Cardinal Sarah on the Amazon Synod

4 quotes on the Amazon Synod in Cardinal Sarah's new book

"The Day is Now Far Spent"

"If, in a missionary impulse, each diocese of Latin America generously offered one priest for the Amazon region, this region would not be treated with so much disdain and humiliation through the fabrication of married priests, as though God were incapable of raising up in that part of the world generous young men willing to make the total gift of their bodies and their hearts, their whole capacity to love and all their being in consecrated celibacy.”

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“If because of a lack of faith in God and because of pastoral shortsightedness the Synod for the Amazon region met to decide on the ordination of [married men], on the fabrication of ministries for women, and other incongruities of this sort, the situation would be extremely serious.… The Spirit blows where He wills, certainly, but He does not contradict Himself and does not create confusion and disorder. He is the spirit of wisdom. On the question of celibacy, he has already spoken through the councils and the Roman pontiffs.”

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“If the Synod for the Amazon region made decisions along the above-mentioned lines, it would definitively break with the tradition of the Latin Church.”

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“What would I be today if missionaries had not come to live and die in my village in Guinea? Would I have had the desire to be a priest if they had been content to ordain one of the men of the village? Has the Church grown cold to the point where among her children there are not enough magnanimous souls to get up and go off to proclaim Christ in the Amazon region? I think, on the contrary, that the prospect of a total gift to God can wake up the drowsy souls of many young Christian men. It is necessary also that we bishops have the courage to call them!”