| | | OFFLINE | | Post: 32.635 Post: 14.721 | Registrato il: 28/08/2005 Registrato il: 20/01/2009 | Administratore | Utente Gold | |
|
In October 2013, Foglio editor Giuliano Ferrara joined Gnocchi and Palmaro in their criticism of the new pope with a book ironicallly entitled 'Questo papa piace troppo' (literal meaning -
'This pope pleases too much'), and in 2015, he wrote the Preface for the book of tributes to Palmaro edited by Gnocchi entitled 'Il buon seme fiorira' (Good seed will flower).
Remembering Mario Palmaro
by Alessandro Gnocchi
Translated from
March 9, 2019
It's been five years since Mario Palmaro passed away and I had thought of evoking his memory by telling you how we came about writing the article we co-signed for Page 1 of Il Foglio on October 9, 2013, with the title "We do not like this pope".
I also thought of describing the vacuum that immediately enclosed us and the 'merciful' attacks we were subjected to, especially from some so-called 'men of the Church' and a certain circle of 'intellectuals', from enemies and so-called friends as well.
At that time, no one had dared to say what Mario and I were already writing, not even those who had already begun to ask themselves about the terrible pontificate that had begun just seven months earlier, and they have not pardoned us for that.
But I must not waste time speaking of others than Mario - no one deserves it better. I think the best thing to do is to re-present the article which marked our lives and which I believe still has something to say. [More, I would say, because it has been more than totally vindicated.]
I simply wish that it be read - or re-read - keeping in mind three dates: When it was published on Oct. 9, 2013, less than 7 months had passed since that 'terrifying' Buona notte [the first words Jorge Bergoglio said to the world which the newly-elected pope addressed to the world] on March 13, and Mario who was suffering from cancer, would die exactly five months later, on
March 9, 2014.
I am re-posting here what I posted of and about that article on this forum at the time:
When 2 reputable authors get fired from
their radio shows for criticizing the Pope elsewhere
The article, published in Il Foglio (the daily newspaper edited by ‘devout atheist’ Giuliano Ferrara), led to the expulsion two days later of its authors from the radio shows they had been hosting individually for 10 years on Radio Maria in Italy (founded privately in 1987 as a ‘tool for evangelization’, it has since grown into an international network in 55 countries), on the grounds that no one working for Radio Maria ought to criticize the Pope.
The authors of the article have co-authored at least 22 books since 2000 on Catholic apologetics and tradition, and are considered among the most authoritative Italian exponents of Catholic tradition, without being extremists in any way.
Alessandro Gnocchi, born in 1959, is a journalist and literary scholar who has written books on Tolkien, Georges Simenon, Conan Doyle, and the Italians Carlo Collodi, author of Pinocchio, and Giovannino Guareschi, author of the Don Camillo series). Mario Palmaro, born in 1988, is a canonist and professor of fundamental philosophy and moral philosophy at the Pontifical University Regina Apostolorum, and a lecturer on bioethics at the Universita Europea di Roma. Gnocchi’s radio show was entitled “"Uomini e Letteratura: incontri alla luce del Vangelo" (Men and Literature: Encounters in the light pof the Gospel); Palmaro’s was “Incontri con la Bioetica" (Encounters with Bioethics).
Their article is the strongest of any critical statements against Pope Francis that I have yet seen in MSM . Its very title – 'Questo Papa no ci piace', which translates literally as ‘This Pope does not please us’, but idiomatically as “We do not like this Pope” - is equivalent to throwing down the gauntlet to all those who are passionate followers of Pope Francis, as well as to those Catholics who believe it is bad form, if not a sin, to criticize the Pope at all (but many of whom may have been indifferent when the Pope being criticized – and attacked unfairly – was Benedict XVI).
Not surprisingly, however, MSM, even in Italy, appear to have chosen to ignore the challenge (they consider it inconsequential, perhaps, in the vast ocean of popularity engulfing this Pope), and the only strong reaction so far is that of Radio Maria which chose to fire the two ‘dissenters’. So much for freedom of speech.
The following day, Il Foglio published a rejoinder by Massimo Introvigne, an authoritative commentator and sociologist of religion, who has gone out of his way since March 13, 2013, to explain away and justify every gesture and statement of Pope Francis that has caused perplexity to some Catholics. Like Jose Luis Restan [veteran Spanish Catholic commentator who, like Introvigne, wrote prompt commentary underscoring any statement (and actions supportive) of Catholic orthodoxy made by Benedict XVI during the latter’s pontificate], he appears to be sincerely motivated by the desire to support the Pope, whoever he is, and under any circumstances.
But Introvigne argues, in his response to Gnocchi and Palmaro, that disagreeing with the Pope could lead to schism. An extreme statement, which implies that persons critical of the Pope are incapable of distinguishing between the Church and the person of the Pope, or between Catholic teaching and the personal opinions of the Pope. Also, Introvigne never said about the vigilante attackers of Benedict XVIU that they risked fomenting schism! That said, here is the Gnocchi-Palmaro article.
We do not like this Pope
His interviews and gestures are a sampler of moral and religious relativism.
The attention of the media-ecclesial circuit is on the person of Bergoglio, not on Peter.
By Alessandro Gnocchi and Mario Palmaro
Translated from
October 9, 2013
We do not know how much it cost to put up the impressive display of 'poverty' in which Pope Francis was a protagonist on October 4 in Assisi. Certainly, at a time when simplification is the mode, one could say that the historic day had little that was Franciscan (about the saint) in it.
It was a well-prepared and well-enacted script that was, however, devoid of that something that made the spirit of St. Francis unique: the ability for true surprise. [1) I disagree that the ability to surprise made the saint's spirit unique - it was his ability to truly 'wear Christ' that did; 2) Francis the Pope had that ability to surprise, initially, except that his ‘surprises’ are now taken for granted – “He’s bound to surprise us” has become the routine expectation - and even predictable, as the day in Assisi showed.]
Francis the Pope, who embraces the sick, who cannot gladhand the crowds enough, who makes jokes, who speaks off the cuff, who rides a Panda [a Fiat model], who leaves his cardinals to lunch with government officials while he joins Caritas soup kitchen beneficiaries - all that was expected and did indeed happen.
Of course, amid great competition in the Catholic and para-Catholic media to extol the humility of this Pope. And with a sigh of relief by some because this time, the Pope also spoke about meeting Christ. And the secular media had a chance to say once more that yes, now, with this Pope, the Church is finally keeping step with the times. All of it good stuff for mediocre headline writers eager to close their editions in haste, and let’s see what tomorrow brings.
But in Assisi, there was not even any new surprise, much less an attention-calling one. Any gesture would have been relatively minor anyway, given what Papa Bergoglio has said and done in just six months of being Pope [seven months today] which culminated with his winks at Scalfari and the interview with La Civilta Cattolica.
The only ones who might have been surprised this time were the ‘normalists’, those Catholics who are pathetically intent on convincing other Catholics – and even more pathetically, of convincing themselves – that nothing has changed. That everything in the Church is normal, and that, as usual, it is only the media who are misrepresenting the Pope who has only been saying the same truths taught by his predecessors but expressing himself differently.
But although journalism may be the oldest profession in the world [Are Gnocchi and Palmaro equating it to prostitution?], it is difficult to give credence to such a hypothesis.
For example, Scalfari asked the Pope, “Holiness, is there a single vision of what is good? And who would establish that?”
“Each of us”, replies the Pope, “has his own vision of good and even of evil. We must inspire each one to proceed towards that which he thinks is good”.
Scalfari prods him jesuitically: “You, Holiness, already said so in the letter you sent me. Conscience is autonomous, you said, and each one must obey his own conscience. I think that is one of the most courageous statements ever made by a Pope”.
“And I repeat it now,” the Pope replies. “Each one has how own idea of good and evil, and he must choose to follow the good and combat the bad as he perceives it. This would suffice to make the world a better place”.
[What PF said about conscience in his letter to Scalfari was bad enough, but the statement was equivocal enough for all his Catholic adulators to give him the benefit of the doubt and say, “No, he was not at all adopting the secular idea of conscience!” But then, he reiterates his belief unequivocally in the above exchange with Scalfari, perhaps basking in the latter’s praise of his courage. That reiteration is hard to rationalize, even with the best intentions towards the Pope. Take it from Fr. Schall, an honest Jesuit, who was critical enough of the ‘equivocal’ statement on conscience in the letter to Scalfari.]
As concluded by Vatican II and afterwards more than well restated in Chater 12 of John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis splendor (The splendor of truth), the Polish Pope disputed “some currents of modern thought… which attribute to individual conscience the prerogative of being the supreme resort of moral judgment which decides categorically and infallibly what is good and bad… to the point of arriving at a radically subjectivistic concept of moral judgment”.
Even the most fanciful ‘normalist’ cannot possibly reconcile Bergoglio 2013 with Wojtyla 1993.
In the face of such a change, the media are carrying out their job honestly. In Page 1 headlines and stories, they have cited Pope Francis’s statements as a distinct contrast to what previous Popes and the Church have always taught.
And now, the normalists – who generally always say whatever L’Osservatore Romano thinks – questions the context for these headlines, i.e., that the statements extrapolated from their blessed context do not at all reflect the mens (mind, thinking) of the Pope.
But, as the history of the Church teaches us, some statements which express a complete sense are meaningful in themselves and can be judged regardless of the context. If, in a long interview, someone says “Hitler was a benefactor of mankind”, it would be difficult to defend such a statement to the world.
If a Pope says in an interview, “I believe in God, but not a Catholic God”, the damage is done, regardless of the context. [The point here is that the Allah of Islam, for example, or the one God of the Jews, is not the Trinity that Christians believe God is. For the Pope to say he does not believe in ‘a Catholic God’ would seem to be denying the Trinity. Obviously, he is not doing that, but bending over backwards to assure an atheist like Scalfari that he does not believe in ‘a Catholic God’ is imprudent and thoughtless, to say the least. It seems to me yet another proof of a failing that seems to be consistent in PF - he is more concerned about the PR effect of what he says, rather than in its content or how he expresses it.]
For 2,000 years, the Church has judged doctrinal affirmations by individuals and groups, isolating them from their original context.
- In 1713, Clement XI published the constitution Unigenitus Filius (The only-begotten Son) condemning the 101 propositions of theologian Pasquier Quesnel.
- In 1864, Pius IX published the Syllabus of Errors listing propositions of modern thought that were contrary to Catholic doctrine.
- In 1907, St Pius X in Pascendi dominici gregis had an appendix of 65 ‘modern’ statements incompatible with Catholicism.
Those are just examples to show that when there was a doctrinal error, it was identified and acknowledged openly. And a review of Denzinger would not be a bad idea. [Denzinger is often mentioned these days – the name inevitably recalls Ratzinger – that I have to cite the Wikipedia entry on him: “Heinrich Joseph Dominicus Denzinger (1819–1883) was a leading German Catholic theologian and author of the Enchiridion Symbolorum et Definitionum (Handbook of Creeds and Definitions) commonly referred to simply as 'Denzinger’.”]
Moreover, in the case of the Scalfari interview with the Pope, an analysis of the context would just make things worse. When, for instance, the Pope tells Scalfari that "Proselytism is a solemn folly”, the normalist jumps up to explain right away that the Pope is talking about the aggressive proselytism of the evangelical sects in Latin America.
Unfortunately, in the interview, Papa Bergoglio tells Scalfari:. “I don’t wish to convert you”, which implies that when he called proselytism a ‘solemn folly’, he meant the work done by the Church to convert souls to Catholicism. [Once again, an instance of PF not thinking about what he says and the way he says it There is a reason modern Popes have rarely spoken off the cuff. John Paul II and Benedict XVI did it relatively often but never got into the tangle of undergrowth that PF finds himself in when he does it, because they were able to think carefully about what they said before they said it. PF can get so informal he seems to forget that a Pope cannot speak casually and loosely, especially not about doctrine as basic as the God we believe in, or adopting the secular definition of conscience, without referring at all to the ‘formed conscience’ that Catholics are taught to exercise. ‘Conscience’, after all, implies a knowing decision that one makes and takes.]
It would be difficult to interpret the Pope’s statement otherwise, in the light of the ‘marriage’ between the Gospel and the world that he himself blessed in his interview with La Civilta Cattolica.
“Vatican II,” he said, “was a re-reading of the Gospel in the light of contemporary culture. It produced a movement of renewal that arose, very simply, from the Gospel itself. The fruits have been enormous. Just look at the liturgy. The work of liturgical reform was a service to the people as a rereading of the Gospel from a concrete historical situation. Yes, there are lines of hermeneutic continuity and discontinuity, but one thing is clear: the dynamic of reading the Gospel that is current today, and which was that of the Council, is absolutely irreversible”.
Just so! No longer the world seen in the light of the Gospel, but the Gospel deformed [‘read’, the Pope said, i.e., interpreted] in the light of the world, in the light of contemporary culture.
And how many times will that happen then - with every cultural shift that will always dispute the preceding interpretation? This would be nothing other than the ‘permanent Vatican II’ theorized by the late Jesuit Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini.
Along these lines, the idea of a 'new Church is looming on the horizon, in the image of the ‘field hospital’ evoked by the Pope in the Civilta interview, in which, it appears, the doctors have so far not done their work well at all. [Well, haven't the Vatican II 'spiritists' always maintained that the Council gave birth to a new Church that ought to have nothing to do with 'the old'????]
“I am thinking, for example, of the situation of a woman who has put behind her a failed marriage and has even had an abortion,” the Pope says. “Now she has remarried and is living in serenity with five children. But the abortion weighs on her enormously and she has repented sincerely. She wishes to proceed with her Christian life. What should her confessor do?”
It was a statement consciously constructed to end with a question, after which one can proceed to another topic, almost as if to underscore the inability of the Church to respond. And very disconcerting from a Pope, if one considers that for 2,000 years, the Church has answered this with a rule that allows the absolution of the sinner, provided he has repented and resolves not to remain in sin.
[In the example cited, her abortion is not the question – it’s done, and it’s clear she repents because she has since had five children, but the question the Pope fails to confront is her ‘bigamous’ marriage if her first marriage has not been canonically annulled, unless the first husband has died. However, the alternative the Church proposes in such cases – for the woman to live chastely with her present husband – is as 'absurd’ and impractical to the modern mind as the Church’s admonition that Catholic homosexuals should refrain from homosexual activity.
This is the sense in which I believe PF is seeking to accommodate Church teaching with ‘contemporary culture’, for which the Catholic sense of ‘amending one’s life’ accordingly to atone for a sin, is simply unacceptable and even inconceivable. Indeed, the idea that. in seeking God’s mercy, one must atone for the sins one has committed has been missing all along from this Pope’s constant invocation of God’s mercy.
The Cross of Christ that we are called on to share is not just our lot of human trials and tribulations, but also the burden of atoning for our sins. If going out to the peripheries to serve the poor is one way of doing that, so be it – but say so! Not that it should be the primary motivation for doing it, but if one does so as a means of atonement, then one would come to appreciate that it is a good thing by itself.]
And yet, subjugated by the overwhelming personality of Papa Bergoglio, legions of Catholics have swallowed the myth of a problem that does not exist. All of them, burdened now with the supposed error of 2000 years during which the Church has terrorized the poor sinner, are now grateful to the bishop who has come ‘from the ends of the world’ not to resolve a non-existent problem but to invent it.
The disquieting aspect of the thinking that underlies such statements by Pope Francis is the idea of an incurable rift between doctrinal rigor and mercy – that if one imposes doctrine, there cannot be mercy.
But the Church has always taught and lived the contrary. It is one’s perception of sin, and repentance for having sinned with the resolve to avoid sin in the future, that make God’s mercy possible. Jesus saved an adulterous woman from being stoned, absolved her of her sins, but said to her, “Go and sin no more”. [And that’s just what I have been remarking all along, since this ‘Pope of mercy’ myth first sprung, citing the very same and obvious Biblical passage]. He did not say, “Go, and rest assured that my Church will not seek to exercise any spiritual interference in your personal life” [As Pope Francis said textually in one of the interviews. But is 'spiritual interference' ('intervention' would be a more appropriate word) not the mission of the Church?].
With the seemingly near-unanimous consensus of the Catholic world and the enamourment of the world with Pope Francis (not to forget that the Gospel also warns against the dangers of such universal praise), one could say that six months of Pope Francis have produced an epochal change.
The fact is we are witnessing the phenomenon of a leader who tells the crowd exactly what they want to hear. One cannot deny that he does this with great talent and mastery. But communication with the people – wherein there is no longer any distinction between believers and non-believers – has been direct and spontaneous only in a fairly small way. [i.e., much of it is done through the media.]
Even the Pope’s immersion in the crowd at St. Peter’s Square or at WYD Rio, in Lampedusa or in Assisi, are filtered through the media which report events to support their own interpretations. [Actually, it has been a major synergy – the normal interest in a new Pope became super-inflated after his initial gestures which the media, and Francis’s cardinal electors, breathlessly greeted right away as ‘a new springtime for the Church’ and Francis as ‘the Pope the Church never had and should have’, and other such superlative absolutes. Everyone loves a winner, and when the entire media world, and in fact, most of the secular world, praises Francis as the pluperfect Pope, then anyone who has a chance to be ‘part of history’ goes out of his way to see him. Though I am perplexed that they do not show up in the numbers expected on occasions like the prayer vigil for peace in Syria, or last night’s Marian prayer vigil.]
The Francis phenomenon does not detract from the fundamental rules of the media game – indeed, it uses it almost to the point of being second nature. The mechanism was defined most effectively in the early 1980s by Mario Alighiero Manacorda in a delightful little book with the most delectable title, Il linguaggio televisivo. O la folle anadiplosi (The language of TV, or the folly of anadiplosis). [Anadiplosis is a rhetorical device used for emphasis, in which the last word of a preceding statement is used to start the next statement, as in, “I am telling you now. Now you must listen!”]
Manacorda pointed out that this artifice has become the essence of mediatic language. “These artifices which are purely formal (about form), superfluous, useless and incomprehensible as to substance”, he wrote, “induce the listener to follow the form – namely, the rhetorical device – and to forget the substance of what is being said”. [In the case of the Francis phenomenon, the form has become the substance, not just in terms of media language, and as John Allen solemnly noted without any shade of irony, "Francis himself has become the message".]
In time, mass communications has replaced substance with form, truth with appearances. [The more usual expression is that perception has replaced reality, because public perception of reality has come to be identical to what the media represents to them as reality.]
And mass media has done so with the habitual use of synecdoche and metonymny, two other rjetorical devices in which one part is made to represent the whole (synecdoche) or a brand name is made to represent a genre or institution [e.g., ‘the Vatican’ for the Catholic Church]
The increasingly vertiginous speed of communications imposes a neglect of the whole picture and places the focus on some particulars consciously chosen by the media to portray the picture they wish to show. Increasingly, newspapers, TV, radio and Internet sites choose to depict events through the use of carefully chosen details, sometimes just one.
From this viewpoit, it would seem that Pope Francis was expressyly ‘made’ for the media, and vice-versa. Just take the image of him boarding an airplane carrying an old black briefcase: the perfect use of synecdoche and metonymy together.
The figure of the Pope becomes represented and absorbed into that briefcase – cancelling out the centuries-old image of the sacred Papacy to replace it with one that is completely new and modern. This is the new Pope, and everything in that detail of the briefcase speaks of his poverty, his humility, his dedication to work, his contemporaneity, his quotidianity, his being down-to-earth and as close to anything terrestrial as one can imagine.
.
The final effect of this process rejects the impersonal idea of the Papacy and the simultaneous highlighting of the person who happens to be the Pope now. It is an effect that is even more upsetting when one considers that the public which receives this message exalts the ‘grear humility’ shown in this gesture and think that it brings great luster to the Papacy. [But that’s human nature. We exalt in the virtues of others that which we ourselves find hard to exercise, even if, in this case, it was a deliberate studied gesture – PF is not naïve, he knew exactly what he was doing, that it was completely unnecessary, but nevertheless, that it would be a great PR move as a ‘message’ to underscore the humility he professes. A perfect example of playing to the gallery.]
Through synecdoche and metonymy, the next step has been to identify this Pope with the Papacy itself – one part to represent the whole. And Simon has pushed away Peter.
Because fro this phenomenon, Pope Francis, even when expressing himself as a private person, immediately transforms whatever he says or does into a magisterial – or teaching – act. If one also considers that most Catholics believe that anything a Pope says is ‘infallible’, the die is cast.
No matter how much commentators can say that a letter to Scalfari or an interview or whatever informal statements the Pope makes are simply the statements of a private person [Benedict XVI said it best after his decision to renounce the office: “A Pope is never again private”], in an age dominated by mass media, the effects that these ‘informal’ statements produce are incommensurately greater than any solemn statements that he makes. Indeed, the more trivial and insignificant such informal gestures or statements are, the more effective they are because they are considered to be so small as not to be subject to attack or criticism.
It is not by accident that the symbology that underlies the Francis phenomenon consists of ‘routine’ down-to-earth matters. The black briefcase carried onto the plane is a textbook example. But this applies even to his pectoral cross, his papal ring, the altar he uses for Mass, the vestments he puts on – in which the subject becomes the material of which they are made rather than what they stand for.
One could say Jesus is no longer on the pectoral cross worn by Pope Francis because the faithful have been led to contemplate the fact that it is made of steel not gold. [Fact check: someone has pointed out that it is, in fact, of sterling silver, not stainless steel.] And once again, the part subsumes the Whole, which in this case is a capital W.
The Pope also asks us to seek ‘the flesh of Christ’ out there, in the peripheries, and everyone is free to choose which ‘holocaust’ best suits him. [I do object to the Pope’ simplistically equating ‘the flesh of Christ’ only with the literally poor and the materially and physically suffering. As if persons who are materially well off and in good physical health – but with their own share of human tribulations - were unworthy to be considered ‘the flesh of Christ’.]
These days, he seems to think it is in Lampedusa, tomorrow who knows? {And why do intelligent apologists for the Pope, like the outspoken Cardinal Dolan, never question the fact that all these months, PF has shown far more concern about the Muslim migrants who end up drowning in the Mediteranean, than all the Christians who are persecuted daily in Africa, the Middle East, and the Muslim nations of Asia? Dolan’s latest apologia pro Francis is that “he does not want us bishops to talk about abortion, etc. so we do not get distracted from our work against Obamacare and in favor of illegal immigrants”. Go figure!]
This is the triumph of the ‘wisdom of the world’ that St. Paul condemned as folly but which is now being used to re-read the Gospel with the eyes of TV. Back in 1989, Marshall McLuhan wrote to Jacques Maritain: “The environment of the electronic media, which are completely in the ether [not for nothing is the cable connector to Internet servers called an Ethernet!], nourish the illusion of the world as spiritual substance. This is modern reason’s facsimile of the Mystical Body, a deafening manifestation of the anti-Christ. After all is said and done, the master of this world would seem to be a Supreme Electronics Engineer”.
Sooner or later, the world will wake up from this great mass media dreamworld and come back to measuring itself against reality. [Later, if ever, rather than sooner!]
One must also learn true humility, which consists in submitting ourselves to Someone who is greater, who manifests himself through laws that cannot be changed, even by the Vicar of Christ.
And we must find the courage to say that a Catholic can only be confused by a papal statement that says, out of respect for the supposed autonomy of conscience, that everyone must be encouraged to proceed with his own personal view of what is good or bad. Christ and his way cannot be just one of many options. Least of all, for his vicar on earth.
March 10, 2019
P.S. In fairness, I must also recall that some time in December 2013 - two months since the above article came out - Gnocchi reported that the pope had called Palmaro on the telephone because he ha heard that the latter was seriously ailing, which, needless to say, was a very Christian thing to do. Even if it does not cancel out any of this pope's the anti-Catholic and anti-Christian words and deeds.
Synchronistically (to use Karl Jung's preferred term for 'coincidentally'), Aldo Maria Valli devotes his post today to a reflection by one of his colleagues whose views on the church of Bergoglio have necessarily gone far beyond what Gnocchi, Palmero and Ferrara argued in 2013....
What happens in a church that
has lost the sense of the transcendent
Translated from
March 11, 2019
I have been meditating for some time on the so-called new paradigm of ‘the outgoing church’ that has characterized the pontificate of Jorge Bergoglio. I think one can say that this is a ‘going out’, in the first place, from the Church herself. Because this ‘new’ church – which is very horizontal, advocating humanitarian causes all the while it is apparently little inclined to concern itself with the ‘last things’ – is a denatured church.
That is why I offer here a reflection by Marcello Veneziani that I believe to be very well developed.
Indeed, mankind does not need a grand and worldwide social aid organization [for that, we already have the Red Cross and similar agencies, not to mention the Catholic Church herself, whose worldwide social works of charity were in place long before Bergoglio] nor a vaguely Catholic version of humanitarianism, but a pope who speaks to the faithful, as popes before this one have, of eternity and the salvation of souls.
*******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
The purpose of the Church
is to save man, not to sedate him
By Marcello Veneziani
Translated from
What is the weak point of Pope Francis’s message to the world? What is the main reason that he evokes such dissent [among Catholics]?
Yesterday, Corrado Augias* in La Repubblica, responding to a reader who had watched his TV conversation with me, noted that in my last book, I had erected ‘a coherent edifice of reactionary thought’ in which I had criticized the pope because he has reduced faith to sociology.
The observation about the pope is correct (even if my book is not about that) but I would not classify it as reactionary thought. I am not frightened by the definition of areactionary but it does not reflect at all the sense of my criticisms.
Indeed, I do not criticize the pope only because he has broken with the past, with tradition and with Christian civilization [Wow! Veneziani has opened up the usual scope of Bergoglian criticism – even if I have gone much farther to say that this pope can be documented well and copiously to be really anti-Christ, if not an or the Anti-Christ], and with the history and doctrine of the Church for the past two millennia.
But I criticize him for something far more radical and devastating, in my opinion.
- That in the church of Bergoglio, there is no longer a horizon of expectation, of hope for the future and of transcendence.
- Everything is instead folded into and sought to be resolved in the context of current history, limited to today and the urgency of giving ‘first aid’. [After all, he thinks of the Church as a ‘field hospital’, doesn’t he?]
The unequalled resource of the Christian religion compared to any secular vision is to look at eternity beyond time, the future beyond earthly life, resurrection beyond death. The Christian message that opens hearts and engages the mind is all directed towards the future. Faith and hope are theological virtues that are totally aimed towards the future, to what happens then.
The supreme power of the Christian faith is to tame death, to give another opening to life beyond its earthly parabola, to make us understand that everything does not end here, that true life is beyond death, veni foras ['Come forth', Jesus's command when he raised Lazarus from the dead].
Because beyond the human is the divine, beyond history is eternal light. It is this prospect of eternity that is the basis for Christian morals and its rules for how men relate to each other and to the world. It may all be illusion and lies to atheists and skeptics, or the promise of redemption for believers and devotees, but the ultimate reason for believing, for praying and for the morality resulting from these, is in that expectation.
The church of Bergoglio is completely wrapped up in the present, it confronts present problems, it is wholly concerned with the contemporary condition [material and physical, that is – touching the spiritual only pro forma]: migrants, hunger, peace, corruption, social injustices. For him, the priority, if not the exclusive task, of the Church is to face these problems, urge universal brotherhood, denounce inequalities and produce humanitarian policies.
And if the churches are being emptied of priests and faithful, he thinks they must be transformed for ‘social’ purposes – make them places of welcome for the poor and the hungry: more aid, less prayer; more solidarity, less liturgy, less of the sacred, less of devotion.
It is true that charity is the third theological virtue after faith and hope. But if the task of the Church were to make life better for persons living today, then it would not be any different from a humanitarian organization, like Amnesty International, or first-aid and humanitarian rescue programs. The Cross would become only the Red Cross.
Yet the decisive ‘wager’ for the faith is God, not to improve the objective conditions of life. If, in the name of his faith, a Christian takes on this latter burden, that is a good thing, of course, but that faith in God would be replaced by social motivations marks the end of faith – it transforms faith into social commitment, prayer to humanitarian aid. The connotation is that it is more important to save a drowning migrant than it is to save a lost soul.
I know what the answer will be: In saving one man, I am saving Jesus himself, because I see him in everyman, and to practice charity is the best way to bear witness to my faith in God. But judging from the attention [given by the pope] and his daily words and his actions, something quite different is happening: God is replaced by ‘mankind’, Christ is replaced by ‘the poor’, the soul is replaced with just a body to feed and clothe and shelter; eternal redemption is replaced by social rescue.
Therefore, rite, liturgy, symbol, prayer, faith – all become irrelevant. The most disconcerting that many have noted is this mass substitution. ‘Mankind’ in place of God. The cathedral as rescue scow. But does one need faith to carry out acts of solidarity - or are revolution and humanitarian socialism enough?
Sometimes, polemical passion leads me to severe criticism, and I apologize for that. I do not say I hiave all the certainties, much less that I am a depository of truth, and I know I can be mistaken. And if I dare to criticize the present pope, I do so in the name of the saints, popes and theologians who thought differently from him.
For the sake of truth, I cannot keep silent on what I am seeing. If I doubt my faith, I take responsibility. But I cannot accept the fact that the church of Bergoglio increases my doubts instead of dissipating them, or worse, that it would make me consider such doubts secondary or irrelevant compared to the urgency of giving ‘humanitarian aid’.
Is all this reactionary, dear Augias? I don’t think so. Unless you consider God to be the first reactionary of all.
Marcello Veneziani (born 1955) is an Italian journalist who has written some 40 books since 1981 of ‘conservative’ thinking on secular as well as religious issues concening Italy and Europe. He is considered one of Italy’s most outstanding thinkers on the ‘right’. At present, he is an editorial writer for the Italian newspapers' Il Tempo' and 'La Verita'. He has been a commentator for 20 years for RAI (Italian state TV) as well as editor of the midnight edition of RAI’s Radio News.
Corrado Augias (born 1935) is an Italian journalist and TV host who made waves in 2006 as co-author of the book Inchiesta su Gesu (Inquiry on Jesus: Who is the man who changed the world) with Mauro Pesce (born 1941), a Biblicist and Church historian. n the book, they argued, on the basis of their reading of historical data, that ‘the authentic Jesus is not the one preached by the Church’.
In the opinion of Sandro Magister at the time, the publication and success of this book prompted Benedict XVI to an early announcement in November 2006 that he would be publishing a book on Jesus that argues the opposite, namely, that the historical Jesus is the Jesus of faith. The first volume of JESUS OF NAZARETH did come out in April 2007, but in November 2006, the pope authorized publication of its Preface as his preliminary ‘answer’ to the Augias-Pesce book.
Meanwhile, read the continuing apologia pro Bergoglio that Andre Gagliarducci inexplicably keeps making for this pope and his pontificate, even as he points out his and its failings.
http://www.mondayvatican.com/vatican/pope-francis-pontificate-turns-six-and-now
I do not know why it reads the way it does linguistically - he writes his blog directly in English, but it was always readable if not always idiomatic and somewhat awkward. This one sounds like it was written by another person altogether in terms of language (not of content), or translated from the Italian by Google. In any case, eminently and amply fiskable. For instance, I cannot believe his two major conclusions, namely:
[sic]"Six years after, we are now experiencing a Papacy that needs to recover some credibility, while secular world figured out this was not the Papacy expected."
and
"Beyond some doctrinal issue bore by the post-synod exhortation, Pope Francis never changed the Church’s doctrine on marriage and family. Pope Francis has underscored that the defense of life must be framed in the wider field of the social justice, but he did not change the doctrine, and in particular Humanae Vitae, as it was thought."[sic]
I have not so far questioned that Gagliarducci appears to sincerely admire Benedict XVI, but I cannot reconcile that admiration with his continued championship of Bergoglio. Which leads me to wonder whether, for all his apparent intelligence (except when it has to do with having to denounce some of Bergoglio's words and actions outright, instead of always justifying them - and worse, consistently blaming them on some mythical 'agenda behind the pope's back' right in the Vatican), he is nothing but a garden-variety robot 'normalist', for whom whoever is pope is right and must be followed.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 12/03/2019 21:42] |