Prof Fired for Pro-Life lecture: Defend Truth Even if ‘Spineless Shepherds’ Won’t

Désiré-Joseph,
Cardinal Mercier

His Eminence Désiré-Joseph, Cardinal Mercier must be spinning in his grave! He was an orthodox Thomist who was a professor at the Catholic University of Louvain before becoming Cardinal-Archbishop of Malines and Primate of Belgium. That is, of course, if he's stopped spinning from the news that his successor in the Primatial See is of the opinion that homosexual behaviour should be respected, had young Catholics arrested for praying the Rosary in his Cathedral in reparation for his glorifying the heresiarch, Luther, and has destroyed a Traditional Order that may have been the last, best hope of the Belgian Church for survival.

Given that one of His Eminence's best known works was Les origines de la psychologie contemporaine (The Origins of Contemporary Psychology), I wonder what he would think of the 'psychology' today that endorses baby killing for 'mental health' and 'gender fluidity'.

From LifeSiteNews

Stéphane Mercier at the 2017 Rome March for Life

ROME, May 18, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – In a brilliant lecture today at the 2018 Rome Life Forum, Professor Stéphane Mercier illuminated just how ridiculous the state of affairs has become in the Church and pleaded for an end to the cowardice so characteristic of modern Catholic bishops and priests.

Professor Mercier became a good friend of LifeSiteNews and household name across the pro-life world last year when he was fired by the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium for asking his students to consider arguments against abortion and gender ideology. 

He explained to the Rome Life Forum today the course of events that led to his sacking and the spineless response of the Belgian episcopate to a Catholic university officially coming out in support of abortion. Professor Mercier, who is as humble as he is witty, used the ordeal he underwent to make a larger point about the crumbling of Catholic universities and "sixty years of suicidal secularization within the Church."

His lecture was a rousing call for Catholics to actively and boldly fight evil and stand for the truth, no matter the cost. 

"If we cowardly give up and sit back, then we become accomplices of the evils we fail to stand against," he said. "An apostle makes waves, and the world is most likely to be upset, but it is our duty to keep going and follow the lead of Our Lord himself, who came not to send worldly peace, but the sword."

It's not enough for a faithful Catholic to just be "nice," quiet, and try to avoid confrontation, Professor Mercier said. The prevalence of cowardice is why "it’s absolutely critical to be firm and explicit, to revive the smouldering fire, and to try and awaken what’s left in people today so that we all man up already before it’s too late."

Professor Mercier is the author of La Philosophie Pour La Vie, a straightforward examination of the moral standing of abortion.

LifeSiteNews is pleased to present his full speech here.