Irrationalism INTOLERANT OF ISLAMIC OPPOSED THE WEST ONLY irrationalism TOLERANT OF ATEI

 

[ REPRODUCED IN THE FRENCH VERSION OF THE TELEMATIC MAGAZINE BENOIT AND ME ]

WHO

 

So the West can not oppose irrationalism of a morality derived from the Koran without any mediation theological much less philosophical - thus ignoring the natural law - another kind of irrationalism, to legislation "secular" without God and the natural right, which is precisely the Of the lex aeterna.

 

 

I am speaking about the sad events of January 2015 in Paris (the murderous violence of Islamic fanatics and the great demonstration of solidarity with the editors Charlie Hebdo to express an opinion different from that of the other editors of The Island of Patmos. The readers of this online magazine does not surprise you, let alone be offended by this difference of opinions, because we have always said that we wanted to bring every problem topical theological principles of the true doctrine of the Church, i.e. dogma, illustrating it, however with comments and applications which by their nature belong to the field dell'opinabile, there where no opinion necessarily require the unanimous consent. I remembered a few occasions the old motto patristic: “In necessary, Unitas; in doubtful, Libertas; in all, caritas”.

So, without wanting to miss the charity, I express my opinion with all freedom. To be as clear and precise, will enunciate in three points:

1) First of all, I consider "sad events" as the murderous violence by Islamic fanatics as the great demonstration of solidarity with the editors of Charlie Hebdo by French politicians and leaders of many other countries in the Western. Both of these facts - military and ideological - judge them enormous moral gravity, but not as much as it is a third fact, the one that gave rise to the other two, namely the pertinacious publication dissemination of obscene and heavily irreverent cartoons against Islam (with a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad) and against Christianity (with blasphemous depiction of the Holy Trinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and His Immaculate Mother).

2) The reaction to these cartoons was, by Islamists, of furious indignation, especially for the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, that they believe should not be represented by anyone ever; the most aggressive have resorted to terrorism in France and new waves of violent persecution of Christians (all considered equally complicit in the "great Satan", ie the West) Middle East and Africa, and more and more explicit is the threat to extend the "holy war" to all the West, even threatening Rome, center of Christianity.

3) The reaction to aggression Islamists, by Western, was the exaltation of the alleged indiscriminate freedom of anti-religious satire, to the point that the irreverent cartoons were distributed in all countries, not only with the special editions of Charlie Hebdo (recently in seven million copies, also distributed outside France, in Italy with The daily show) but also with the reckless reproduction by information bodies Catholics, which over everything they preferred to select the cartoons against Christianity rather than those against Islam that had caused the massacre in Paris. The political-cultural magazine Studies, directed by religious Jesuits, has offered to its readers with the absurd pretext of wanting to show that Catholics are not "fundamentalists" and know they also respect the "freedom of satire", laughing gladly of their institutions and their representatives. Even The Island of Patmos, without my being consulted relevant, thought of having to play such horrendous anti-Christian cartoons in support of an excellent article on the subject signed by Father John Cavalcoli. I consider this choice journalistic - despite good intentions, including that of documenting the severity of the facts of which you speak - a wrong choice, because materially constitutes a "cooperation in evil”, involuntary complicity with the sin of others, which in this case - the offense to the Name of God - is even greater sin.

Point out that the problem of how to reconcile freedom of opinion with the respect of religious institutions and their symbols is a matter entirely secondary in relation to the enormity of the blasphemy act as intrinsically immoral, as an offense against God. Faced with the facts of which we are speaking, a person of proper criterion, and even more a theologian, should not accumulate many socio-cultural considerations but detect what is immeasurably worse than all the rest: that those infamous cartoons Charlie Hebdo contain, among many obscenities and insults irreverent - all despicable things - even curses in the proper sense, ie desecration of the holy name of God, and this is in itself directly and the "matter" of that grave sin from which God warns all men with the second commandment of the Decalogue.

To explain better, I have to remember that "blasphemy", etymologically, mean generically "insult". Now, when the victim dell'ingiuria is only human, it goes against the fourth and the fifth commandment, and the blame more or less severe, according to the dignity of the victim; instead, when the injury is addressed directly to God is blasphemy in the proper sense.

Muslims speak of "blasphemy" even when it is Muhammad, that even they consider God but only his Prophet. And so it is not exactly blasphemy, how to Christianity, the derision of the representatives of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, Including Pope. Not that they are tolerable acts: are desecrating actions against institutions and people who represent the true religion, instituted by Christ Himself. But - I repeat again – the severity of these sins is absolutely not comparable with the gravity of the sin of blasphemy, that is the fault of those who offend the Father, his son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit (and remember that, by virtue of the union hypostatic, also the insult to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother Dio, constitutes a real blasphemy).

the, since childhood, I have suffered so much for the blasphemies I felt around - and since I have felt several Tuscan -, and sometimes reacted with berating some animosity blasphemers. Then, as a priest, I had to take a calmer I contain, imitating the meekness of Jesus. But the offense done to God in public profaning his name and that of his Mother has always gone a deep pain and the Church I learned to personally make many acts of reparation, in addition to the prayers in repair of curses that are recited during exposure Eucharistic. The reaction against blasphemers went quickly into the background, indeed even then there was more. They too are the subject of prayer, asking God not to take account of their sin, "They know not what they do". In short, in front of the blasphemy, a person of conscience suffers for blasphemy because he knows that God deserves not only respect but also acts constant adoration and thanksgiving by all men. No matter, a Christian who is endowed with common sense even before faith, the fact that blasphemy hurt his ego and he feels personally offended in his belonging to a religion. What really counts, when it comes to blasphemy, not the subjective and sentimental but the objective and moral. Because blasphemy is primarily a sin, one of the most severe, because it goes directly against the second commandment of the Decalogue, so trivialized by Roberto Benigni, that is Prato like me and does what it can, poor thing, but they give too much attention and too much money even when wants to laugh with arguments taken from theology.

This is not an abstract discourse and idle: need to understand that almost all Catholic commentators have responded inadequately to unpleasant facts related to "blasphemous cartoons", because they have only ever spoken of respect for religions, for their followers and their symbols. For example, the bishop of Verona, Monsignor Giuseppe Zenti, in an article published in the diocesan weekly, Verona faithful, titled "How do you reconcile the blasphemy with the secular democratic?”, deprecates simply "the cultural climate" that made possible the publication of the "blasphemous cartoons": a climate, specifies the prelate, who is "that of barbarism, in which there is no right of citizenship for the respect of people and their human and religious' [see who]. Another bishop, the Patriarch of Venice Francesco Moraglia, speaking to the Jews said: "There are issues that can not be treated with literary genres like the irony, especially when this is fierce: when the responsibility is public, our words are heavier stones » [see who]. Too little, I say. Most serious of any lack of "respect for people and their human and religious', and even more serious offenses to the ministers of God, is an offense against God himself, God as a person and not as a reality idea of ​​someone or symbol of something else.

Not even Father John Cavalcoli, in the comment to the facts of Charlie Hebdo, seems to take due account of the terrible fact of blasphemy repeated everywhere in millions of copies, but prefers to recommend a greater dialogue between Christianity and Islam, starting from the common faith in the God of Abraham and practicing mutual respect. Even the Holy Father, intervening on the subject, spoke of the inevitable reaction - he calls unjust but humanly understandable - that you can expect when you causes offense to a person, for example, speaking ill of his mother [see who]. Ma, I repeat, here are not in play the "horizontal" relationships among men in human society, but the relationship "vertical" of men with God. If you stay in the line "horizontal" and we are only concerned to determine the manner and the way to protect the honor and rights of some social subject, but uniform, Also in the West, the typical mentality of Islam, where everything is political, and there is no natural law but only positive law established arbitrarily by the Member.

So the West can not oppose irrationalism of a morality derived from the Qur'an without any mediation theological much less philosophical - then ignoring the natural law - another kind of irrationalism, to legislation "secular" without God and the natural right, which is precisely the Of the lex aeterna. In the West, after all the rhetoric defenseless of freedom of opinion and even satire, they wanted to react to the military violence of Islamist ideology justifying violence of satirical newspaper - all told: “I'm Charlie"-. Then, the contingent fact it has gone to theorize the "right" to insult any religion - but especially Christianity, and of course Islam -, proclaiming the "right to blasphemy" or "right to blasphemy ', that French President Holland has included between civil rights and the achievements of freedom that the West has inherited from the French Revolution. Of course, from a point of view merely cultural-historical, Holland is right: The trouble began with the Enlightenment own anti-Catholic, whose representatives, however, were not really atheists (neither was Voltaire). What did the Enlightenment Masonic - outweigh Catholic Enlightenment, which had among its representatives two Neapolitan intellectuals, Giambattista Vico and St. Alphonsus Maria de 'Liguori - was to replace the worship of God with the worship of Political Power. Like this, Jacobins in France devised the solemn enthronement of an image of the Goddess of Reason in the basilica of Notre Dame in Paris, no more than the house of God but exaltation of revolutionary thought. Like this, in the United States, the Pilgrim Fathers did God the flag of independence aspirations by the Anglican Church, ruled by the King of England, and the dollar bill wrote "In God we trust”. Two centuries later, the Nazis were fighting their battle neopagan keeping the motto of the German emperors: “God with us!"... In Conclusion, history shows us the rapid evolution of an operation ideological secularization, at the height of which is not only God is no longer recognized as the foundation of natural law and the logical holder of the right to worship by all men, but it is even denied in his own reality. To operate this substitution, as evidence of an Absolute is inherent in human reason, Enlightenment modern contemporary drew a grotesque cultural regression, making all'idolatria, the deification of the "elements of this world" as named by St. Paul.

First you should set up the Christian society history records companies who practiced the worship of idols of the nation (ancient East) or the cult of the military chief (the two Caesar Roman Empire, to which the Christians refused to offer sacrifice). Modernly, secularist ideology wanted again deify the Political Power (the "State", the "Country" or the "People"). To impose this deification secularism borrows from Christianity the language of the sacred, which in itself makes sense only when referring to God: here is the "civil religion" theorized by Jean-Jacques Rousseau; here is the altar of the Fatherland Savoian after the fall of Rome; here is "the sacred boundaries" of the Fatherland; here is the worship of the memory of the martyrs (in Fascist you spoke of "martyrs fascists', immediately after the "martyrs of the Resistance"); this is the "apostle of freedom" (Joseph Mazzini); here is the "pilgrimage" to the mausoleum of Lenin etc.. The sense of the sacred is past all the political rhetoric: the Sacred authentic, the Holy par excellence, ie God, no longer has any public recognition as reality itself. If it turns evoked, is only to describe "the religious feeling" of some group of citizens, to which the State may graciously grant some freedom of worship.

That being the case, is too little, I said, simply plead, satire against the blasphemous of Western newspapers, respect for the subjective rights of people who believe in God, and that the sole purpose of ensuring social peace. For example, Compass on the Daily 18 January I read an article by Ettore Malnati titled "The offense to religious feeling does not help coexistence" [see who]. I repeat again: too little! Here it is the respect due to God, which undoubtedly exists even if the state secularist says that is not true, that "is not". State secular anti-religious satire, including blasphemy, is only a lawful manner to express rational criticism of a subjective feeling irrational. But the truth is that blasphemy is an injustice, a moral disorder (that is a shame) absolute gravity, because what is being violated, first of all, is the primary law that God has respect, honor and adoration. Propose, as has been done, that the state upholds the existence of a "right to blasphemy" is equivalent to formalize the implicit premise atheistic secular state, his "material constitution": we claim that the State must explicitly assert - without having any authority, neither logical nor moral - that God does not exist, that what some call "God" is only a subjective idea tolerable in private but not worthy of public protection. While I have other ideas, for example, the idea of ​​being worthy of respect and esteem as gay. For this reason we can not absolutely offend nor criticize gays (is the crime of "homophobia") but you can offend God, because God does not exist. Instead, offending a head of state is the offense of defamation, because the head of state exists, and of course the state knows. This is the logic of speech, if logic is. In reality it is not logic but of mere arrogance on the part of, to maintain power, must continue to impose its cultural and ideological hegemony. The state was formed arbitrarily absolute authority, so explicitly considered the source of all truth and moral metaphysics, and therefore legal (who exists and has the right to respect and who is not).

Positive law has legitimacy only if presupposes and respects the natural moral law, starting from the certainty that God exists as the first cause and final end of all, and therefore as universal Legislator. Before, about the offense to the holy name of God, I was speaking of the first and second Commandment. This and all other constitute the Decalogue, which is nothing if not a codification of the natural moral law of the Old Testament. It contains so fully intelligible fundamental moral norms that every man knows spontaneously and is obliged to observe faithfully, as taught by the great philosophical tradition, and also the Holy Scriptures. No need to know the Law of Moses, St. Paul says in his Letter to the Romans, to honor and love God as creator and legislator. Like this, today, we must say that there is no need of a positive law of civil society not to blaspheme. Of course, a modern state Western, who claims to be "secular", not only did not keep the laws against blasphemy that before had been variously formulated, but even impose a law in favor of the "right to blasphemy".

We must react statist ideology, which is one of the most bitter fruits of idealism and remember that it is rather the state that does not exist: instead there are men and women who make up civil society, men and women who, as citizens of a nation are given or received a particular legal form for public institutions (government, justice, defense, tax etc.), and among these there are some citizens who exercise public functions. One and the other (private citizens and public officials) have an intellect and a conscience, and they know what is the obvious reality for all, and from this knowledge base (which in philosophy is called the "common sense") form their opinions, at large, on immediate issues. By the consent of all the evidence of common sense comes in so many different ways to form positive law, valid if in harmony with the will of the people, but first and foremost with the natural moral law.

Those who still have the ability to think for themselves knows that the metaphysical truth and morality is an achievement that human reason is based on the experience obtained when immediate and universal and then also on critical reflection (the philosophy), which are the foundations of any rational acceptance of divine revelation. Faced atheistic indoctrination state must return to the evidence that God exists, even if those who govern the state does not want to recognize it. Recognizes common sense and philosophy: no true philosopher professed atheism (it showed Etienne Gilson with his book Atheism difficult), and no scientist has ever been able to prove with his tools of investigation that there is no God. An influential Italian philosopher, work in the sixties of the last century, he wrote:

"The route of man to God is presented as the most difficult and the most pressing. Without reference to the Absolute in fact all values ​​remain suspended and the man is exposed to the continuous risk of being overwhelmed by the temporality and of getting lost in the pitfalls of contingency. The various attempts to evade the problem of God atheism in its polyhedral shapes up to contemporary forms of so-called "theology of the death of God", show the dialectic never resolved the drama disconcerting man down here can not draw and possess God, while always felt somehow that they can not live without God " (Cornelius the carpenter, The man and the risk of God).

Atheism State, as that which has prevailed in the West, is conceivable only in a purely political horizon: but not politics as an exercise of power regulated by criteria of justice in sight for the common good, but of politics as a conflict of interest for the conquest or retention of power by an ideological force, economic and military. Such a policy seeking popular support with demagogic speeches, turned to the feeling and not the conscience of citizens; e, when it reaches its goals, here is that the social order is radically compromised through laws which have no connection with the natural right. But laws contrary to natural law are not true laws, have no moral value, but are reduced to bullying, to tyranny, to despotism. No matter, from this point of view, that the form of government is democratic or totalitarian: in both cases it must be recognized that a power management (judiciary, government, parliamentary) ignore the natural law ensures that the political class is reduced to a criminal (huge robbery), as St. Augustine said already at the time of the transition between the Roman Empire and the barbarian kingdoms.

Now, the conscience of a man gifted, precisely, of conscience, will cause it to behave well with God, both in private life and in public, without the need for legal constraints in one direction or another. From the point of view of personal conscience there is no problem. The problem arises when the personal consciousness leads to an interest of public affairs and to take a stand in the face of unjust laws. So many people are the ways to take a stand: with their active intervenento in shaping public, with diversity of form and social criticism (the teaching, the use of mass media), by personal example that it is right or not to observe and, exercising the right to vote when circumstances permit, help to ensure that it is not approved or if already approved will be abolished. Many have done it and are doing it, for example as regards abortion, (question of established law) or public recognition of homosexual unions (question creating the right).
But the paradoxical aspects of this opposition of "secular state" is that the Absolute, ie God, is not considered real, while the State, that is related to an idea of ​​society, is considered real. Relativism, denies any absolute - which is impossible for the basic laws of logic - and ends up shut himself in solipsism irrationalistic. Typical irrationalism is making speeches that continually fall in contradiction (the self-denying discourse), and therefore more wrong that are properly senseless, are authentic nonsenses. The "secular state" professes irrationalism as much as "Islamic state", namely the politico-religious ideology of Islam denounced by Benedict XVI in Regensburg speech.