FARE “EXPERIENCE OF CHRIST " IN THE EUCHARIST, CLERICAL EGOCENTRISM IS NOT, HOW CARDINAL MARIO GRECH AND THE JESUITE ANTONIO SPADARO WOULD LIKE TO MAKE US UNDERSTAND, BUT IT IS TO FEED ON THAT CHRISTIAN HOPE THAT HAS BECOME FLESH.

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[…] Following the plot of the film Dogma, let's find out how the figure of the Christ Compagnone it was conceived by a man of the Church, from a renovator we would say today, a certain Cardinal Glick - played by George Carlin - as part of a campaign called “Catholicism Wow!” which aims to renew the image of the Catholic Church by making it more "output", starting precisely with the reform of the image of Christ.

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Author
Ivano Liguori, Ofm. Capp.

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it is no longer the future, now it is the present …

From our columns de The Island of Patmos I have reiterated over and over that, the current pandemic time, it should lead the Church to take up a serious theological reflection on the virtue of Christian hope. This reflection appears more necessary than ever because hope is that virtue that teaches us to live in the world as believers, leading us - according to the teaching of Blessed Duns Scotus - to desire God in every situation of life, be it favorable or adverse, He who is our supreme good, from which we receive all the goods necessary for our sanctification [cf.. A. Tanquerey, Compendium of Ascetic and Mystical Theology, S. Paul 2018, p 581].

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When in life we ​​are touched from events that cause our fragility it is particularly sad to live without the virtue of hope but it is even sadder to live with a hope deprived of its theological foundation, especially if this empty hope takes root in the heart of those who should be believers.

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Benedict XVI says: «When the First Letter of Peter exhorts Christians to always be ready to give an answer about the logos - the meaning and the reason - of their hope (cf. 3,15), "Hope" is the equivalent of "faith" " [cf.. Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter, Spe Salvi, n.2]. So the speech is clear: the reason we hope lies in the fact that in the fullness of time [Gal 4,4], the Logos of the Father is incarnated and, in assuming a human body, it heals all those who find themselves afflicted by the pain of despair [cf.. 1Ts 4,13] or because of a false hope.

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Such hope is embodied - which is Christ - arouses the faith in our hearts which he has in the exclamation of the apostle Thomas: «My Lord and my God!» [GV 20,28] the most beautiful synthesis of rediscovered hope informed by faith.

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Starting from this observation we must report how in the consequent health emergency, we are going through a very specific crisis of hope which is the natural course of a crisis of faith towards the person of Christ seen not as the Logos of God incarnate but as a palliative without a salvific foundation.

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Here we are at the conclusion of our reasoning, if we struggle to live the virtue of hope it is only because we struggle to stay within faith, worshiping a Christ emptied of his divinity, which proposes a hope equally emptied of logos divine. He is no longer the Risen bearer of hope, as the ancient Sequence of the Easter liturgy says: «Cristo, my hope, It has risen!», but assumes the features of Christ Compagnone of the film Dogma the 1999, in which Jesus is characterized by a cheerful and cordial aspect, broad smile and winking eye, right index finger pointing and left thumb raised as a sign of approval. In short, a grotesque mask of that Savior who while presenting himself to the world in such a way "inclusive" however, it remains unable to save men precisely because it is too busy giving warm pats on the back towards a relativized and relativizing modernity. Incidentally: the book that we Fathers de The Island of Patmos we have recently given to the press, "The Church and the coronavirus", it opens with a chapter of our Dominican confrere Father Gabriele Giordano M. Scardocci that makes a pertinent reference to this film [visit our book shop, WHO].

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Following the plot of the film Dogma, let's find out how the figure of the Christ Compagnone it was conceived by a man of the Church, from a renovator we would say today, a certain Cardinal Glick - played by George Carlin - as part of a campaign called “Catholicism Wow!” which aims to renew the image of the Catholic Church by making it more "output", starting precisely with the reform of the image of Christ.

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Unfortunately, from cinematic fiction we move on to the tragic reality in which we find ourselves interacting no longer with fictional characters - such as Cardinal Glick in the film Dogma - but with others that are much more concrete, like the Jesuit Antonio Spadaro and Cardinal Mario Grech. Real people, corifei of Yves Congar's thought, who have long been engaged in the race to restyling clergyman who desires a new way of being for the Church, to speak, to act and commit. Like this, through a nice off-the-cuff interview, of those that in these times are so fashionable to prepare souls for change, they give us to understand that “a certain clericalism emerged during the pandemic, even away social"And that the impossibility of not being able to celebrate the Eucharist before the people highlighted that "degree of exhibitionism and pietism that knows more of magic than of expression of mature faith" [See. La Civiltà Cattolica, WHO]. In other words, they are telling us that behind the effort of numerous priests who celebrated the Holy Mass without the people - but always for the people - through the new forms of communication a sinister clericalism and an ego centered and exhibitionist pastoralism are hidden, which takes on the features of an elegant voyeurism liturgical for those few irreducible priests “messaioli ”. In short, in addition to the damage, even the joke.

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We realize the extravagance and the absurdity of these statements only if we compare them in the light of the more radical pastoral inclusiveness that we experienced a year ago. Inclusiveness that put all common sense to the test - in the facts related to the apotheosis of Pachamama during the Pan-Amazon Synod, with the consequent mortification of various liturgical-ecclesial contexts not at all distant from the See of Peter.

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In short, in the name of the update, even a pandemic can be the case for innovators, if this actually succeeds in undermining the dominion of the old ordained sacred ministers and promoting the new lay ministry towards a frontier in which the common priesthood and immediate soteriology trace the new image of the Church. For this reason it is useful to remember how the Spe Salvi it highlighted the danger of hope understood as faith in human progress alone, founded on human reason and freedom, but released from the grace of Christ.

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We understand this reasoning much more clearly if we follow the continuation of the interview:

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"In the situation that prevented the celebration of the sacraments, we did not realize that there were other ways through which we could experience God". Among the services mentioned, the health service appears, which has "transformed hospital wards into other cathedrals".

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These words seem sensible but in the complexity of the interview they hide a subtle pitfall, in fact, Cardinal Mario Grech does not have in mind to mention - and he is careful not to do so - the numerous hospital chaplains who have assisted the sick of Covid-19 with the grace of the Sacraments, giving the acquittal in article died and representing a present Church at that juncture, caring mother, who remains under the cross of sickness and watches over there, where all the others flee. For the prelate, only the humanitarian service of health workers stands out in which reason and freedom rise to the absolute values ​​of the new priesthood, much closer to Masonic ethics than to evangelical ones.

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Although the service of the health service is highly meritorious, necessary and decisive in pandemic contexts, however, it always remains a service bound by immanence, who cannot in any way go beyond the transcendence of bodily death when it presents itself as the natural outcome of an important disease, what is Covid-19. Nor can this humanitarian service give that deposit of eternal life that only Christ grants through the ministry and work of his priests in the Church.

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Man in suffering he is in dire need of clearly perceiving that certain hope that makes him say:

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«Neither death nor life, born angeli born principati, neither present nor future, nor powers, neither height nor depth, nor can any other creature ever separate us from God's love, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord " [RM 8, 38-39].

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This sure and faith-rich hope contemplates himself in the crucified Christ who gives himself to the mysterious contemplation of the sick and suffering brothers through the daily sacrifice of the altar. In every Holy Mass offered and celebrated, the "For you and for many" it opens men to the certain hope of redemption through love, in which the bloodless sacrifice of the altar makes us participate in that "blessed hope" [cf.. Tt 2,13] that awaits the whole Church every time it obeys the command of its Lord: "Do this in memory of me".

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For this reason it is necessary in every time of tribulation to resort to the Holy Mass as a divine remedy, because in its faithful celebration, "By the rituals and prayers" [Holy Council, n. 48], men are constantly accompanied by the divine hope that never abandons man and gives new strength to go forward and hope against all hope [cf.. RM 4,18].

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The interviewer from Civiltà Cattolica asks the new cardinal: "So what is the challenge for today?». The Cardinal answers:

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«When the temple of Jerusalem, where Jesus prayed, was destroyed, Jews and Gentiles, not having the temple, they gathered around the family table and offered sacrifices with their lips and the prayer of praise. When they could no longer follow the tradition, both Jews and Christians took the Law and the Prophets into their hands and reinterpreted it in a new way [cf.. T. Kiss, "This is the time to set sail", in Future, 5 April 2020, 28] This is the challenge for today too ".

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I honestly can't understand the sentence: «[…] both Jews and Christians took over the Law and the Prophets and reinterpreted them in a new way ". Maybe I don't understand this sentence because, not only, it is neither correct nor true, but because Our Lord Jesus Christ admonishes:

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' Verily I say: until heaven and earth have passed, not a jot or a sign from the law will pass, without everything being accomplished. Who then will transgress one of these precepts, even minimal, and he will teach men to do likewise, it will be considered minimal in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever will observe them and teach them to men, will be considered great in the kingdom of heaven " [Mt 5, 18-19].

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The Blessed Apostle Paul echoes these words:

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«[…] there are some who upset you and want to subvert the Gospel of Christ. Well, But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel other than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed! We have already said it and now I repeat it: if any man preach a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be accursed!» [Gal 1, 7-9].

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Someone, he really intends… to reinvent the Church? Perhaps as in the past another Jesuit scholar declared, Federico Lombardi, that from the Press Office of the Holy See, the 3 May 2013, stated: "Enzo Bianchi helps us reinvent the Church"? [cf.. WHO]

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Laconi, 8 November 2020

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