received a well deserved standing ovation. This wide reaching address concluded with a moving story concerning the terrorist attacks against Iraqi Catholics at Mass whose death he referred to as a "martyrdom".

Here are a select few quotes from his robust defense of the Right to Life and the controversy surrounding recent Federal Health Care legislation:

"Once political leaders and health care experts decided to use government subsidized insurance as the vehicle for providing more universal health care, it was our moral obligation as teachers of the faith to judge whether the means passed moral muster, whether or not the proposed legislation used public funds to kill those living in their mother's womb."

"Consistently, and ever more insistently since the sin and crime of abortion was legalized in the United States, our voice has been that of the bishops of the Catholic Church ever since the first Christians condemned the abortion practices of the ancient Romans. The act is immoral; and the laws that have permitted now fifty million children of our country to be killed in their mother's womb are also immoral and unjust; they are destroying our society."

"Who speaks for the Catholic Church? We speak for the apostolic faith, and those who hold it gather round. The bishops in apostolic communion and in union with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome, speak for the Church in matters of faith and in moral issues and the laws surrounding them. All the rest is opinion."

"For too many, politics is the ultimate horizon of their thinking and acting. As we know, fidelity to Christ in his body the Church calls for two responses on the part of those who would call themselves his disciples: orthodoxy in belief and obedience in practice..

"Orthodoxy is necessary but not enough; the devil is orthodox. He knows the Catechism better than anybody in this room; but he will not serve, he will not obey. There can be mistakes in our thinking, but there can be no self-righteousness in our will, for this is the sin against the Holy Spirit. We should not fear political isolation; the Church has often been isolated in politics and in diplomacy."

"The voice of Christ speaks always from a consistent concern for the gift of human life, a concern that judges the full continuum of technological manipulation of life, from the use of artificial contraception to the destruction of human embryos to the artificial conception of human beings in a Petri dish to genetic profiling to the killing of unwanted children through abortion."

"If the poor are allowed to be born, then the voice of Christ continues to speak to the homeless and the jobless, the hungry and the naked, the uneducated, the migrant, the imprisoned, the sick and the dying."

He concluded his final speech to his brother bishops with a tribute to those who suffer for their faith and particularly for those he called martyrs, "our Catholic brothers and sisters in Iraq." Catholic News Agency Reported:
 
"On Oct. 31, gunmen linked to al-Qaida took over 120 faithful hostage at the Syriac Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of Salvation in Baghdad during Mass, demanding that the Coptic Church of Egypt release the wife of one of its priests, whom the extremists claimed voluntarily converted to Islam and was subsequently locked up in a convent. When the Iraqi military raided the cathedral to free the hostages, over 50 people, including 2 priests, were killed in a firefight and the explosion of suicide vests by the terrorists.

"As he spoke about the attack, Cardinal George paused with emotion as he recalled the story of an American Dominican sister currently in Iraq. The religious sister told a friend of Cardinal George that witnesses saw a three-year-old boy named Adam follow the terrorists after the murder of his parents, admonishing them by repeating the words "enough, enough," until he himself was killed.

"Dear brothers and sisters," Cardinal George said, "we have all experienced challenges and even tragedies that tempt us to say 'enough.'"

"Yet all of our efforts, our work, our failures and our sense of responsibility pale before the martyrdom of our brothers and sisters in Iraq and the persecution of Catholics in other parts of the Middle East, in India and Pakistan, in China and Vietnam, in Sudan and African countries rent by civil conflict."

"With their faces before us, we stand before the Lord, collectively responsible for all those whom Christ died to save," he said. "May the Lord during these days give us vision enough to see what he sees and strength enough to act as he would have us act."

"That will be enough."

The U.S. Bishops will elect the successor to Cardinal George on Tuesday, November 16, 2010. We ask our global readers to pray for the wisdom of heaven to inspire the successors of the Apostles in their deliberation over this crucial decision. We also ask you to join with us in extending our deep appreciation to Cardinal George for his sacrificial and courageous leadership over the last few years. 

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