Brotherly Love Begins at Home

Below is the subtitled version of a sermon given by a German Catholic priest named Father Pietrek.

He’s a refreshing antidote to Cardinal Rainer “Man in the Boat” Woelki, the Archbishop of Cologne (for the most recent antics of Cardinal Woelki, see this post and video from last month).

I didn’t get any information about Fr. Pietrek beyond what’s in the transcript. However, based on some careful searching on the Internet, I’m certain that he’s Father Winfried Pietrek, born in 1932 in Breslau (now the Polish city of Wrocław). The sermon below appears to have been given in December of 2014, when he was 82.

Considering the current condition of the Catholic Church under Pope Francis, Fr. Pietrek might be accurately described as a dissident priest.

Many thanks to Ava Lon for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Video transcript:

00:00   Let’s imagine, someone owns a house.
00:05   And has a family. He has empty apartments in that house.
00:10   He would like to lease them. Is he going to take a tenant
00:15   with whom he has to worry that they… might debauch
00:20   his children? Everyone would say: No.
00:25   It’s his decision. At present
00:30   Germany is facing this decision.
00:36   Catholic social teaching demands that we also… take a position towards
00:41   such difficult problems. Politicians,
00:46   also Church people told us, you have
00:51   to take more people, take in, no matter who they are,
00:56   whoever it is, he is referred to the words of the Holy Scripture
01:01   for example: do good to those who hate you,
01:07   pray for those who persecute you.
01:12   … today’s Gospel on the enemies
01:17   of Saint Stephen, who even while dying had said:
01:22   “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”
01:27   Following Jesus’ example he said this, Jesus explained on the cross:
01:32   Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
01:37   What should we think about it?
01:42   How far should “Love thy neighbor” go? There is a discussion about it,
01:48   many Germans are even so scared that they gather outside
01:53   in thousands or tens of thousands, because they
01:58   don’t want our county Islamized.
02:03   In 2013 we took in
02:08   eleven thousand asylum seekers
02:13   from Syria.
02:18   Of them 70% — so about eight thousand — were
02:23   Muslims; the others were mostly Christian.
02:29   Surely, we have
02:34   towards them, the homeless, the driven-out,
02:39   from whom everything was taken away, a big moral obligation
02:44   of brotherly love. It can lead up to
02:47   the limitation of the individual.
02:54   For example, in the refugees’ neighboring countries
03:00   villages have been built,
03:05   towns, which were financially
03:10   supported by us. We have, however, not only a right
03:15   but also an obligation, and I say it here also, if
03:20   I have to contradict some bishops, who aren’t infallible concerning this question:
03:25   We have the right and the obligation
03:30   to defend our Faith, our
03:33   predominantly Christian culture. We…
03:41   — the limits are flexible for sure, the line has to be drawn by the experts,
03:46   and politicians — but we have a right
03:51   to defend ourselves against foreign infiltration, and we rightly demand
03:56   from all politicians, and this has to be said openly by the Church as well:
04:01   Since we are in the majority a Christian country
04:07   we demand that we take in Christian refugees before any others.
04:12   Paul writes: “[We should] do good to everyone”,
04:17   but “especially to those in the family of faith” [Galatians 6:2-17].
04:22   Also to protect one’s own faith, which is totally clear that
04:27   an Islamized Germany will lose in large part.
04:32   Many who don’t really know the faith, who don’t really exercise it,
04:38   would become weak and they would give up their own faith. It’s the duty of the shepherd
04:48   to warn about it. My mother left
04:53   me as a leading thought for my later
04:58   life the sentence:
05:03   What use for the sheep is a shepherd who is a sheep?
05:09   We have to — in the love of our neighbor —
05:14   go to the extreme we know the Sermon on the Mount, we know that
05:23   Jesus voluntarily calls us to voluntarily be ready for the extreme,
05:29   to sacrifice everything, even our life, our belongings out of love for our enemies
05:39   or also for our opponent.
05:44   But since we know that Islam is violent,
05:50   that it cannot change the Quran and doesn’t want to change it,
05:55   precisely because it CANNOT change it, and because
06:00   wild conquest belongs to Islam, we have — as our ancestors
06:05   did, before Loreto, twice before Vienna,
06:10   during the defence against Muslim attack against Rome,
06:15   during the attacks on the entire Mediterranean Sea,
06:18   where over the centuries hundreds of thousands of Christians
06:26   fell into slavery, like the Christians who
06:31   were conquered in Spain, that three quarters
06:36   of a millennium: for 750 years it was occupied by Muslims,
06:41   so that even today every fourth word in Spanish has an Arabic influence —
06:46   So we have, as Christians, namely out of love
06:51   for the Savior, the duty to preserve our faith
06:57   and to preserve also the faith that was entrusted to us.
07:02   So, in the name of Catholic social teaching, I would like to openly
07:07   put to our politicians the demand that
07:12   they take in Christians, but where non-Christians
07:17   are concerned, finance shelters for them in other countries.
07:22   And when the politicians don’t do it,
07:27   then I encourage all the Christians not to be impressed by the warnings,
07:30   also by those put forward by bishops,
07:38   and go to the great rallies [PEGIDA]. It’s totally clear that
07:43   among them radicals are also mixed with normal protesters, people
07:48   who look for a fight. So it can always… the press will always
07:53   be able to destroy separate groups, but
07:58   we love our Catholic Faith. It is sad
08:03   that we — in the Muslim world up until now —
08:06   are able to proselytize so little.
08:14   An old missionary in India, who recently passed away,
08:19   told me that during his life he baptized about
08:24   four to five thousand Indians — especially the natives [in India].
08:29   Always when he built a church — first a school
08:34   then a church — and a tiny village around it, he transferred it
08:39   to a younger missionary and he would then move on with a couple of families.
08:45   He told me at this occasion, that in his life in India he
08:50   was able to baptize only a handful of Muslims, because they were scared
08:55   of being rejected or killed by their families.
09:00   We cannot close our eyes before the fact
09:05   that the love of one’s neighbor has to be exercised towards everybody,
09:10   but it starts in one’s own homeland,
09:15   in one’s family and towards those of the same faith. Everything else is
09:20   MISUNDERSTOOD LOVE OF NEIGHBOR!
09:26   And so we want to pray to Saint Stephen,
09:31   the martyr for the love of neighbor,
09:36   that the Catholic Church in Germany wakes up,
09:41   that it recognizes what the REAL LOVE OF NEIGHBOR IS!
09:44   We have to preserve the tradition of our fathers, not only in the liturgy,
09:47   but also in the practical behavior of Catholic social teaching,
09:56   the way it was taught to us for hundreds of years, also in the defense against Islam:
10:01   We love an individual Muslim: he is also our brother; we pray
10:07   that he might be saved for eternity, but we also
10:12   have to tell him what Jesus shared with us: that
10:17   we can only be saved through Jesus, through the birth
10:22   of the divine child at Christmas and our devotion to His cross.
10:27   So the strength of the mission — also of
10:32   the Catholics in Germany — has to return. Amen.
10:37   In the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit
10:42   Amen.
 

13 thoughts on “Brotherly Love Begins at Home

  1. Wow, a priest like that makes me fall in love with my Catholic faith again. Is this priest in Union with The Church or in schism? Does anyone know? Would be interesting to know. I think he might be in schism like priests of the Pius X order. Someone on the German PI site with a Polish background once told me about this patriotic German priest, I think it’s him, but I could be mistaken!!

    • My guess, knowing something about Roman Catholic politics, is that he is not considered in schism. He is old and can be safely ignored. There is a wide latitude in the church for differing opinions, depending on how the priest goes about it, and whether or not he’s a diocesan priest or belongs to an order – Franciscans, Jesuits, etc.

      The movement to return to the Tridentine Mass (Latin) has been growing. Benedict was sympathetic to the Pius X order and had he remained in office the Pius X group (Father Lefevre, I think) would have been reconciled to Rome.

      In a rural county near us, the Pius X seminary in America has built a massive new place. They picked up sticks and came here from Minnesota, though it was never clear why they moved. Too many Somalis? Like our county, and those surrounding us, the area they picked is poor and very rural. They won’t be mixing with their neighbors though they will have some formal occasions when the hoi polloi is permitted in for Mass.

      The number of Pius X seminarians continues to grow, even as the seminarians in other venues continues to shrink. There is a movement toward conservatism everywhere. The great illiberal experiment has failed.

      The group here will be following a monastic tradition as far as I can see. They plan to have a vineyard, to grow their own food, etc. If they are smart they’ll make friends with local hunters, but they may not be that politically intelligent. I’m watching with interest. It sure is a nice balance to the miserable, poor Islamic compound to the west of us.

    • The ‘uniform’ and altar seem to be of a Tridentine Church. I’ve heard that it’s quit popular in Bavaria.

      • Latin Mass popular in Bavaria? This sounds incredible!

        Thanks Dymphna for the response!

  2. Well said, Father Pietrek.

    As Anthony Esolen wrote, Jesus never commanded us to love “mankind”, but to love our neighbour. That neighbour is not somebody on the other side of the world – “He is the man who never mows his lawn and who drinks too much.” Also, this love of neighbour “extends to a perfectly proper love of country” – something that Pope Francis clearly doesn’t get.

  3. “What use … is a shepherd who is a sheep?”
    “And so we want to pray …. that the Catholic Church in Germany wakes up,”
    Special message for shepherds:
    Wake …..the flock ……up.

    • “What use … is a shepherd who is a sheep?”

      [Vulgar intensifier] priceless! Thank you.

      Pope ewe … er, Francis, is leading his flock to slaughter. Mayhap he needs to drink a sample of his own sanguine flood.

  4. Nietzsche was correct when he said that Christianity is the religious expression of a slave mentality. A slave accepts blows raining down on him; more than accepts, forgives. And don’t give me the nonsense that agreeing with Nietzsche leads straight to the Nazis. It leads back to health.

  5. I’m an atheist, but I observe the Fr. Pietrek has a strength of character about him. I don’t think anyone has any worries that he will say something he doesn’t believe, or not say something that he believes.

    I do have a few observations.

    I’m completely in sympathy with his desire to preserve the Christian culture and prerogatives they have. I would be a bit more hesitant, were I him, to willy nilly allow any immigrant professing, or even manifesting, some sort of Christianity. The mafias, organized crime syndicates, drug smugglers, and street gangs are chock full of people professing Christianity, particularly from other countries. Someone as smart and forthright as Fr. Pietrek should not lose his healthy worldliness when he looks at Christians.

    Further, the virtual of loving and helping your enemy, even from afar, becomes even more virtuous when it is a result of voluntary contributions, rather than shoveling international aid out of general tax revenues. In other words, Fr. Pietrek should give some attention to the idea that government aid administered by bureaucrats does not have the same virtue as voluntary aid given at the behest of one’s spiritual community.

  6. The confusion re the two kingdoms (State/spiritual) continues to plague the church.

    Not so much, however, does this confusion “plague” the secular realm (state) — as said realm takes delight in it and uses this confusion to further its adversarial goals vis a vis the “hoi-polloi.”

    While it is true that Christians succor even their enemies, the state wields the sword to punish the wicked and protect the innocent. Read Romans 13 in the Bible.

    Christians have no “duty” to roll over and play dead so that murderers and rapists may have their ways with them.

    The state is using this “confusion” re the two kingdoms in order to make of its citizens nothing but slaves and grist for the mill of torture, torture carried out in practice by hostile peoples, these peoples themselves welcome guests by the wicked, corrupt and illegitimate state. Yes illegitimate. For all state “actors” are accountable to God Almighty as to whether or not they fulfill the function for which they have been granted authority to rule.

    Deepest woe to them (Obama and Merkel) for sticking your fists in God’s face. You will hide under the rocks when your judgment comes, if it comes on this side of the grave.

    If Europeans were more attune to this reality, the state would encounter far more resistance by its people to this genocidal program being carried out through the inducements of Christ-haters and Christendom-destroyers such as George Soros — about whom there is ample evidence to hang from the gallows.

    My message: stop letting the haters of mankind and the haters of the good tell us God-fearing people that we should FORGET what the demand according to Holy Scripture says about the FIRST duty of the state: PUNISH EVIL DOERS AND PROTECT THE INNOCENT.

    And if the state’s postmodernist enthusiasm should be the occasion for its ignoring what God commands of it then it must be ready to accept God’s punishment as exercised and exacted through an oppressed and despised citizenry.

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