Insuppressible prophecy

Dr. Anca-Maria Cernea

There are those in proverbial ivory towers who will struggle to get control of a faculty or become an assistant dean with an animus that would ill befit a general in battle.  There is one caveat here, though, and it is this: the stakes are not so small when you consider that professors can shape the minds of a whole generation.

A recent letter in The New York Times signed by Catholic academics, objected that a columnist had no right to comment on the recent Synod in Rome because he had no theology degree.  This ignored the fact that none of that newspaper's columnists who frequently attack Catholic doctrine have any such scholarly decorations.  It also defied the call for more vocal involvement of the laity that the signatories to the letter claim to champion as self-styled progressives.

Academia is rife with censorship in the form of political correctness, but it cannot totally smother the truth, which is supposed to be the substance and goal of learning, expressed in the plethora of school mottoes: Veritas, Lux et Veritas, Veritas Vos Liberabit, etc., etc.

An example of insuppressible prophecy was Dr. Anca-Maria Cernea, a representative of the Association of Catholic Doctors of Bucharest, Romania at the Synod on the Family in Rome.  In the midst of speeches of varying quality, her brief remarks set a unique tone in the assembly of bishops and consultants.  She spoke of her parents who were engaged to be married, but waited seventeen years while her father was a political prisoner of her country's harsh dictatorship, and her mother kept vigil all that time, not knowing if he was dead or alive.  She went on to say: "The Church's mission is to save souls.  Evil, in this world, comes from sin.  Not from income disparity or 'climate change.'  The solution is: Evangelization.  Conversion.  Not an ever increasing government control.  Not a world government.  These are nowadays the main agents imposing cultural Marxism on our nations . . . Our Church was suppressed by the Soviet occupation.  But none of our 12 bishops betrayed their communion with the Holy Father. . . . Now we need Rome to tell the world: 'Repent of your sins and turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.'"

Seven of the twelve bishops she mentioned died in prison.  It was a sobering reflection during a Synod where there were not a few receptions and much dining, most innocent in themselves but different in tone from the laments of the countless Christians suffering in the Middle East.  It was also very different in urgency from the offended academics whose pomposity was pricked by an "unqualified" newspaper columnist.  They should have been more offended by the Romanian doctor whose only theological credentials were bestowed by the witness of her parents and the blood of her bishops.