A news gave great annoyance to the friends of the “anti-Papist resistance”. In France, one of the Western countries with the greatest crisis of priestly ordinations, 20% of ordained priests would be a “traditionalist”.

One of the exultant comments was the following: «an important sign, in consideration of the open disfavour that the reigning Pontiff showed on several occasions towards the young priests who prefer the tradition of the Church». There is a malignant and purposeful confusion between the adhesion to Tradition and with the celebration of Mass in Latin, so as to induce to think that only priests using the Vetus Ordo would be in line with the Catholic doctrine. Unjustly involving Francis, additionally, is the confirmation that in certain environments any news is used to attack the Pope: the most fecund ordination groups would be those unfavoured by Bergoglio. This is the bad message that someone wants to transmit.

False is also the affirmation that Francis would unfavourably look on the ancient rite; it is an erroneous belief born at the time when the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate were put under the administration of an external commissioner, and the Holy See induced them to celebrate the liturgy according to the ordinary rite. But – as has already been clarified – only to respond «to specific problems and tensions created in that congregation», in particular because the majority of the friars wanted to celebrate according to the Novus Ordo. On this specific topic, instead, Pope Bergoglio appreciated the possibility conceded by his predecessor of celebrating Mass with the ancient rite, but rightly considers as «worrying the risk of ideologisation of the Vetus Ordo, its instrumentalisation». Many traditionalists, indeed, consider nothing other than heretics those those who use the modern rite, as a result of having turned the Tridentine Mass into an existential obsession, whereas it is to be judged as an extraordinary form and not as an ordinary one, as was provided for by Benedict XVI.

Harkening back to the French “traditionalist” groups with the highest number priestly priestly ordinations, we have discovered that the news is not entirely true. Amongst these congregations there is the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter (FSSP), which – beside being in perfect communion with Pope Francis – legitimately prefers the old liturgy in Latin (even though Scriptures are read in the local language), but does not want at all to «reintroduce it in parishes and somehow impose it on people. Both forms of the rite may enrich each other». If we trust the words of Father Bernhard Gerstle, member of the Fraternity, we infer that we are dealing with a community spiritually fine, not at all “traditionalist”, sedevacantist, or pharisaic, not ideologically anchored in the past. Indeed, the prelate specified: «I do not like at all the term “traditionalist”. We are not “traditionalists”, but simply Catholics. And, as Catholics, we appreciate Tradition. But not so much as to be totally contrary to changes and organic adaptations».

The Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter recognises «the new liturgy as valid and legitimate», even though it criticises many developments of the liturgical reform, like the celebration no more ad orientem and Communion given in the hand to the faithful. The priest recognises that these are «changes of the external form», but he fears that «they have led not few priests and faithful to a quite Protestant conception of the Mass». His fears, albeit exaggerated, are understandable and in part acceptable, although the real problem remains the education to the faith: one may receive Communion on the tongue and while kneeling but without understanding its meaning, only out of a formal obedience to a “We have always done so”. There is nothing automatic, and it is not the form that changes man’s heart. Besides, on this point, Benedict XVI has already clarified: «Communion on the tongue is not an imposition: I have always practiced both forms» (Ultime conversazioni, Garzanti 2016, p. 175).

Father Gerstle also distanced himself from the intransigent wing of the Fraternity of St. Pius X, a community – this, yes – being strongly traditionalist. The latter – warned the priest: «has to recognise that there is no alternative to the reconciliation with Rome». On the contrary, «the Fraternity of Saint Peter has undertaken an unbiased study of the conciliar texts and came to the conclusion that in them no break with the precedent doctrinal statements. There are, however, various texts which are formulated in such a way as to give rise to misunderstandings. On the part of Rome, there have been clarifications that even the Fraternity of Saint Pius X should recognise. For us, no pre- and post- conciliar Church. There is only one Church, which dates back to Christ».

Finally, in the French Fraternity full of vocations, there is no enmity at all against the Holy Father. Quite the opposite! «Our main worry must be the care for the salvation of souls, as continuously highlights Pope Francis» – explained again the priest of the Fraternity of Saint Peter. On the 30th of March 2014, in the Parish of the Most Holy Trinity of Pilgrims, entrusted to the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter itself, the then Auxiliary Bishop of Rome (future “Bergoglian” Archbishop of Bologna) Msgr. Matteo Zuppi  celebrated the Holy Mass in the “ancient” rite. Without any problem or “disfavour”.

The Editorial Staff

If you do not know Raimundo Panikkar, then this story will be new for you. If, instead, you know who he is, it will be a novelty anyway, because no-one – but really no-one – reports how the earthly path of this icon of the post-1968 progressivism ended.

Son of an Indian man and of a Spanish woman, philosopher and syncretistic theologian, susprended priest, ex member of Opus Dei, member of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIS) and professor at Harvard and at the University of California. All this was, in sum, Panikkar.

Ordained Catholic priest in 1964, he was one of the first presbyters of Opus Dei. His journey to India in 1955 and his contact with spiritualistic religions led him to radically syncretistic convictions, which very soon led him to a personal crisis of identity («he got lost in the details of the Indian religion: paraphrasing the title of one of his books, between the silence of God and the answers of Buddha», wrote Armando Torno). «I left Europe as a Christian, I discovered myself Hindu, and I came back as a Buddhist, without having ever ceased to be Christian», says a famous quote of his’. In 1961, he wrote one of his most famous books, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism, where he affirms: «It is obvious that the “Logos”, which was in the beginning and then incarnated in time, cannot be identified with Jesus of Nazareth without qualifications. Jesus is the Christ, but Christ cannot be totally identified with the son of Mary» (p. 31).

He abandoned Opus Dei in 1966 and lived his life between India and the USA, where he became Professor of Religious Studies. Always farther from his origins, he retired to Tavertet, in Catalonia, and on the 6th of December 1984 he contracted a civil marriage, thereby getting suspended a divinis by the Church, which deprived him of the right to exercise the priestly office. In the West, he became the symbol of a naïve rebellious progressivism, a representative – also to his detriment – of the new-age philosophy and of a disobedient Catholicism. Even today, for example, theologian Vito Mancuso uses his name to invoke the abolition of the priestly celibacy.

However, in 2005 Pannikkar decided to send a letter to Javier Echevarría, Prelate of Opus Dei: «The communion of saints is a reality», he wrote. «I remember all of you. God bless you and enlighten you in your delicate task». The relationship with the Prelature increased in the last ten years of his life, in which he received friends like Ferran Blasi and Juan Antonio González Lobato. Who met him saw in Pannikkar a rediscovery of and a nostalgia for the priestly vocation and ordination, considered by him as the most important fact in his life, so much so that he started a negotiation to find a solution to his irregular canonical situation. His case was studied by Benedict XVI.

The decisive step took place on February 2008, when the “rebellious priest” wrote: «I want to ask publicly for forgiveness for the bad example I gave with my disobedience to celibacy. I sincerely repent, accept, and humbly reaffirm my obedience to the Church. I will eliminate all the bonds I have because of my marriage». On the 3rd of April 2008, his suspension was revoked, and two years later Pannikkar died in Tavertet completely reconciled with the Church. «I feel I am a priest of the Church, and I want to keep going to Communion until the end». «He was a man and an intellectual with his mistakes and genialities, but faithful to the Church in his teachings», recalled his friend Ferran Blasi.

The Editorial Staff

Even Google celebrated the anniversary of the birth of Msgr. Georges Lemaître (17th of July), father of the Big Bang and the one who opened the contemporary era of cosmology.

Priest and physicist of Belgian descent, he does not only represent one of the greatest scientific revolutionaries in history, he is not only a universal example of the compatibility between science and faith, but he was also the one who, with utmost humility, corrected his friend and colleague Albert Einstein. Three were the main public contacts between Lemaître and Einstein, in which the Belgian Jesuit converted the father of relativity to the theory of the birth and of the continuous expansion of the Universe.

Born in 1984 in Charleroi, young Lemaître’s precocity for science was parallel to his religious vocation, so much so that at 9 years ago he decided to become priest. He followed, however, his parents’ advice and was educated at the Jesuits’ schools. In 1922 he published a little thesis on Einstein’s physics that brought him to Cambridge University as researcher in astronomy. Almost parallelly, he was ordained priest, on September 1923, at the age of 29. He started to collaborate with famous astrophysicist Arthur Eddington and, in 1927, Lemaître anticipated (on the Annales de la société scientifique de Bruxelles) what is today known as Hubble’s Law, which concerns the speed at which galaxies separate from each other (recession of nebulae).

Let us get to the first meeting between Lemaître and Einstein. It was 1927 and all the most important physicists met at the famous Solvay Conference in Brussels. The two talked to each other long, but the German physicist, even confirming the correctness of Lemaître’s equations on relativity, pronounced sceptically about the idea of an expanding Universe by telling him: «Your calculations are correct, but your understanding of physics is abominable». He was too attached to a model of an eternal and static Universe. The Jesuit took the criticism, until 1929, when Hubble published a work that presented more evidence for the expansion of the Universe, thereby contradicting the theory commonly accepted back then. In 1931 the Belgian Jesuit answered the objections in a document on Nature: «The beginning of the Universe» – he concluded: «happened short before the beginning of space and time». It was the first explicit formulation of the theory of the “primordial atom”, which would be backed by always more confirmations and became accepted by the majority of scientists. Some remained against it: the Soviets, in particular, considered this “relativistic cosmology” a disguised theology, too allied with religion, a new edition of the «old clerical theory of the Universe that moves in only one direction (from the beginning to the end)». Even English Astronomer Fred Hoyle manifested his dissent and pejoratively defined the theory of the Belgian priest as “Big Bang”.

Lemaître became a celebrity and during one of his many conferences, in California, his friend Albert Einstein went to listen to him. We are 1932 in Pasadena; it was the second meeting between the two. They strolled for hours while talking about physics and the ascent of Adolf Hitler. For the first time, Einstein admitted the expansion of the Universe but did not quite accept the hypothesis of the “primitive atom”, because he suspected that the Jesuit priest was not scientifically objective. The German physicist judged this hypothesis as «inspired by the Christian dogma of creation and unjustified at the scientific level». So much so as to tell famously his friend and colleague: «This entire deal resembles too much the Book of Genesis; we easily see that you are a priest».

The third and last meeting between Einstein and Lemaître took place the following year, in 1933. After Lemaître concluded his speech at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California, Einstein stood up and, applauding, said: «This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation that I have ever heard». As a matter of fact, there probably were other contacts between the two scientists, related, though, to dramatic historical facts: after the rise of Nazism, Einstein renounced the German citizenship, and Lemaître, to help him, organised in Brussels a series of conferences animated by the father of relativity. In his turn, Einstein would reciprocate this human and scientific esteem by even supporting Jesuit priest’s candidacy to the important Francqui Prize, effectively awarded to Lemaître in 1934 (F. Agnoli, Filosofia, religione e politica in Albert Eintein, ESD 2015, p. 35).

Lemaître was assigned many tasks at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, thereby becoming the personal consultant of Pope Pius XII (who expressed his “favourableness” for the idea of a dynamic Universe and the Big Bang on 22/11/1951), and also became the President of the said Academy in 1960. He died in 1966, at the age of 71, two years after the news of the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation, the last decisive proof of the correctness of his astronomical theory. «The believer» – he wrote: «has the advantage of knowing that the enigma has a solution, that the underlying logic is ultimately the work of an intelligent being, that, therefore, the problem posed by nature was posed to be solved, and that its difficulty is probably proportionate to our human abilities, be it today or tomorrow. This knowledge might not provide him with new investigation resources, but it will help him maintain the healthy optimism without which a sustained effort cannot long endure» (quoted in O. Godart & M. Heller, Les relations entre la science et la foi chez Georges Lemaitre, Pontificiae Academiae Scentiarum Commentarium, vol. III, n. 21, p.21).

The Editorial Staff

«Listening to the lovely bells of Winchester, one of our great mediaeval cathedrals». This was the tweet from the most famous fundamentalist atheist in the world, Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion. He fought for years to annihilate the “virus of religion”, but today, somewhat older, he sits on a bench while admiring the Winchester Cathedral. Who would have said it?

Dawkins, after ascertaining to «have failed» – as he had already admitted in 2008 – is maturing a reconsideration of his position. The topics concerning the inexistence of the Creator have left room for the more political ones (anti-Trump, anti-Brexit etc.), and always more frequently he is showing worried about the advance of Islam across Europe, so as to rediscover himself by reaction «culturally Christian», as he defined himself in 2013.

In the recent tweet we are commenting, indeed, he added: «[Bells are] so much nicer than the aggressive-sounding “Allahu Akhbar.” Or is that just my cultural upbringing?». After having been covered with criticisms and insults (those he never received when he acted as a hater of Christians), he clarified: «Church bells are beautiful. The muezzin’s call to prayer can also bhe very beautiful if recited in a good voice. But also, “Allahu Akhbar” is the last thing you want to hear before the suicide bomb goes off». And again other accusations of Islamophobia. As wrote Giulio Meotti: «The atheist is always fine when he attacks Joseph Ratzinger, Saint Augustine, and the dusty Judeo-Christian tools. But if he touches Islam, it is a whole other story».

One month ago, we were commenting precisely this revaluation of Christianity on the part the atheist evolutionist (or, better, agnostic, as he wanted to define himself), by observing how Dawkins is not curiously choosing and proposing a hard, rationalistic, and positivistic atheism as “the bastion” of society against Islamism, as he would have done until few years ago. Not at all. He opted to rehabilitate Christianity, which was absolutely not to be taken for granted.

In this way, the last thing was to appreciate the «most beautiful» bells of the Christian churches, by having himself photographed just a few meters from Winchester Cathedral. Who knows whether in a few months he will decide to cross its threshold and take a look at the inside…

The Editorial Staff

Stimulating is the new lay confession on the part of writer Teju Cole, guest at the Festival la Milenesiana. It is the witness of a Protestant Christian who let himself fall into sceptical agnosticism. He fell into doubt like many. But how not to lose faith? How can it mature so as to become certainty?

Let us look at the experience of the writer: all began when he wondered whether «the Bible really was the only truth of existence». He realised he could answer only by assuming as true what the Bible itself said. Already here there is the symptom of a weakness, of a mistake: a lonely man, with his Bible. But in Christianity, the Truth is not the Bible, but a Person: “I am the way, the truth, and the life”. And the truth cannot be possessed, but only be met. Chritianity (in particular, Catholicism) is not a religion of the Book, and, without the personal experience of meeting Christ, faith cannot hold only on the basis of written pages, albeit divinely inspired. It is he, Teju Cole, who should have been able to give reason for what the Truth of existence is, without putting the blame on the Holy Scriptures.

Where did Jesus Christ has been remaining present in history?

Thus, the “confession” goes on: «a morning, at 27 years old, I woke up and discovered to have lost faith». Inevitable destiny when there is not that certainty of faith which matures not in solitary theological thoughts, but by living together where Jesus Christ has been remaining present in history: the Christian companionship of those whom he called, that is the Church (one’s parish, the priest, and the faces of the Christian community where the life of each person is at stake). The Christian faith, by its nature, is born and matures in a human relationship with someone else who is the witness of the Other: Christ witnessing the Father to the Apostles and the Apostles, together with their successors, witnessing Christ. Benedict XVI has gifted us with insuperable words: «Faith is not the product of reflection, nor is it the attempt to penetrate into the deep of my being. Both things can be present, but they remain insufficient without the listening through which God calls me, from a story He Himself created. In order for me to believe, I need witnesses who have met God and make Him accessible. The Church did not create herself; she was created by God and is continuously formed by Him».

Belong to Christian people: the answer to any doubt.

The answer to doubt, therefore, is to belong actively, consciously, reasonably, and joyfully to the Christian people: this is the antidote to a sentimental and emotional faith, in the grips of doubt and secularisation. The Gospels themselves teach it: they «describe the path of the Apostles: “and his disciples believed in him” is repeated many times; knowledge becomes persuasion, little by little», wrote Spanish theologian José M. García. «Believing turns into persuasion in a successive repetition of recognitions, which need giving some space and time in order for them to take place. Only faithfulness, cohabitation, and familiarity makes certainty enter us always more radically» (J.M. Garcia, Il protagonista della storia, BUR 2008, p. 122). It is, therefore, normal that the African American writer says to be “relieved” after discovering himself far from that intimistic faith: if the “Me” is not involved in the story of the Christian companionship, Christianity is reduced to a series of incomprehensible moral dogmas, based on emotional stimuli. Teju Cole himself admits it: «My Christian faith was emotional without any doubt». Msgr. Luigi Negri wrote instead: «Christianity is not a doctrine, but a historical reality, a group of men who claims to be a place in which the definitive event of Christ continues to be present and to influence history. It continues through the unity of Christians» (L. Negri, False accuse alla Chiesa, Brossura 2016, p. 17).

The new life that the writer narrates is devoid of «sense of certainty; I found the one of doubt», sorrounded by activities and interests that «could give me company and comfrot». «We are not sure. We have lost faith and our mind», he concludes. Not to lose “faith and our mind”, we need live physically where « Jesus entered human history for ever and lives on in it with his beauty and power», explains again Pope Ratzinger. That is to say «that frail body — ever in need of purification but also infinitely full of divine love — which is the Church. It is this that makes the Church contemporaneous with every human being, capable of embracing all people and all epochs because she is guided by the Holy Spirit in order to perpetuate the work of Jesus in history».

The Editorial Staff

The Economist, gender, and Trump. After the decision by the American president to abolish gender and to link sex to what is anatomicaly evident at birth, the British magazine surprisingly maintains it is a mistake to liberalise the self-identification of sex.

Even the Economist says so. Over 1 million copies sold every month, the famous British weekly magazine is the best-known economic and financial magazine in the world and the most active British press agency to have supported the administration of Barack Obama. Since 2004 it has openly and explicitly advocated “egalitarian marriage”, the legalization of prostitution and drugs, and even the theory of voluntary human extinction to save the planet. The ideological context of origin is therefore clear.

“Sex is determined only on a clear and objective biological basis”

This has increased the amazement for an editorial of the Economist deemed to be in favour of Donald Trump and even to support him against gender self-identification for trans people. The current American president would indeed be preparing a bill to establish in a legal way that the sex of a person is determined only “on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable”, that is the sex attributed and decided by nature at the time of birth, thereby determining a still bigger distance from his disastrous predecessor, Obama. An act of truth and consistency with scientific evidence, abolishing the ridiculous expression “Gender X” and preventing unreal and impossible sexual transitions – as has already been forbidden in prestigious Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine – through the mutilation of genital organs that modify only the outward appearance of people and deceive them into believing they can really change their sex.

The 46-year-old mechanic feels he is a 6-year-old girl: is he really?

A global stigma was expected, which has not been, instead, so strong (yet). In Italy, it was busy and know-all Chiara Lalli to reply on Wired, by writing that «there are many other aspects which contribute to our identity», beside sex. She did not specify which ones, though, so that she comes to the absurd conclusion that Paul Wolschtt, a British 46-year-old mechanic, is in fact a 6-year-old girl only because he feels he is and so perceives his identity, independently of his genes. However, as rightly and surprisingly explained by lgbt philosopher Michela Marzano, «the body is not only something “you have”, but also and above-all something “you are”, before the certainty that it is life that imposes a body on each of us and that we cannot get rid of it without getting rid of our existence in the meantime».

The Economist: “People cannot self-identify their sex”

And even the Economist has decided to take a stance in an editorial. Obviously, it has had to state in advance that it is «a proud champion of gay rights» and that it «first ran an editorial in favour of same-sex marriage in 1996». After the due and banal preamble, we read though:

To protect itself from the readers, the famous British weekly magazine wrote that the choice of the US administration would be “wrong”, but immediately afterwards it supported the concept that led President Trump to act:

A harsh editorial, then. It does not only admit the groundlessness of the lgbt arguments and criticise who seconds confused children towards their identity, but it also affirms the existence of the gender theory, so widely denied and ridiculed by gay militants. There is eventually the recognition of a homo-fascist social climate towards who is not aligned with the “new orthodoxy”, which involves researchers, too.

An inmate self-identifies as a woman and rapes 4 women

The stance taken by the Economist may be surprising, but we suspect this is a due act after what happened in New Hall women’s prison, in the North of England, about which we have already talked. After having suppressed the protests and warnings about the transfer of transsexual males to women’s prisons, four women were raped by a man who had self-identified as a woman and was thus entitled to serve his sentence in that prison. Already in that case many criticisms arrived, especially from The Spectator, a magazine close to the British conservative party. Today, more surprisingly, a weekly magazine of a completely different line of thought has joined as well.

The Editorial Staff

Even David Silverman, President of American Atheists – the main secularist organisation in the USA –, has been removed from his charge after believable complaints of sexual assault. Identical specific charges have been recently made against the last celebrity of the atheist world, physicist Lawrence Krauss. Some years ago, instead, this happened to the founder of the main atheist magazine, Michael Shermer.

The American Catholic Church (and Chilean, in particular) is coping with the terrible scandal of paedophilia, for which we all feel enormously humiliated and angry. But, in its little, even the atheist community is hit by a spread phenomenon related, also in this case, to sexual abuse, albeit towards women. Beside misogyny and discrimination of women. Crimes and scandals about which few talk and which – why not – it should be made known that is being defined by lay feminists even as an epidemic, many of them having been victim of the abuses and of the veil of secrecy.

Silverman had been the great priest of American atheists since 2010, very good orator, author of the book Fighting God: An Atheist Manifesto for a Religious World, and promoter of many failed campaigns, like the quite ridiculous initiative to ask for the legalisation of the word “atheist” in the licence plates.

Nowadays there are three complaints against him (only to concern physical abuses): the physical and sexual assault on a woman during a conference of atheists in Memphis (after having assumed drugs); the coercion of a university student into an unwanted sexual meeting while she was looking for a job at the association of which Silverman was president; and the appointment of a woman with whom he had sexual relationships to a high position (he is, by the way, married). The accusations have been considered believable, specific, and confirmed by witnesses.

Commenting this important phenomenon of discrimination that is emerging from the US atheist community, Alex Nichols wrote:

The Editorial Staff

The book Nature’s Prophet (University Alabama Press 2018), dedicated to Alfred Russel Wallace, was published some days ago. The author, Michael A. Flannery, science historian at the University of Alabama di Birmingham has held that Wallace’s formulation of biological evolution was totally incompatible with Darwin’s. Indeed, his theory developed in a theological context. A theistic evolution, we may say.

Flannery, member of the controversial movement Intelligent design, suggested that this very theological opening was fatal for him from the viewpoint of fame, which was gained almost exclusively by his competitor Charles Darwin, co-discoverer of natural selection. This cannot be excluded, although it must be remembered that many of the first Darwinists were theists and Christians, existentially much closer to Wallace than to agnostic Darwin. Let us think of Asa Gray, Lyell, Herschel, Henslow, Mivart, De Filippi, Chambers, Rosa, De Nouy, Sinnott, and Marcozzi.

Entomologist George Beccaloni, who in 2013 curated an exhibition on Wallace at the Natural History Museum, explained: «Wallace was the one who had the paper ready for publication, and if he’d sent it directly to a journal, it would have been published and natural selection would have been Wallace’s discovery». Instead, the naturalist chose to send his work to his colleague Darwin, without being aware that even the latter was parallelly working on the same intuition. Not very honest operations followed towards Wallace on the part of Darwin and two colleagues of his’, Sir Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker, so much so that Beccaloni defines these actions as «pretty morally reprehensible».

In this case, history marginalised him more compared to Darwin, and we agree with physicist Gerald L. Schroeder, who confided to UCCR that it would be right to celebrate also a  Wallace Day, maybe by reminding that he never wanted to embrace reductionism or scientism and always held the superiority of spirit over matter. He believed in a transcendent God and in nature’s finalism, by saying:

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