The topic of paedophilia inside the Catholic Church has once again become the main focus on attention, and it is important that Pope Francis has talked about “crimes” in the letter diffused yesterday, because the sexual abuse by these corrupt men is not only a sin, but a tragic betrayal of their vocation. Few days ago the report realised by the Grandy jury of Pennsylvania, which describes the abuse occurred from 1947 until today in six dioceses of the American State.

The news went around the world, but there are two details to add, which do not diminish at all the seriousness of these actions, but they permit to contextualise things better. Few have talked about it, not even the “Catho-traditionalist” media, which are exploiting this issue to spread hatred towards today’s Pontiff and his collaborators. Until yesterday, they were talking about a secularist plot; today they are «ready to ask for the resignations even only on the basis of “it is not possible that he did not know”, when some clergymen considered close to the Pontiff in charge end up in the crosshairs (only in theirs)» – wrote Andrea Tornielli. A battle not in favour of the victims but «pursued by self-styled Catholic websites that daily and violently attack Pope Francis, the Bishops (those they do not like), and their brothers in faith. [They are] ruthlessly accusatory towards someone but silently uphold other cardinals’ innocence still today in charge, maybe accused of more serious facts, but they do not ask for their resignation only because they are considered “conservative”».

1) ABUSES DATING BACK TO MORE THAN 20 YEARS AGO
If we read the entire report, we learn that we are dealing with sexual violences occurred more than twenty years ago, whilst there has been none since the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops committed to fight seriously this phenomenon. «The bulk of the discussion in this report» – writes the report: «concerns events that occurred before the early 2000’s […]. At the same time, we recognize that much has changed over the last fifteen years».

Even the case of ex Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Archbishop Emeritus of Washington, dates back to abuses on adult seminarists many years ago. Of course, the authors add, there might also be more recent victims, but there are not enough certified data, and «we think it is too early to close the book on the Catholic Church sex scandal». Why, if the investigation concerns remote facts in the past, is it made to emerge today? There is who answers suggesting we should consider the political aspirations of the Attorney General of Pennsylvania Josh Shapiro, but it does not seem opportune to us to back conspiracy theories. Another remark: almost nobody has commented the fact that the main enemy to Pope Francis in the US, the Catholic conservative editorialist of  New York Times, Ross Douthat – idol of the little anti-Papist galaxy – candidly admitted having convered Card. McCarrick’s abuses. He had become aware of them in the first 2000s: «I was in the same position as the “everyone” who knew. And in that position you become accustomed to the idea that the story will never come out». And he did nothing to make it come out, despite collaborating with the most prestigious investigative newspapers.

2) WE ARE NOT DEALING WITH PAEDOPHILIA, BUT WITH HOMOSEXUAL PEDERASTY
The second detail is the one highlighted by Paul Sullins, Professor of Sociology at the Catholic University of America: «The current scandal includes mostly revelations about male on male sexual abuse of seminarians, where the victims are adults. These kinds of cases were not even considered in the responses to the 2002 scandal, which was about the criminal abuse of minors. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops commissioned two reports, one in 2004 and in 2011, by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice to study the reported cases of clerical sex abuse from 1950 through 2002 and 2010 respectively. Both reports found that over 80% of the victims were neither girls, nor pre-pubescent children (true pedophilia), but pre-teen and teenage boys». Sullins talks about “homosexual subculture”, confirmed by 44% of US priests in 2002.

Homosexuality is the big threat and challenge for seminaries, as show the worries and indication of Pope Francis: «If in doubt, better not let them enter». Even Card. Raymond Leo Burke talked about it: «There was a studied attempt to either overlook or to deny this. Now it seems clear in light of these recent terrible scandals that indeed there is a homosexual culture, not only among the clergy but even within the hierarchy». Robert Morlino, Bishop of Madison (Wisconsin), agreed on this: «We are talking about deviant sexual — almost exclusively homosexual — acts by clerics. Until recently the problems of the Church have been painted purely as problems of pedophilia — this despite clear evidence to the contrary. It is time to admit that there is a homosexual subculture within the hierarchy of the Catholic Church that is wreaking great devastation in the vineyard of the Lord. The Church’s teaching is clear that the homosexual inclination is not in itself sinful, but it is intrinsically disordered in a way that renders any man stably afflicted by it unfit to be a priest».

According to the American report, indeed, almost three quarters of the accused priests were homosexual, whilst only one quarter were heterosexuals. The majority of the victims, instead, were not children but young seminarists. It is therefore technically wrong to talk about “paedophilia”; at the most, we are dealing with “pederasty” (although this does not reduce the faults). In spite of this, Attorney Shapiro filled the stage with female victims to hold the TV press conference. Investigative journalist George Neumayr, present at the press conference which spread the news around the world, wrote: «The vibe yesterday at the Harrisburg press conference was very odd. Attorney General Josh Shapiro, an LGBT-backed Democrat, stacked the victims’ dais with female, not male, victims, even though most of the victims are male. I don’t think the composition of Shapiro’s dais was an accident. He does not want the public to see this scandal for what it largely is: a product of a very sick Gay Mafia in the Church that overlooks the homosexual pederasty of the Cardinal McCarricks». Shapiro’s playing down the prevalence of homosexual abuse might be a political calculation, probably aiming to avoid offending his innumerable Democratic gay sponsors.

The Editorial Staff

Few months ago, the Italian translation of the work Luther’s Jews by German historian Thomas Kaufmann was published by the publishing house Claudiana (219 pagine, € 19,50), with a foreward by Daniele Garrone. The text makes for a remarkable shortcoming of the Italian books panorama, by describing the relationship between the father of the Reformation, religion, and the Jewish people in an exhaustive and complete way.

The thesis emerging from the study and exhaustively and convincingly argued may be summed up in an extremely simple and concise way: in the first writings Luther appears benevolent towards Jews, with the hope of their conversion; in the last writings, instead, Luther appears extremely aggressive and polemic, even with peaks of vulgarity and explicit invitations to violence, until going so far as to suggest governors persecute and expel the Jews.

The first Luther emerges with extreme clarity from the text Jesus Christ was a born a Jew (1523), written few years after the beginning of the Reformation (conventionally dated 1517). In the text Luther shows admiration and almost a sort of envy towards the Jewish people, the first interlocutor and recipient of the alliance with God, and towards the Hebrew language which contains and codifies this alliance. He made himself the spokesman for an unconditional religious tolerance towards the Jews, attitude which makes him positively stand out in his Century and in the preceeding ones. Luther’s hope is that his Reformation can eventually attract many Jews and push them to welcome the message and the figure of Jesus. Amongst the other things, he rejects the accusation (a current myth in the Middle Ages) according to which the Jews made ritual sacrifices of Christian children.

These considerations were variously recalled by the later Protestants and were stressed in particular by the Pietist movement and, in the contemporary age, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Protestant martyr against Nazism (La chiesa di fronte alla questione ebraica, 1933).

However, it is the thought of the second Luther – inequivocally and profoundly antisemitic, other than alien any evangelical and philanthropic perspective – that makes him stand out in a negative sense in the context of that day and that left an ill-fated aftermath in the following centuries until the Nazi shoah.

The writing The Jews and their lies (1543) is paradigmatic, just like his contemporary sermons and “table talks” (that is discussions and explanations which informally took place with his disciples after the meals), where the antisemitic hints appear with higher frequency and vehemence.

Some examples of the many possible hints (inverted commas are necessary). Commenting the evangelical episode of Malchus (name deriving from “king” in Hebrew), whose ear is cut off by Peter in an attempt to defend Jesus from the arrest, Luther sees in it an allegory of the Jewish people, who have been denied the earthly kingdom for their incapacity of listening to the word of salvation: “The kingdom was cut off the ear”. Again, commenting the (in his opinion) little consideration the Jews had of Jesus and Mary, which led them to the rejection of the Christian faith, Luther speaks about “lies”, “so impious and malicious lies”, which would show how they have been affected by “folly, blindness, and mental confusion”. And unlike the precedent writings, he restates the accusation according to which the Jews would have been guilty of the murders of Christian children.

In conclusion, even though “they must not be killed”, the antisemitic Luther invites governors to persecute and drive away the Jews. “Burn down their synagogues”, “force them to work, deal harshily with them, as Moses did in the wilderness, slaying three thousand lest the people should perish”. Jews had to be deprived of “all their books, all their prayer books, the Talmudic writings, and even the whole Bible”, without leaving “even one page” to them. Their houses had to be demolished, and they could be might be lodged “under a roof or in a barn”. Jewish religious practices had to be fobidden “under penalty of death”. They would not have been allowed anymore to exercise activities and functions as “lords, officials, or tradesmen”. They had to be deprived of “all cash and treasure of silver and gold”, that is what “they have stolen and robbed from us [through usuries]”. “Therefore, in any case, away with them!”, away in the territories of “the Turks and other pagans”, where, in his opinion, “these venomous serpents and little devils”, “children of the devil”, would not be able to harm the Christian people.

These very heavy and unfounded insults let us understand why a big part of historiography has seen a fil rouge between the second Luther’s antisemitism and the Nazi regime’s. As a paradigmatic example, the pamphlet by English scholar Wiener, titled “Martin Luther: Hitler’s Spiritual Ancestor” (1945), is mentioned, together with the defence of Nazi Julius Streicher during the Nuremberg trial, according to which Luther – not he – should have been made to sit in the dock.

The antisemitic Luther has thus been understandably overexposed by contemporary historiography with dozens of monographs and hundreds of articles, and the undeniable merit of Kaufmann’s book is the adequate contextualisation of the statements by the father of the Reformation. At the personal level, the death of Luther’s daughter threw him into a period of depression and pessimism which lasted until his death in 1546, period in which we find the heaviest antisemitic invectives. Moreover, Kaufmann specifies that Luther “criticised and demonised the Jews just as he did also to Papist Catholics and Turks”.

From the diachronic viewpoint, the scholar also highlights how anti-Judaism had been present for centuries at the popular and theological level and had bloody recrudescences during the fourteenth-century Great Plague, when throughout all Europe the Jews were superstitiously and falsely accused of being plague-spreaders.

Roberto Reggi

The Meeting for Friendship amongst Peoples, organised by Communion and Liberation, is about to start. Whatever one thinks, everybody should take interesti in the writings by Father Luigi Giussani. His reasonable way to explain faith does not leave indifferent, and his’ is a method of evangelisation that will never be anachronistic. It is so that he converted thousands of people, including Muslims, Orthodox Christians, Protestant theologians, agnostics, scientists, philosophers. But also several Marxists: one example is Aldo Brandirali.

Born in 1941, Brandirali was one of the points of reference for the 1968 Milanese activists, one of the exponents of the Italian Communist Party in 1945, and leader of the Maoist Union of Italian Communists (Marxists-Leninists), founder of the weekly magazine Servire il popolo [Serving the people] and the review FalceMartello [Hammer and Sickle]. At least until 1975, when, after he met Father Giussani and his 15-thousand-member party was disbanded, his path of personal conversion started.

«I had always been an influential interpreter» of the 1968 revolution, as Brandirali has recently written Brandirali. «If today I still had the opinions I had at that time, now I could only recount delusions and failures, and this would not be interesting. In fifty years I have walked, changing, recognising failures, and trying to explain my reasons to myself». It was an epoch full of «ideologies that invoked the primacy of theory over reality»; however, Brandirali saves the initial revolution of those young people, one of whose leaders was he and who were animated by «more human needs than enrichment and the myths of wealth and consumerism. Questions on the meaning of one’s own life arose as always happens in all generations. Questions on the sense [of life] that did not find an answer in the dominant morality, with a State conceived as a place of a consolidated ethics and a Church become against the current, with its religious ethics critical of the secularist one». The ethical State and a moralist Church. For this reason, «going against the current, breaking with the customs and traditions of that day, experiencing different forms of life: this becomes the youth’s subjectivity of those years».

Long hair, torn clothes, free drugs and sex, family conflicts, cultural contestation of teachers, anticlericalism, questioning authority in general. This also because «the sons did not receive adequate answers from the adults to their questions of meaning. There was not a meeting with a correspondence to one’s own desire of meaning» – writes the Italian ex Communist. But Bradirali also went out of the Italian Communist Party as «the Communist ideals remained outside the real life, because the goal of the political fight was only to be part of the ruling class of the Country», thereby giving birth to the Gruppo Falcemartello [Hammer and Sickle group]. And, nevertheless, there was again a failure by reason of the «decline of the initial questions, and with the rise of an abstract problem of political concreteness, which became an opening to the ideas of violent actions to impose our ideas. I refused to be involved in this logic, and I provoked the dissolution of the movement. It could be understood that we had not found the answers to our desire. A dissolution that concerned 15 thousand members and that caused much resentment towards me».

On October 1982, as we were saying, he met Father Giussani, founder of the ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation, which is trying to recuperate amongst the young people the credibility of Christianity as an answer to the expectations of meaning inherent in the human heart. It states the necessity to restart from the concrete encounter with Christ, Who can be met in the faces of the Catholic community, really to change life and, as a consequence, the whole world. «I was very surprised by his recognition of what I was, not of what I said» – writes Brandirali. «This new attraction grew inside me, and on May 1985 in a public meeting with Father Giussani I told him: “But where were you? I have always looked for you”; I meant that I had finally found in him the point of reference to understand my questions. Giussani himself answered that even he had looked for me, that is to say he knew about my youth unrest, of the questions characterising it, and he wanted to reach out to us beyond ideologies».

Aldo Brandirali so converted to Catholicism, thereby completely abandoning the Marxist-Maoist ideology. Today he saves its ideal but condemns its developments: «Having studied Marx in my youth and having then verified the theory that took the name of Marxism» –  he reflected: «after a long path that brought about a deep change of my ideas, I have become Catholic, and I have understood that there cannot be a science of the life of the peoples and persons». This because: «the desire of justice and equality among people represents a noble ideal, and going against the worldly mentality of enrichment as the goal of life is a step towards freedom, but all these human reasons need the true historical subject of history, which is not the self-emancipation of men, but the unity of men, having its root in Christ and in the capacity of following the truth by faith. Christ is the subject of history, a presence that continuously revolutionises the life of men, by recognising them and supporting them in their desire».

Father Luigi Giussani has been recently remembered by the Archbishop of Bologna, Matteo Zuppi, who recalled his «so personal, directive, and affectionate attitude, in love with God and therefore penetrating, sensitive, firm and flexible, attentive to man, which made others feel the longing for heaven and opened the most authentic questions of the heart, of the person. Giussani saw how the youth starved, in fact, for true words; they were desirous of water to quench their heart’s thirst; they were naked because, with many words deprived of a true content, they were prisoners of common places». And, one of these young people, was precisely ex Marxist Brandirali.

The Editorial Staff

There are not few theorists of a secular bioethics, which denies a moral law inherent in man. The loss of absolutes is the first consequence, and the second is relativism, one of whose variant is called utilitarianism. The theorist thereof has been, for years, Peter Singer, Professor at the Princeton University, vegan, and anti-specist, having recently come back again to raise a debate.

In Italy, the most successful experiment of secular bioethics is that of the Consulta di Bioetica [Commission of Bioethics], directed by Maurizio Mori. In 2012, it appeared on all the front pages of the newspapers, as two members of the board, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, overly justified infanticide. The international indignation notwithstanding, Mori himself supported the thesis of his researchers.

But the real leader of international secular bioethics is, as already said, Peter Singer. Even he is the author of similar theses: «Neither the newborn nor a fish are persons; killing these being is not morally as negative as killing a person». «Even though the baby will be able to have a life without excessive suffering, like in the case of the Down Syndrome, but the parents think that it is an excessive burden for them and want to have another one, this may be a reason to kill him».  (Ripensare alla vita, Il Saggiatore 1996, p. 20). The association isabled Peoples’ International defined him a «frightening Mengele». In an editorial on the New York Times, some time ago he commented the case of Anna Stubblefield, convicted for having sexually assaulted a student of hers affected by a serious cerebral palsy. The woman acted as a tutor towards him and became persuaded with the birth of romantic feelings with the disabled, thereby going so far as have sexual relations with him and being denounced by the family. Princeton’s bioethicist defended the woman:

«If we assume that he is profoundly cognitively impaired, we should concede that he cannot understand the normal significance of sexual relations between persons or the meaning and significance of sexual violation. These are, after all, difficult to articulate even for persons of normal cognitive capacity. In that case, he is incapable of giving or withholding informed consent to sexual relations; indeed, he may lack the concept of consent altogether. This does not exclude the possibility that he was wronged by Stubblefield, but it makes it less clear what the nature of the wrong might be. It seems reasonable to assume that the experience was pleasurable to him […]. On the assumption that he is profoundly cognitively impaired, therefore, it seems that if Stubblefield wronged or harmed him, it must have been in a way that he is incapable of understanding and that affected his experience only pleasurably».

The sociologist of Harvard University, Nathan J. Robinson, claims that Singer has elaborated «a philosophical defense of raping disabled people». Similar accusations have come from many, but things are not really so. The philosopher only maintained that Stubblefield should not have been convicted if the disabled was not able to give his consent to the sexual act; he did not legitimise the rape of the disabled.

The whole issue stems from the guiding moral principle of most secular Peter Singer, that is utilitarianism: an action is morally good only if produces happiness, satisfaction, or pleasure (and viceversa). This vision excludes the existence of Good and Evil as moral absolutes, and bases the evaluation merely on the consequences: the problem is that serious torts (or very good merits) even if no suffering is caused. Betraying one’s partner, behind his/her back, is an immoral act anyway; stealing is a serious tort, even though nobody is aware of it. If the good is the highest happiness of the greatest number of people – according to the classical formula of utilitarianism – and if the greatest number of people is cannibal, cannibalism automatically becomes a good.

In the case in question, Singer is supposing that the disabled is not even capable of conceiving the notion of consent or of violation of himself, and for this reason one cannot say that the woman violated him. The only reasons to judge the wrongness of his action – the utilitarian philosopher maintains – are related to suffering: but there is no evidence that the disabled suffered. On the contrary, he concluded: it is very probable that he felt pleasure.

If there is no absolute (transcendent) moral orientation, then there is nothing that pulls us out of ourselves; thus, pleasure is the only criterion yardstick of morality. The philosopher simply applied to the seriously disabled what he had been maintaining for years with respect to animals: having sexual relations with beasts is morally acceptable because we are animals ourselves and, secondly, we feel pleasure whilst they cannot be proved to feel unease or pain. And the same he claimed about necrophilia: there is no harm, but there is pleasure; therefore, there is «no moral problem».

The Editorial Staff

«The “Our Father” is not the one of Pope Benedict XVI. God does not lead us into temptation!! Benedict XVI was fooled by the Devil». We read this on November 2007 on traditionalist websites, when Jorge Mario Bergoglio was a “simple” Argentinian Archbishop.

But, at that time, these people were an isolated voice, lacking – contrary to nowadays – the mediatic support of the religious right wind (or, better, “divine” right wing, as Camillo Langone calls it). The latter is accusing Francis of being willing to change the Pater Noster, but they ignore that the form “do not abandon us in temptation” was introduced in 2008.

It is the task of theologians – not ours – to evaluate the matter of the opportuneness or not of a better translation of the prayer taught by Jesus in the Gospels. Simply, we want to show how self-proclaimed Ratzingerians whose existential mission is the war against the Pontiff in charge – on any topic – find themselves fight even against Benedict XVI. «The Our Father will be modified and edulcorated» – has recently denounced, for example, journalist Marco Tosatti, leader of the “anti-Bergoglian resistance”. «With this effrontery, one dares to tamper with a two-thousand-year-old text? In Germany, even atheists objected to the new translation, supported by Bergoglio». But not by the Pope Emeritus, under whom it was born and approved of.

From these criticisms – shared also by many others and not peculiar only to our friend Tosatti – a serious journalistic lack of preparation and a poor familiarity with the Gospels emerge. Indeed, it is since the translation by the Italian Episcopal Conference published in 2008 by the Vatican Publishing House, with the placet of Benedict XVI, that the so much discussed modification of Scripture has been authorised: «The choice of the Permanent Council was to intervene only if it had really been absolutely necessary for the correctness of the translation» s – explained Msgr. Giuseppe Betori, the then secretary of the Italian Episcopal Conference. «In the case of the “Our Father”, the idea was consolidated that it was now urgent to correct the “do not lead us”, currently intended in Italian as “do not constrain us”. The Latin inducere (or the Greek eisferein) does not, in fact, mean “constraining”, but “guiding towards”, “guiding in”, “introducing into” and does not have that connotation of obligatoriness and constraint that the verb “indurre” [lead] has taken on in Italian, so as to project it [this connotation] inside today’s formulation of the “Our Father” and to give God a responsibility – in “leading” us into temptation – which is not theologically founded. That is why we have then chosen the translation “do not abandon us in”, which has a double meaning: “do not allow us to enter temptation”, but also “do not leave us alone when we are tempted”».

We were on May 2008. Ten years later, today’s Pontiff introduces the same modification into the liturgy as well. Few days ago, Francis recalled indeed the concept: «In the prayer of the “Our Father” (cf. Mt 6:13) there is a request: “Do not lead us into temptation”. This Italian translation has been recently adjusted to the precise translation of the original text, because it could sound equivocal. Can God “lead” us into temptation? Can He deceive His children? Of course, not. And, for this reason, the real translation is: “Do not lead us into temptation”».

Heaven forbid! The self-styled Catholic “compasses”, silent when the modification occurred at the time of Ratzinger, found the new pretext to condemn again the Pope as a heretic: Bergoglio dares to change the word of Jesus. A surprise, instead, on the Secolo d’Italia: «The Pope and the Our Father: but the corrections had already been made by the Italian Episcopal Conference at the time of Ratzinger».

The Editorial staff

by Claudio Risé*
*Jungian psychotherapist

from La Verità, 08/05/18

On religiousness today as well as on who has a say or not on religious symbols and rituals, there is great confusion in Italy, also owing to misinformation. The usual stereotype, repeated more times by the big media, is that religion and its symbols do not interest almost anyone anymore. We are explained, until we get bored, that the developed world deals with other things: money, fun, status… in sum, the things that matter. The rest is bigotry about to disappear.

That is the thesis of “secularisation”. The world has by now learnt to to without God and goes on, more or less serenely, on its own. This hypothesis has been by now proposed for 230 years, when the French Revolution had the holy statues hacked down to substitute them with that of the goddess Reason, and is now refuted, as we shall see, by internationally known and accepted data. So much so that the official philosopher of postmodernity, Jürgen Habermas, asked to talk about post-secularisation today […].

The human being needs something else, beside money and more or less shiny consumes. In particular, he needs to love and to be loved by Someone else who gives him something back from a higher and eternal dimension and whom all the world’s cultures call God, in different forms. Tirelessly looking for God and his strength is the providential aspect of the human psyche which has always been called in the West “soul” (without listening to which even the body does not feel very well). And man is looking for the soul Oprheus played with his flute throughout woods of Greece, not yet administered by the troika, but being already a testimony to the birth of poetry, of culture, and of beauty of this part of the world. Yes: it is in those areas that there are also our Biblical, Greek, and Christian roots, about which Benedict XVI wisely talked to us. Rediscovering them is good for us, although in the modest Charter of the European Union they completely go unmentioned (but it does not matter).

The return of God which put the word end to the secularisation did not immediately occur. It was already for a religious need that in the middle of the Sixties (well before 1968), thousands of young Western people left their busy parents’ homes for a higher research (without too much fear of the deep) through meditation, the research of oneself and that of the sacred. It was the epoch of the Second Vatican Council, and the interest of the Christian churches concerned the «horizontal truths», as theologian Jean Guitton called them: peace, rights, freedom, and science. Many of those young people intuited, though, that from none of those practical categories the real change of course would have ensued, for which they felt the need: the vertical axis of the Cross, the one directed upwards, was missing. They looked for it (usually without finding it) in the monasteries amongst the Himalayan peaks, in meditations, even in sometimes multi-coloured gurus; at least, they tried. As already recognised by historian Augusto del Noce, even the youth revolt was born later «by the recognition that opulent society leads to alienation to its highest degree» (L’epoca della secolarizzazione, edizioni Aragno) and by the attempt to override it.

The unsatisfied need was after some years reproposed with flaunted superficiality by the more versatile and its way deep publicity of the various churches. The trend setters, much more informed with their surveys than the Enlightenment theory of secularisation (taken seriously by some Christian churches, too), perfectly knew indeed that for a great many young people Jesus was more interesting than any other «brand» and that, after all, they would have really wanted to follow him. Thus, in the spring og 1973, they launched the Jesus jeans with the writing on the back: «Who loves me follow me». L’Osservatore Romano wrote an indignant commentary. Even Pier Paolo Pasolini seemed to fall into that with a «corsair writing» on the Corriere della Sera. In which, besides, he acutely announced that from that manifesto capitalism «provided men with a total and unique vision of life», from the body to consume and to God, and would not have known what to do with the Church anymore. Just as it more or less occurred. However, since, beyond the prophetic tones, PPP really was a little prophetic (like true poets), he also recognised that maybe this story talked to us about the future. Perhaps calling the trousers Jesus and printing «Who loves me follow me» on them, capitalism understood also that following Christ would have passed through that, through the satiety of consumerism, rather than through the speeches on rights and on science made by the Council. And PPP himself saw a punishment in this, the «nemesis of the Church as a result of her pact with the Devil»: materialist consumerism.

The fact remains that people went back to following God, and not only in the Christian world. In a few years, in Iran the Westernised regime of the Persian Shah was overturned by Ayatollah Khomeini, who substituted it with a theocratic State, still in power. In the USA, also amongst the young Christian libertarians, there was a spread of movements like the Promise keepers, who got married only after having made a public and solemn promise to keep the marital bond by renouncing the possibility of divorce and going so far as to obtain that in many Federal States this promise was officially registered. In sum, against the «we want all» they asked for bonds, to rebuild society. A process that still continues today in the world and also in all the West by continuously renewing the search for new ways of affirmation. Furthermore, the non-Western countries had demonstrated that secularisation was not indispensable for economic development and for modernisation, which occur at a very fast pace even in prevalently religious societies like India, or Singapore, where indeed religiousness was intensified with development. Believing in God did not mean at all remaining poor and hungry.

It was, nevertheless, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and of the Soviet Union that secularisation entered a crisis period in the whole world. The «return of God» was by now evident and recognised by religious sociology, by surveys conducted everywhere to verify it, and by political science. The phenomenon did please the majority of old politicians, accustomed since the beginning of the last Century to the hypothesis of a gradual and unrestrainable development of atheism. The return of God must not surprise us, though: the psychological observation shows in a precisely clear way (in Carl Gustav Jung, Edmund Husserl, Karl Jaspers, and many others), that man has a strong call to transcendence, which is expressed in his ideals, for example. When he does not listen to it (or is prevented from doing so), he suffers and becomes ill. Moreover, he needs a more significant and interesting belonging than the supermarket card, which helps him recognise his identity and the sense of his existence. Amongst these identity aspects, the religious is one of the strongest one and drags many others with itself. It is no chance that, for example, at the end of the Twentieth Century, when the previous nations incorporated into the ex Communist Yugoslavia were reconstituted after the last thrill of secularised globalisation, the main criterion to establish the boundaries was immediately that of religious belonging. As written by Marco Rizzi, on that occasion: «the religion of the majority determined the boundaries of the States» (La secolarizzazione debole, edizioni Il Mulino). Even in Europe, at the end of the last Century, nations and religious identities were already being reborn.

The post-Soviet Russia was the first to start soon to rediscover the religious and transcendent aspects of its own identity, together with its own history, its own boundaries, and its own symbols after 70 years of atheist Communism. In that Country, this enormously strengthened both religious participation and the Orthodox Christian Church and the State. China, with its managers of today, committed to the reproposal of the Taoist thought as well as of the moral and religious vision of Confucius and of its disciples. Not everyone was, though, happy about the end of secularisation. In the West, the most upset ones were, in effect, that had been administering the whole religious question since the epoch of «God’s death»: the State with its traditional parties, and the churches «biased in favour of secularism», as written by philosopher Marcello Pera in an interview on this newspaper (dated the 5th of April 2018). Today, if the majority of the interviewed by Pew research and many others serenely declare to believe in God and a great many assure that the feel strengthened by an intense personal relationship with the sacred, meditation, and prayer, it means that religion has by now come out of that secluded corner in which it was relegated by the agreements of the diplomacies between secularised states and ecclesiastical bureaucracies. This upsets, though, old habits, traditional indolences, and recent comforts. It is easier to make the Church work as an NPO instead of keeping up with a Holy Spirit that, as the Gospel of John says, «you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going», but this is exactly what the faithful look for.

Often priests do not have, however, anymore a direct relationship either either with the langauges in which the Biblical and evangelical word was handed down, or with the ritual and mystical traditions that may make for one of their insecure interpretations. As many believers complain: they behave as social workers. This has, though, nothing to do with Christianity, where since the beginning Jesus admonished Judas, the administrator-traitor, who protested against the waste of the oil poured on His body before the Passion: «The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me» (Mark 14:1-11). Poverty and richness concern human freedom, but it is in the personal relationship with Christ that man’s destiny is at stake. As had intuited Jean Guitton, the «horizontal truths», peace, rights, and science, have weaned the ministers of faith from the effort to relate to the other difficult axis of the cross, the vertical one, with (for example) its looking upwards at the (personal and collective) future and, downwards and towards the deep, at the past and tradition. The extraordinary dynamism of Christianity has always consisted, instead, in reconciling the two directions, the horiziontal and the vertical one, in the middle of which there is man.

The re-awakening of faith as a diffused and popular sentiment has nothing necessarily divisive in itself. As have demonstrated the studies on war, contrary to what is often maintained, only less than 10% of conflicts has been provoked by religious motivations. Anyway, the fact remains that this rediscovered and demanding faith is more difficult to handle than opportunistic habits or superficial devotions. Especially in Christianity the return of God appeals, instead, to that non-conventional «creativity» recalled by Benedict XVI. Of course, universalist ideologies of 1700 and their omnipotent fantasies to substitute God and national traditions with a «goddess Reason» good for everyone have made their time. At the existential level, in lifestyles always more oriented towards the invasiveness of economy and technology, religious beliefs represent for always larger groups the possible alternatives to the depersonalising logic of the market and the dehumanising one of technology; starting from those for artificial reproduction.

At the anthropological level, ancient realities of people, territories, nations, and their cultures re-emerge; and so does their God, who can cohabit with everyone provided he is respected. Ours is the man-God dead on the cross. The only one to have resurrected

 
Mariano Bizzarri*
*director of Systems Biology Group Lab – Sapienza University of Rome
 

It is so paradoxical that the Catholic Church – in her documents and in the speeches of many of her exponents, including many Pontiffs – has always supported the compatibility between the Catholic faith and the theory of evolution, while Protestants fiercely fought evolutionism, albeit some variations depending on their multiple denominations.

In fact, the Protestant ideology – in conflicting ways – declares, on the one hand, the right to an autonomous and free interpretation of Scriptures by each faithful and, on the other, requires a strictly literal interpretation. It is exactly the literal interpretation of the Bible that led the Anglo-Saxon Protestant world into a double cul-de-sac. The literal interpretation, for the believers of one of the many Protestant denominations, means conforming their thought with a story of creation similar to a fairy tale. For non-believers, instead, the adherence to the same interpretation has fatally inspired vulgar ironies and criticism because it is so easy to show how the Biblical story of creation is scientifically untenable.

Biblical Creationism has spread among the Protestant and Evangelical demoniations, especially in the United States of America. The Catholic world, instead, is not involved in this diatribe because it has always been educated by St. Paul’s teaching: “not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:6). The same was said by Dante Alighieri, when reminding the necessity of an interpretation of the Bible structured on four levels of possible meanings (Dante Alighieri, Convivio Libro II, cap. I, p. 2-15). Also Pius XII, in the encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943), asserted the need to put the hermeneutical effort into an appropriate framework, by preliminarily individuating the “literary genre” of the text. Finally, the Bible is not a scientific treatise, but a book of wisdom, and as such it should be treated.

I think that many modern misconceptions stem from this confusion between “spirit” and “letter”. Only since the Age of the Enlightenment have there been frantic attempts to read between the lines of the Holy Scriptures the legitimacy of the scientific knowledge of that time, by looking for an impossible concordance with what was emerging from scientific experimentation. The Galileo case was passed down in a willingly distorted way, with the clear intention of showing the incompatibility between faith and science.

This is particularly true in the context of the debate on evolutionism, where the prevailing position – summarized by Richard Dawkins (in The Blind Watchmaker) – is using the theory of evolution to demolish any anthropocentric vision and to claim the non-existence of God on the basis of the fact that the emergence of life and human comes from blind and random processes. It is ironic that these devout believers in the absolute truths of science end up supporting equally unlikely theories (in terms of empirical evidence) when they are trying to proclaim their absolute adherence to the atheist manifesto. This is the case, for example, with Francis Crick (Life itself, Simon & Schuster 1981), who made up the theory of panspermia (according to which extraterrestrial intelligence would have spread the seeds of life).

The Catholic Church has always considered likely that life on Earth may be attributed to a “process” and that it was not something suddenly emerged from chaos. Already St. Augustine believed that God created the world according to a rudimentary sketch, but He gave it “seminal properties”, principles for which Nature was able to grow and evolve in the ways which we know today. This is what is reiterated by Pope Francis when he stresses that «evolution in nature does not conflict with the notion of Creation, because evolution presupposes the creation of beings who evolve».

St. Augustine also stresses that «to suppose that God formed man from dust with bodily hands is very childish. God neither formed man with bodily hands nor did he breathe upon him with throat and lips» (De Genesis contra Manicheos, cit. in Andrew Dickson White, Project Gutenberg A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, vol. 1, New York, Londra, D. Appleton & Companyc, 1922). St. Thomas and countless other Catholic authors belong to the same line of thought. This topic has been addressed by some pontiffs, including Benedict XVI, according to whom «the doctrine of evolution certainly is an important hypothesis, but however show many problems, which still need a broad discussion». So, Pope Francis’s remark, quoted above, took place in a consistent manner inside a tradition which can be seamlessly traced back to St. Augustine.

It is not clear, therefore, why some Protestants reacted with anger to Pope Francis’s speech, especially pastor Ken Ham. We should like to emphasise the criticalities raised by the Holy Father. In fact, evolution is a theory – part of a overall theory of Biology yet to come – of which we still need to know what the “engine” is. Are the “novelties” really such or are they just variations on some formal, discrete topics? Are they due to genetic modifications or are other factors at play, like biophysical conditioning imposed by the enviroment? Are they imposed by “randomness” or do they take place along a pre-defined path?

The Catholic doctrine rejects that the process of evolutions depends solely on genetical mutations, emerged by accident and selected for the fact that they confer greater chance of adaptation and survival. In short, evolution cannot be led by randomness: this definition is in itself an oxymoron because it cannot tell how only stochasticity may provide order and direction to a process.

This is the criticism that today is addressed not as much to Darwin (who was aware of the limits of his theory) as to his ardent epigones. The evolutionary theory, as it is explained by post-Darwinists, is today seriously criticised by scientists: just think of the contributions by Steven Jay Gould, Stuart Kauffman or Carl Woese, for example. The rediscovery of a Lamarckian inheritance, of a horizontal transfer of genes or the modifications inherited by maternal epigenetics, have contribuited to modify significantly the formulation Darwin’s theory and impose a deep revision of it.

It is really curious that today the most extreme and intransigent standpoints – post-Darwinism supported by Dawkins and creationism supported by many preachers of intolerance, like Ken Ham – both militate in the Anglo-Saxon Protestant area. In both cases they reaffirm the faith in an absolute and deterministic principle, centered on randomness or “a mechanic god”, responsible for every detail. It is the same philosophy. In both cases, Life is deprived of that freedom which, albeit bound by the laws of creation, is the main message of the Sacred Scripture. Both for Dawkins and for Ham, Life and Man are governed by a “whatchmaker”: blind in any case, because whether it be the Randomness or God, he is indifferent to the course of Human History. St. Augustine’s hunch, instead, is more fruitful because it preserves human freedom in an evolutionary process which takes place in accordance with the laws of Nature, which have nothing arbitrary.

My daily job is centred on researching and understanding these laws which manage to combine “freedom” with “necessity”. There is nothing arbitrary and random (Einstein was right when he said that “God doesn’t play dice”) but also nothing preordained: living organisms “explore” an area of possibility, limited to a discrete number of potentialities allowed by the laws of Nature. To that extent, evolution and the same processes recapitulating phylogeny take place and lead to ontogeny. This evidence is for me a daily finding, which emerges from scientific testing. This confirms, in my opinion, the correctness of the theoretical framework which allows to reconcile aspects apparently contradictory in Biology (How to reconcile evolution and the persinstence of some “fundamental” forms? How to reconcile change and homeostasis? How does an organism remain itself while it continuously changes?) and reiterates the wisdom of Scriptures, when they are appropriately interpreted while respecting their hermeneutical complexity. All this especially helps me to rediscover, every day, that invisible hand behind every phenomenon which makes us feel even closer to the presence of God. Also in my laboratory.

The city of Genoa (Italy) had an important role after the dissolution of the Nazi regime. From Genoa, in fact, dozens of Jews and refugees boarded to looke for a new life. However, also many Nazi criminals did; for this reason, we also talk also about ratline.

Like for every historical episode, accusations against the Catholic Church cannot fail to be levelled. In this case, she is accused of facilitating the escape also of Nazi criminals through the so-called ratline, which connected Europe with South America. This controversy has recently arisen again when Italian writer Carlo Martigli rhetorically asked Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone clarifications about all this. In particular, about Cardinal Giuseppe Siri, suspected to have supported Croatian priest Carlo Dragutin Petranovic, former army chaplain of the Ustashe militia, suspected, in his turn, to have distributed fake passports to Nazis.

Ratline: historical inquiry by Pier Luigi Guiducci

Maybe Martigli does not know it, but a historical inquiry has already been written by Pier Luigi Guiducci, Professor of History of the Church at Pontifical Lateran University. In his book Oltre la leggenda nera (Mursia 2015) – which we reviewed on may 2016 – the historian devoted a whole chapter on the Genoese question (pp. 172-196). He used as sources his colleague’s contributions (Bricarelli, Brizzolari, Lai, Macciò, Scavo, Sorani etc.); the documents of Boetto, Repetto, Siri, Teglio e Valobra; the testimony found in the Croatian archives; the autobiography of former Nazi officer Priebke; and much else. Dr. Guiducci described the years after the collapse of the German regime as «the chaos at the Italian borders, because most refugees did not have documents and they could not prove their identity».

Martigli and other accusers do not even remember the great assistance from the Curia of Genoa to the Jews on the run. As early as in 1943, writes Guiducci, «many Ligurian parsons were the first to host the Jews and try to help them». Fr. Raimondo Viale, for example, «thanks to the help from the dioceses of Turin and Genoa, saved many Jews» and for this in 2000 he was awarded the title of “Righteous Among The Nations”. Beside him, there is also Cardinal Pietro Boetto – in his turn rewarded by Israel – who allied with the Delegation for the Assistance of Jewish Emigrants (DELASEM) and hid its president, Lelio Vittorio Valorba, and many Jews in religious houses and produced fake documents, also thanks to Fr. Francesco Repetto (secretary of Boetto), Fr. Bruno Venturelli and dozens of Genoese priests, so as to form a «chain of solidarity». Help also came frome people of Genoa, victims of the 1941 bombing: in 1945 Msgr. Giuseppe Siri reached the partisans in Rocchetta Vara (La Spezia), convincing them to let the food aids pass, as they thought they were destined to the Nazi-fascists. He convinced them, so the foodstuffs arrived in Genoa and were distribuited to the population.

The successor of Boetto was exactly Cardinal Siri, who founded the institution Auxilium to support the Genoese families in difficulty, and he intensified «the undeground help to the Jews persecuted by the Nazi-fascists». However, Cardinal Siri also asked for lawful trials for former Fascists and opposed summary executions. It was a delicate situation because – writes the Italian historian – it was known that «war criminals under a fake name were mixed among the refugees. About it, nor the Italian authority, nor the Red Cross, nor the Argentinian delegation, nor the Allied displayed any particular strictness in terms of boardings. So, in this chaotic crowding and through the market of false identities, the Nazi and Croatian criminals of war managed to get lost in Genoa. In many cases, it was not even about counterfeiting documents, but about receiving new ones from the Red Cross, by just saying to have lost the old one and by using friends or complaisant comrades».

Cardinal Giuseppe Siri’s innocence

It is in this context that some people accused Msgr. Giuseppe Siri of having protected these war criminals. He was accused, especially, on account of his interaction with Croatian priest Petranovic. Fr. Siri denied the charges, as quoted by Benny Lai in Il Papa non eletto. Giuseppe Siri, cardinale di Santa Romana Chiesa (Laterza 1993), and so also did his vicar Giovanni Cicali: «How is it possibile say a such lie? Fr. Siri was certainly a proud anti-Nazi, persecuted for this reason», he said in 2003. «He was the star pupil of Cardinal Minoretti, sworn enemy of Mussolini, who did not come to Genoa until the election of Cardinal Boetto, because he [Mussolini] knew that Boetto’s predecessor was anti-Fascist». The most recent investigations have confirmed it, explains Prof. Guiducci.

In the historical archives of the Diocese of Genoa, there are some dossiers concerning Petranovic, in particular his letters addressed to Cardinal Siri. In these (dated 1948), the Croatian priest complains with Siri about the prohibition to host Croatian refugees in ecclesiastical dorms, but the letters reveal much else. Historian Guiducci explains that «Petranovic could not boast any specific mandate or authorisation from the Genoese Church for his work. This is shown by the fact that he has to introduce himself and to tell his whole story. Moreover, Petranovic was not well known by Siri and even less was he trusted by him. So, we can denied the statements of the authors who want to present Petranovic as protected by Prelates and authorised to travel with the cars of the Curia. It does not even seem that Petranovic enjoyed any particular support or approval by the Genoese clergy; indeed, he does not mention acquaintances and complains, instead, about the enduring prejudice towards him».

Finally, the secretary of Cardinal Siri, Fr. Mario Grone, testified not to have ever heard or seen anything like this, let alone to have learnt about a certain private confidence about a «direct or indirect action by the Genoese Curia to favour awarely the passage of Nazi criminals fleeing to South America. I am induced to believe that this never happened, because Cardinal Siri always manifested the utmost confidence towards me. Finally, as caretaker of his personal files, after his death, I can witness that I have not found any record of this issue in the correspondence».

The Editorial Staff

After the first attack against the Pope from his safe house, Msgr. Viganò keeps his mouth off, but he has not realised that his rifle loaded only with blanks. The last gossip of the Prelate of Varese, indeed, concerns the 2015 meeting between Pope Francis and Kim Davis, an employee convicted for having invoked the conscientious objection by refusing to sign the marriage licence of gay couples. But his reconstruction of facts was clamorously exposed by the ex spokesman of Benedict XVI and one of the closest collaborators of the Pope Emeritus: Father Federico Lombardi.

THE PREVIOUS EPISODES. Msgr. Viganò was in the public eye one week ago through a verbose dossier, well detailed but unsubstantiated, in which he asked with a great delay Pope Francis to resign, because the latter would have disregarded some alleged secret restrictions imposed by his predecessor on Card. McCarrick, accused of a past homosexual life. However, we discovered that Viganò lied: Benedict XVI himself allowed the Cardinal to disregard these restrictions, by meeting him at the Vatican and letting him attend events of other kinds (therefore, in the worst of cases, the fault would have to be ascribed to Ratzinger, unhappily involved by Viganò). The dossier has rapidly become a boomerang, since it allowed to discover that Viganò himself publicly manifested “affection” for and celebrated the Eucharist with the Cardinal he knew to be an abuser. Disappointed by the failed “impeachment” of the Pope, the ex Apostolic Nuncio reappeared admitting that, effectively, Card. MacCarrick was free to attend the audiences of the Pope Emeritus, thereby scaling down his charge against the current Pope for having allowed the alleged restrictions imposed by Ratzinger to be, as it were, disobeyed “from the time of his election”.

NEW CHARGES FROM VIGANÒ ON THE KIM DAVIS CASE. The fiction has unfortunately gone on with a new episode. Viganò told the world he had proposed to Pope Francis to meet Kim Davis during his visit to the USA in 2015 «personally and in a completely confidential way, out of the media spotlight» – he wrote. The meeting took place: «I organized to have Davis come to the nunciature without anyone noticing […]. I also had Davis promise me in advance that she would not give any news to the media until after the Pope’s return to Rome». The Pope, writes Viganò, met Davis, embraced her and thanked her for her courage, but the former Nuncio criticises the then Vatican spokesmen since, once the new had emerged, they denied that it was a private visit, by reducing it to an informal greeting. Which it was: even Viganò has written so in his intervention. The former Nuncio thus reported to have been called by the Secretary of State Parolin, because the Pope was furious with him. But, according to Viganò, the opposite occurred: «The Pope received me for almost an hour, and was very affectionate and paternal. He immediately apologized to me for troubling me with coming to Rome, and he lavished continuous praise on me for the way I had organized his visit to the USA, and for the incredible reception he received in America. He never expected such a welcome. To my great surprise, during this long meeting, the Pope did not mention even once the audience with Davis!». Few days ago, a victim of sexual abuses, Juan Carlos Cruz, recounted that some months ago, in a private meeting, Francis would have spoken to him about the Davis case by saying: «I did not know who the woman was and he [Msgr. Viganò] snuck her in to say hello to me — and of course they made a whole publicity out of it. And I was horrified and I fired that Nuncio». Who is lying – asks Viganò –, Cruz or the Pope? «It is clear, however» – concluded the former Nuncio: «that Pope Francis wanted to conceal the private audience with the first American citizen condemned and imprisoned for conscientious objection».

An inconclusive gossip, in which the charge is ridiculous: the Pope would have concealed his meeting in a private audience (far from the media) with Cruz? Even if it were true and if we took Cruz’s word sas Gospel, where is the scandal? Does Viganò want perhaps to make the Pope look like an enemy to the conscientious objection? Unfortunately for Viganò, while the Pope was coming back exactly from that journey to the USA, a question was raised, this time publicly, by a journalist about those «government officials, who say they cannot in good conscience, their personal conscience, comply with certain laws or carry out their duties as government officials, for example in issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples», by which Davis was being evidently referred to, without being mentioned. Pope Bergoglio answered: «I can say conscientious objection is a right, and enters into every human right. It is a right, and if a person does now allow for conscientious objection, he or she is denying a right». Nothing could be clearer and more public than this!

FATHER LOMBARDI EXPOSES THE LIE. Yesterday evening, though, Father Federico Lombardi, trusted collaborator of Benedict XVI, his spokesman for many years, and President of the Ratzinger Vatican Foundation, wanted to have his say on the episode. Lombardi was quoted by Viganò himself and (together with his English-speaking assistant, Father Thomas Rosica) clamorously exposed the the ex Nuncio, by reading the notes he had taken during the meeting he had with him the evening after the famous face-to-face discussion between Viganò and Francis. On that occasion, contrary to what is reported by the ex Nuncio, the Pope really reproached him as a result of having felt deceived by him for two reasons. Firstly, because, as Apostolic Nuncio, he had not warned him about the potential mediatic impact which, for an informal greeting, risked overshadowing the real reason for the visit to the USA and, secondly, because he had hidden from him (or denied) that Davis had been married four times. Father Lombardi, indeed, read the Pope’s words Viganò himself reported to him back then: «You never told me that she had four husbands!» – complained the Pontiff.

There are 5 conclusions we can draw from the new Vatican gossip:

1) Msgr. Viganò lied again: it is not true that the Pope, when he wanted to meet him after his journey to the USA, did not reproach him for having organised the meeting with Kim Davis. Indeed, the opposite is true: he himself said it to Father Lombardi and Father Rosica.

2) Pope Francis, contrary to what Viganò wants to suggest, had no problem to defend the conscientious objection of the public officials with respect to gay marriages; indeed, on his return journey from the USA – as we have demonstrated – he gave a precise answer to a precise question: the conscientious objection is a human right.

3) Pope Francis scolded Viganò not for having made him meet Kim Davis (also because even he recounts that the Pope was himself enthusiastic about it), but because Viganò did not calculate and did not warn him about its potential mediatic impact which risked overshadowing the real reasons for the pastoral trip, and because Viganò omitted that David was a four-time divorcee and, therefore, a woman certainly courageous for his act of conscientious objection but not so credible a witness of the Christian marriage.

4) It was the ex spokesman of Benedict XVI to expose Viganò, just as the personal secretary of the Pope Emeritus, Georg Gänswein, had proved him wrong some days ago when his (Viganò’s) lawyer, Timothy Busch, spread the fake news that Ratzinger had confirmed the famous dossier. This is no coincidence, and Benedict XVI’s disdain for this episode clearly emerges.

5) Once again, Viganò’s remark has become a boomerang against himself.

Two days ago our friend Marco Tosatti complained with UCCR for defending Pope Francis and having refuted the charged made against him by Viganò, of whom he was the proofreader: «They will have their connivance. It is a real shame: it was a really interesting website. I wait for them to comment the story of Kim Davis» – he wrote. Well, we have contented him. Now it is we who are waiting for him and his other fellow of the anti-Papist resistance, Aldo Maria Valli, to bend over backwards, as usual, to defend the indefensible. However, to be honest, we pray that this ridiculous put-on made up of waned accusations, gossip, and talebearing will end. For the good of all.

The Editorial Staff

Malcolm Muggeridge was a famous English journalist born in 1903 and died in 1990, a lover of satire and of women. He lived as a declared atheist almost until his death, that is until his surprising conversion, occurred thanks to the Encyclical Humanae Vitae, of which we celebrate the fiftieth year in these days.

He said that his look towards faith was that of a gargoyle: from the top of a spire, from the top of a cathedra, he sneered at the ridiculous behaviours and the wasted efforts by the believing humankind. But in 1969 and in 1982, around the age of 80, this contemptuous observer became Catholic together with his wife Kitty. The first spur seems to have come from Saint Teresa of Calcutta.

The journalist went to India to document the activities of the Missionary Sisters of Charity and spent much time with Mother Teresa: seeing her assist the last of the last, he then defined her a “light which could never be extinguished” and narrated his experience in his book “Something Beautiful for God”, published in 1972. He wrote about her as about a “living conversion” and said that one could not observe her with the people assisted by her, without being already in some degree converted: her love for Christ and treating everyone as if they were the Lord in person had more effect on him than anything else. While being in touch with that defender of life, Muggeridge reported to have perceived the inestimable value of the Incarnation of the Son of God.

Afterwards the journalist started also the study of the writings by Saint Augustine and edited and produced a TV series for the BBC in which he analysed the thought and the works of the Bishop of Hippo, Blaise Pascal, William Blake, Søren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He convinced himself that human life was sacred, thereby predicting the remarkable damages of contraception in the deterioration of the interpersonal relationships. Coherently with his statements, he resigned as Rector of the University of Edinburgh to protest against the students’ campaign that asked the availability of contraceptive pills at the University Health Centre. His resignation was preannounced in a sermon at the Cathdral of St. Giles, subsequently published with the title “Another King”.

On the 25th of July 1968, when Humanae Vitae was released, Muggeridge restated his personal appraisal of the Catholic Church. Ten years later, on occasion of a symposium at the University of San Francisco, he, already converted to Christianity but not yet to Catholicism, delivered this speech:

«I find myself in a most difficult position… After all, I am not a Catholic. I do not have that great satisfaction that so many Catholics enjoy. At the same time, I have a great love for the Catholic Church, and I have had from the beginning a feeling stronger than I can convey that this document Humanae Vitae, which has been so savagely criticized, sometimes by members of the Catholic Church, is of tremendous and fundamental importance, and that it will stand in history as tremendously important. And I would like to be able to express this profound admiration that I have for it; this profound sense that it touches upon an issue of the most fundamental importance and that it will be, in history, something that will be pointed to both for its dignity and for its perspecuity».

Muggeridge continued his passionate defence of Humanae Vitae until 1978. Four years later, to his colleagues’ and the media’s general surprise, he and his wife embraced the Catholic faith. In 1988 he published his last book, dedicated to life change and titled The Spiritual Journey of a Twentyeth Century Pilgrim. He died two years later, on November 1990: the monster on the top of the Cathedral had come down and finally entered the House of God.

Carla Vanni