20 October 2015

Dr Anca-Maria Cernea, President of the Association of Catholic Doctors of Bucharest, Romania, speaks at the Synod on the Family

Sts Louis and Zelie Martin

Dr Anca-Maria Cernea,  President of the Association of Catholic Doctors of Bucharest (Romania), made the following intervention at the Ordinary Synod on the Family on Friday, 16 October. Dr Cernea spoke in English.

I have added some [comments] and emphases.

Your Holiness, Synod Fathers, Brothers and Sisters, 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 for 17 years. My parents were engaged to marry, but their wedding took place 17 years later

My mother waited all those years for my father, although she didn’t even know if he was still alive. They have 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 this is, first of all, a spiritual battle.

Material poverty and consumerism are not the primary cause of the family crisis.

The primary cause of the sexual and cultural revolution is ideological.

Our Lady of Fatima has said that Russia’s errors would spread all over the world.

It was first done under a violent form, classical Marxism, by killing tens of millions.

Now it’s being done mostly by cultural Marxism. There is continuity from Lenin’s sex revolution, through Gramsci and the Frankfurt school, to the current-day 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, sex identity and human nature. [In my native Republic of Ireland last May voters re-defined marriage under the banner of 'equality' even though everyone was already free to marry, ie, one man and one woman, within the limitations of the law.]

This ideology calls itself progressive. But it is nothing else than the ancient serpent’s offer, for man to take control, to replace God, to arrange salvation here, in this world.

It’s an error of religious nature, it’s Gnosticism.

It’s the task of the shepherds 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 (Matthew 6:33).

The Church’s mission is to save souls. [Pope Francis reminded the judges and advocates of the tribunal that the highest law is the salus animarum – the salvation of souls.] Evil, in this world, comes from sin. Not from income disparity or 'climate change'.

The solution is: Evangelization. Conversion. [Conversion is a theme that runs through Laudato Si'.]

Not an ever increasing government control. Not a world government. These are nowadays the main agents imposing cultural Marxism to our nations, under the form of population control, reproductive health, gay rights, gender education, and so on. ['Reproductive health' includes abortion, as then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated unequivocally in 2009. In 2013 the Irish government legalised abortion under the name 'Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act' if a mother was threatening suicide. The government totally ignored the advice on this matter given by psychiatrists, advice that it had asked for.]

What the world needs nowadays is not 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 prisons and 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 (Matthew 3:2).

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