Archbishop Cordileone to Newsmax: Society Rejecting God Will ‘Fail’

A society that rejects the dominion of God is destined to “fail,” San Fransisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone told Newsmax on Saturday.

“We can think about the former Soviet Union’s communism as an explicitly atheistic ideology they rejected God from society and they eventually fell,” Cordileone told “America Right Now.” “If we reject God from our society, we are going to fall. It’s going to go very bad for us.

“We need to reclaim God and put him at the center of our lives.”

Cordileone said it is not the same as imposing one religion on anyone, but “respecting the principle of the dominion of God over us.”

He said a very important aspect of living better lives is the ability to listen to each other, even when we do not agree, and not blindly accepting “secular doctrines” that are being imposed on people.

“What worries me is that the moral relativism is [that] we’re moving more into an age of another sort of absolutism,” he said. “There are a certain sort of secular doctrines that are being imposed on everyone, and everyone must conform to, and there is no latitude for differences of opinion.

“This is another part of the message of sacrificial love is listening to one another and trying to understand the other. They may have a different opinion from you, but try to respect them and try to understand their opinion and listen honestly and openly. We’re seeing speakers now being shut down on university campuses around the country because students cannot tolerate someone speaking an opinion different from their own that differs from this sort of secular orthodoxy.”

He said the meaning of the Easter holiday, the day Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ following his crucifixion and death on Good Friday for the sins of mankind, demonstrates the “sacrificial love” God has for us, and what we should try to mirror here on earth.

“Christ offered his life on the cross so that he could then rise from the dead,” he said. “So, he sets the pattern for how we are to live our lives. It’s this sacrificial love, giving of ourselves for another, not looking for what we’re going to get out of it.

“I would encourage people to reflect on their own experiences when they’ve gone out of their way to help someone for the person’s own good, not for something they’re going to get out of it, and they see that they’ve actually helped another person, whether it’s feeding the hungry, helping to shelter the homeless, whatever, they experience a certain joy that no one can take away from them.”

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