The Gospels report that the disciples, disappointed and dismayed after the crucifixion and death of their mentor, had visions of Jesus Himself, who showed them the resurrection from the dead. This fact upset and convinced them, so much as to be ready for martyrdom rather than deny what they had seen. But what is true about this? Critics explain that the Evangelical reports would have been written late with respect to the facts, that the disciples would be lying, or that the they had hallucinations. But these conclusions do not come up even if we analyse the studies of the most sceptical, agnostic, and atheist scholars.

First of all, let us debunk the myth of the Gospels having been written late: already one or two years after the death of Jesus of Nazareth, indeed, the little community of the Christians in Jerusalem, proclaimed and announced the earliest Christian creed: the crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Christ. This is demonstrated by the First Letter to the Corinthians, redacted by Saint Paul in 50-55 A.D., using, though, pieces of information learnt from the disciples in 35 A.D., which, besides, had been known since some years. Almost the totality of the experts claims the very ancient origin of the Pauline letter (written before the Gospels), and amongst them there are not only Christian scholars, hastily and erroneously deemed by someone as “biased”, as...

On June 2016, at least 50 persons lost their lives inside the gay club Pulse in Orlando. Although the “homophobic” defensors of the family – among whom Pope Francis – were immediately indicated as the moral instigators, in the following horse it emerged that the terrorist, Omar Mateen, was a renowned gay and a regular at the Pulse, angry at how he «felt used» in that club.

Following the tragedy, one of the homosexual survivors, Angel Colón, announced a radical life change, by going back to attending the parish where he used to sing in the choir.

A short time ago, another survivor of the Orlando shooting made an even more shocking announcement. He has matured the conviction that God drew a greater good from the evil of that night, a repentance overwhelming his life as he had lived it until then. In an interview, Luis Javier Ruiz recounted, indeed, his leaving homosexuality, after 30 years of Lgbt life.

He had come out during his high school, on his mother’s birthday. They were listening to a radio programme in which a preacher lashing...

What did not happen in Italy on the 22th May 1978 e in Ireland on the 25th May 2018, happened yesterday in Argentina. The legalisation of abortion has been historically rejected by 38 deputees against 31, by preferring to save “both lives” – according to the Argentinian pro-life slogans – the mother’s and the child’s. The militancy for the “no” side by the Episcopal conference, guided by Bishops close to Argentinian Pope Bergoglio and personally chosen by him, was pretty influential.

It was a defeat for the powerful mediatic apparatus which literally censored thousands of pro-life demonstrators characterised by the colour “light blue”: on the newspaper’s page there are only and exclusively pictures of “green” flags, the pro-abortion ones (and also in these first minutes after the vote, the foreign newspapers – in Italy almost nobody has reported this news yet – choose pictures of “green” sad and disconsolate demonstrators while ignoring the exulting “light blue sea”). An example amongst all the other ones: although a survey had reported that the majority of the Argentinian women was sided against abortion, but...

Martin Luther’s homeland is today more Catholic than Lutheran. Catholics outnumbering Protestants, in Germany, happened in 2009. According to a recent survey, the crisis of the Protestants is increasing whilst the number of Catholics has been stable since 1950.

The crisis of Protestantism, therefore, hits Germany as well. A short time ago, we were observing the same phenomenon in the USA: collapse of the Reformed Christians and stability of the number of Catholics. 20,7 million German Protestants left Lutheranism in 1950, whilst the Catholic Church counted 23,2 million faithful in 1950 and today likewise 23,3 millions. The absolute number is kept.

Neither does the Catholic denomination enjoy good health, though: in a year, as reported by the Episcopal Conference of Germany, 270.000 faithful abandoned the Church, and only 9.332 entered or came back into it. The German Bishops have already closed 515 churches in the last ten years. One of the main reasons for this defection, unique in the whole world, is the compulsory religious tax (8-9% of the income tax) that...

How is it possible that a minuscule “sect of Judaism”, as is sociologically defined, could conquer the Roman Empire and dominate the Western world? We talk about Christianity and about its unbelievable demographic expansion. The new and interesting book by Barth D. Ehrman deals this historical question, thereby giving us remarkable surprises.

The most banal explanation for the rapid diffusion of the Christian religion, the explanation that would be given by Voltaire, Gibbon and Burckhardt would bring into play the political support given by Emperor Constantine. «It was not Constantine to convert to Christianity, but it was Christianity to turn into an imperial religion», writes the Italian anticlerical Corrado Augias, in Disputa su Dio e dintorni [Dispute on God and sorroundings] (Mondadori 2010). That is, the Emperor’s would not have been a true religious conversion, but a political move to use Christianity as an “instrument of power”. On the other hand, the Christian religion would have benefitted from the imperial support to spread like wildfire.

Agnostic B.D. Ehrman, expert of primitive Christianity and Professor at the North Carolina University, has a completely different opinion. He is an interesting scholar, to whom we pay much attention, not only because of the importance of his academic profile, but also because of his frequent intellectual honesty. As a non-believer, he set himself the goal to defy two extremisms:...

«The image of the Roman Inquisition as a reign of torture and of evil has taken on a life of its own by now, ending up resembling those fake news about which many people talk today». Thus the Jewish historian Anna Foa, Professor of Modern History at the Sapienza University of Rome. Another specialist against the black legend, that is a false anti-Catholic vulgate created by Enlightenment thinkers and Protestants.

The mediatic mainstream, reflected Anna Foa, has erroneously thought that, with the opening of the central archives of the ex Holy Office in 1998, the Catholic Church would have finally recognised the allegedly abominable and bloody nature of the Inquisition, which still represents in the collective imagination «the armed wing of the Church against heresy, free thought, freedom of conscience. To the eyes of the media and of the so-called historiographical common sense, the Inquisition was the enemy par excellence of the modern thought».

None of all this, obviously. A disappointment for journalists and anticlericals, of course not for specialists. Also because, continued the Jewish historian: «during the two last decade there had already been a historiographical revisitation in this field, which, nevertheless, evolved, rather than in the direction of a plea for forgiveness,...

The four Gospels are unreliable having been written many years after the facts they want to narrate. This is often heard, but it is a false affirmation. Let us see why.

First of all, we have several times pointed out that the pieces of information concerning Jesus of Nazareth are more numerous and closer to the narrated historical facts, as compared to many other historical characters, like Julius Caesar, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, Flavius Josephus, Socrates, Alexander the Great, etc. So much so that famous scholar John Robinson commented: «The wealth of manuscripts, and above all the narrow interval of time between writing and the earliest extant copies, make it by far the best attested text of any ancient writing in the world» (J. Robinson, Can we Trust the New Testament?, Grand Rapids 1977, p. 36).

Secondly, the Evangelists got most of their information from pre-synoptic sources (oral and written), already circulating few years after Jesus’ death. «Some disciples of Jesus» – added the main living biblist, J.P. Meier: «may have begun to collect and arrange sayings of Jesus even before his death» (Un ebreo marginale [A Marginal Jew], Vol. 1, Queriniana 2006, p. 157).

But there is another argument on which we should like to dwell in greater detail: Saint Paul’s epistles, written, as everybody knows, before the Gospels. In particular, the First Letter to the Corinthians was composed...

«I think about Blessed Paul VI. He had the strength to defend openness to life inside the family at a time when many people were worried about population growth. He was not antiquated, close-minded. No, he was a prophet, No, he was a prophet who, with this, told us to beware of Neo-Malthusianism, which is coming». It is a pity that nobody is remembering these clear judgments of Pope Francis on the Pope of Humanae Vitae, the Encyclical that – among other things, because it must not be reduced to that – restated the rejection of chemical contraception by the Church.

It is an issue having become again topical thanks to the study of Msgr. Gilfredo Marengo, Professor at the Pontifical Theological Institute John Paul II and author of the book, The Birth of an Encyclical: 'Humanae Vitae' in the Light of the Vatican Archives (Libreria Editrice Vaticana 2018). It emerged that Paul VI, on October 1967, asked for the opinions of the Synodal Fathers on contraception in view of the publication of the encyclical: Only 26 of the 200 bishops present produced a written response. The majority of them said they were in favour of some opening to the pill, while 7 were against. However, the despite the favourable opinion of the Bishops and of the consulted theologians, Montini considered it inappropriate to change the...

According to a recent survey, Protestantism is literally collapsing in the USA, thereby leaving the field to those who define themselves “without religion”. The number of Catholics, on the contrary, remains stable. A strong signal to Catholic progressism, which would like to be more open to the world by following the example of the Protestant confessions.

The 14-point drop of American Protestantism in 12 years has been measured by ABC/WashingtonPost and corresponds to a rise 9-point rise in the number of those who profess no religion, as well as to Catholics remaining stable around 22%. Indeed, according to other reports, the number of US citizens who define themselves Catholic is constantly increasing: from from 48.5 million to 76.7 million between 1965 and 2014.

For sure, these figures owe much to the Hispanic influence, as far as Catholicism is concerned. However, if we look into details, also amongst the non-Hispanic US citizens the percentage of Catholics has remained nearly constant in the last 12 years: 22% in 2013 and 20% in 2018.

In 2014, commenting...

The bloodstains imprinted on the Sacred Shroud would have been incompatible with those of a crucifixion. The claim to have proved it comes from two researchers notorious for their numerous attempts to discredit the authenticity of the relic. Luigi Garlaschelli (retired chemist) and Matteo Borrini (University of Liverpool). However, their experiment was flawed by enormous ingenuities and mistakes that we have duly listed in our immediate response.

A well-documented criticism also arrived from Doctor Paolo Di Lazzaro, research manager of the Aeneas of Frascati and Vice Director of the International Centre of Sindonology. Anyway, on the media other replies appeared, but none of them goes so much into details.

Beside the words of the Archbishop of Turin, Cesare Nosiglia, we read (and listened to) the speech by Pierluigi Baima Bollone, full professor of forensic medicine at the University of Turin, who pointed out that «the job is based on a system called BPA, widely criticised at the scientific level. From the look of the blood stains, you deduce how they were procured with...

Now they will have no more alibis. Or maybe yes? How will the critics of Pope Francis, who accuse him of speaking only about migrants and of not dealing with other issues important to Christians, and the false adulators, who use his name to justify conducts contrary to his thought, react to the words he said yesterday? «Today we speak of different types of family» – said Francis – «but the human family as the image of God, man and woman is one alone. It is one alone».

For those who follow the speeches of the Holy Father, there is nothing new: he obviously repeated these same things many times (see the images below). The real novelty is that this time all the main newspapers have recalled, since the title, his words:  The Irish Times ,  Advocate ,  CNBnews ,  The Wall Street Journal ecc.

Meeting the Forum...

Exactly 40 years ago, in 1978, the Shroud of Turin was deemed “fake” because researcher Walter McCrone affirmed (erroneously) that there were no traces of blood on the linen cloth, but a mixture of iron oxide and vermilion pigments. Yesterday, after bitterly swallowing that, yes, there is human blood, two notorious sceptics of the authenticity of the Shroud concluded, though, that the stains were unrealistic as compared to the position of a crucified person.

In the last hours, we have been overwhelmed with requests to answer and refute this new study, published on the Journal of Forensic Sciences. However, in principle, all researches should be welcomed, both in favour or against the authenticity of the Shroud (which nobody, not even the Church, obliges to consider authentic). Of course, when all the mediatic apparatus talks in perfect synchrony about the “falsity” of the Shroud without this conclusion being even held by the study (where we only read “unrealistic bleeding”), and when we read that the author is, as usual, the chemist of Pavia Luigi Garlaschelli (scientific director of the CICAP, the Italian Committee for the investigation of claims by the pseudosciences), who has already failed similar experiments on the Shroud, then the suspicion of hoax begins to arise.

Analysing the research with accuracy and objectivity, we read that the two researchers used a mannequin by...

They also want to destroy the sport. The Lgbt lobby is defending the precence of trans people in women's volleyballs, but the female players preparing a class action. The sporting ethics is in danger, said Italian luminary Arsenio Veicsteinas, tenured Professor of Physiology at the State University of Milan.

All-out war against women: gay Senator Sergio Lo Giudice – who has purchased a child and taken him away from his biological mother – wants teach the meaning of motherhood to the Italian women; from the USA we heard of the testimony to basketball player Candice Wiggins, who withdrew because she was discriminated and bullied as heterosexual; the gay community denies entry to women, as if they were animals. Today, a transsexsual man wants to play against female players. And feminists? They are silent.

The case has arisen with Tiffany (Rodrigo) Pereira, a Brazilian trans who plays for Golem Palmi, a volleyball team in Italian A2 Female League. Other teams feel disadvantaged and sport is in danger because a "rush to transgender players" may occur. The Millenium team's president ...

How can we reconcile the Trinity with monotheism? «It is no more impossible to bring all the sea into this hole than what you are trying to do – comprehend the immensity of the mystery of the Holy Trinity with your small intelligence». St. Augustine heard this while he reflected on the mistery of the one and triune God.

If a mental giant received such a reprimand by the Lord, it is not surprising how little one of the greatest mistery of the Christian faith can be understood by us. The Christian theology seems sometimes complicated in the eyes of the world, less simple than Islamic monotheism. Yet, in my opinion, it is exactly this inconceivability to prove its truth.

Despite some attempts, some better than others, the Trinity remains a mystery. However, theology did not keep silent about this issue: from Irenaeus to Augustine, from John Scotus Eriugena to Thomas Aquinas, all the main Christian thinkers have addressed it, everybody giving a decisive and insuperable contribution. Some doubts may be clarified, also taking the cue from what is written by popular philosopher William Lane Craig in reply to the questions by a Muslim.

1) How can you philosophically reconcile the Trinity with monotheism? The answer was already searched during the first centuries of the Christian Era, during the great councils of the Church: the persons of the Trinity are not three different divinities; since the first council, it has been affirmed that Father, Son...

«Stars have always referred to man's destiny. Also for Van Gogh, till the end, they remained a sign of a last possible hope. He confided: "Hope is in the stars", and his many nocturn paintings stem from a "tremendous need for – I will use this word – religion, so I go outside at night to paint the stars"». These are the words of eminent Italian astrophysicist Marco Bersanelli, able to combine science, art and philosophy masterfully, which makes him – at least in our eyes – one of the most interesting Italian scientists.

He is Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Milan, where he is also Director of the Postgraduate Programme in Physics, Astrophysics and Applied Physics. Dr. Bersanelli is member of the Planck Science Team and is amongst the scientific supervisors of ESA's Planck mission and also author of about 300 scientific publications. Recently, he has published the book "Il grande spettacolo del cielo" (Sperling & Kupfer 2016), in which collected personal reflections and quotes of colleagues of his', poets and artists who let themselves be seduced by the beauty of the cosmos.

«It is paradoxical», he has explained in a recent interview, «today technology allows us to look at the depth of the Universe at a level which was unthinkable even few decades ago, yet...