Western civilization — by that I mean the civilization spawned by Christianity — is in dire need of saints to combat the vortex of evil masquerading as nobility under the banner of tolerance.
Take France, for example, which once upon a time produced Christian saints such as Martin of Tours and Jesuit founder Ignatius Loyola and erected the iconic Notre Dame de Paris. Today France is not even a shadow of its former self. It has been transmogrified into a monster of iniquity.
A government official in France is demanding the prosecution of a Catholic priest who said homosexual inclinations are “a weakness” and must be resisted like any other sin, according to The Christian Post.
A video was posted to Instagram in March by the Rev. Matthieu Raffray, a 45-year-old who instructed his 60,000 followers to resist all sin, including homosexuality.
“We all have weaknesses: Those who are greedy, those who are angry, those who have homosexual tendencies!” Raffray said in the video.
Aurore Bergé — a 37-year-old French politician who serves as France’s minister for gender equality, diversity and equal opportunities — was not pleased with Raffray’s video. How dare a priest tell anybody to resist sin! Oh, the outrage! It could be a joke on “Saturday Night Live,” but it’s not.
On March 20, Bergé released a statement insisting Raffray’s views on homosexuality are “unacceptable.” She vowed to report him to DILCRAH, the Interministerial Delegation for the Fight against Racism, Anti-semitism, and Anti-LGBT Hatred.
The French government must have mistakenly read Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984” as a how-to book rather than a warning. Again, it could be funny if it wasn’t real. Bergé called for Raffray to be prosecuted under the French penal code.
“Following unbearable remarks relating to homosexuality and which I refuse to reproduce here, I asked the @DILCRAH to make a report to the public prosecutor on the basis of article 40,” Bergé wrote in a post on X, according to a Google translation. “I will not let anything go in the face of hatred, whatever it may be.”
Suite à des propos insupportables relatifs à l’homosexualité et que je me refuse à reproduire ici, j’ai demandé à la @DILCRAH de procéder à un signalement au procureur de la République sur le fondement de l’article 40.
Je ne laisserai rien passer face à la haine, quelle qu’elle…
— Aurore Bergé (@auroreberge) March 20, 2024
According to a Google translation, Article 40 of the French penal code requires government officials who have knowledge of a crime to report it to a public prosecutor.
Around 20 minutes after Bergé’s post, DILCRAH responded by posting it had forwarded Raffray’s comments to the public prosecutor per Bergé’s request. “At the request of @auroreberge, the #DILCRAH reported to the Public Prosecutor the comments #homophobes made by Mr. Raffray on his social networks,” the delegation posted.
“So-called ‘conversion therapy’ has been illegal since 2022. Talking about homosexuality as a weakness is shameful,” the post continued.
Raffray wasn’t backing down from the threats. That same day, according to a Google translation, he posted, “the hysterics of all stripes who try to destabilize me with grotesque controversies: publicity assured,” Raffray’s X account has over 20K followers.
Je viens de m’apercevoir que ce compte vient de dépasser les 20.000 followers !
Merci à tous pour votre soutien.
Merci aussi aux hystériques de tous bords qui tentent de me déstabiliser par des polémiques grotesques : publicité assurée 👍🏻
Amis ou ennemis : je prie pour vous. pic.twitter.com/JH2c1GlJbj
— Abbé Matthieu Raffray ⚔️🙏🏻 (@AbbeRaffray) March 20, 2024
“Friends or enemies: I pray for you,” the post concluded.
According to The Christian Post, Raffray told the French Catholic news outlet Famille Chrétienne (Christian Family) that he was talking about “temptations in general” and he was not singling out homosexuality. Instead, he was trying “to make it clear that we are not obliged to give in to all our temptations, to all our desires.”
Do you agree with Raffray?
“I cite homosexuality, among other things,” he said. “Homosexual acts are a sin, but I think people no longer know what a sin is. Denouncing a sin does not mean denouncing the person who commits the sin! You could have blamed me if I had said something clumsy or hurtful, but that’s not the case here.
“Not only am I not homophobic,” he continued, “in addition, as a priest, I am careful about the vocabulary I use on this issue because I know that the subject is sensitive and that people can easily be hurt.”
Raffray thinks that by going after him the French government is attacking the Catholic Church. Sound familiar?
Across the pond in the U.S., “government hostility toward Catholics and other Christians under the Biden administration” is increasing, according to Fox News. Raffray feels our pain.
“What is at stake is not me, but the freedom to be Christian today,” Raffray said, according to the Post. “I hope that all the faithful realize that it is Christian morality and the entire Church that are under attack.”
France is in dire need of a contemporary version of Joan of Arc, the peasant girl of medieval France who believed that God had chosen her to lead France to victory in its Hundred Years War with England.
While still in her teens, and without any military training, she led French forces to startling victories over the English and their French collaborators but was captured and burned at the stake in 1431 for alleged crimes of witchcraft and heresy.
By the time she was canonized as a saint in 1920, Joan of Arc was seen as one of history’s greatest martyrs. She is also among the patron saints of France.
Today, France is still at war. This time it is with its own government masquerading as nobility under the banner of tolerance. The good people of France are at war with evil within.
So is the Catholic Church. So are all Christians.
Who knows? Maybe Father Raffray is a saint in the making. God knows, France could use a saint right now. So could we all.
