We know that St. John the Baptist was beheaded because he condemned the adulterous liaison of King Herod with his concubine Herodias. Countless examples of martyrs testify to the illegitimacy of Henry VIII's divorce with Catherine of Aragon. Among them, the martyrdoms of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More stand out.

In French History also, divorces and concubinages were severely condemned by the Catholic Church. One need only recall the case of King Robert the Pious, son of Hugh Capet, who was excommunicated for divorcing his legitimate wife Susannah and "marrying" Bertha. Pope Gregory V excommunicated him through his representative in Paris. The scene is depicted below as imagined by artist Jean Paul Laurens.

Notwithstanding the constant Catholic teaching on this topic, during his trip to France in September 2008, Benedict XVI chose to appear in public with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his concubine, Carla Bruni Sarkozy, above, both supposedly Catholics.

Now then, Nicolas Sarkozy has been divorced twice and was "re-married" out of the Church. The Pope, purportedly the symbol of Catholic Morals, neither mentioned this irregular situation nor even made an insinuation that something is wrong. Wasn't this a tacit approval of divorce?

As far as Carla Bruni is concerned, she boasts a hard-to-beat resumé of immorality. Indeed, she was born from an illegitimate affair which her mother had with Maurizio Remmet while she was married to Alberto Bruni Tedeschi. At age 19, Carla started to collect lovers. The most famous of these number 10, including Mick Jagger and French ex-minister Laurent Fabius. In 1993, tired of her fashion model career, she posed nude for the cameras. This picture, which went on the auction block in England in 2007 shortly before the presidential couple officially visited that country, created several diplomatic embarrassments. Finally, according to Time magazine (December 31, 2007), she declared: "I'm monogamous from time to time, but I prefer polygamy and polyandry." For more click here.

Any one familiar with Vatican diplomacy knows that if the Pope had so desired, it would have been a simple matter to arrange the trip so that an encounter with Carla Bruni would not take place. He did not want to do this. In other words, he wanted to meet her and thereby give his tacit approval to her immoral past and present situation.

One sees how far removed Benedict is from the Catholic moral teaching of the Church!

Internet photos

Related Topics of Interest

  St. John the Baptist

  St. Thomas More

  St. John Fisher

  St. Thomas Becket

  Catholic Divorce Speeded Up

  Church Annulments Mock St. Thomas More

  Are Present Day Annulments To Be Taken Seriously

  How a Divorced Wife Should Act at her Husband's Death

  Visit Our Catholic Morals Page