Cardinal Levada addresses 1,300 in Los Angeles, recalls Pope’s US visit

September 26, 2008

Addressing 1,300 at the 2008 Los Angeles Catholic Prayer Breakfast, Cardinal William Levada, prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, recalled Pope Benedict’s April visit to the United States under three themes: ‘freedom and democracy,’ ‘tradition and progress,’ and ‘faith and reason.’ As he discussed ‘tradition and progress,’ Cardinal Levada contrasted the American Revolution with the anti-clerical European revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In doing so, he said that the Second Vatican Council’s teaching on religious liberty has deep roots in the history of the Church: ‘the Council was able to discern, in its ground-breaking decree on religious liberty Dignitatis Humanae, that the acceptance of religious liberty was not a ‘canonization of relativism’, as Archbishop Lefebvre accused it of being in his path into schism. Rather, it was an embrace of freedom of conscience as witnessed by the martyrs of the early Church, who refused to worship the Roman emperors and who died for their faith…’

 

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Further information:

• Cardinal Levada: ‘Seeing America through the eyes of a friend, and with the eyes of faith!’ (Archdiocese of Los Angeles)
• Pope's US visit themes highlighted at L.A. prayer breakfast (The Tidings)