ANTI-COVID VACCINES19. THAT MORAL AND THAT CHRISTIAN CHARITY UNKNOWN TO THOSE TURBULENT "ANTIVAX CATHOLICS" WHO SCREAM ABOUT THE SOCIAL MEDIA AS FISHERMAN AT THE LOCAL MARKET

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The Catholic has a moral duty to get vaccinated out of a sense of deep responsibility towards mankind, because mankind is his neighbor that he must not only respect and protect, but that he must love as himself. What hard to make blind and obtuse subjects understand that they based their anti-scientific ideology first and foremost on the blatant disregard for the other, whether it is the individual or the entire world scientific community. And similar attitudes, for a Catholic, they are truly and deeply sinful.

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Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo

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intensive care

To this delicate issue Fathers de The Island of Patmos they dedicated the essay: The Church and the coronavirus. The subtitle of the book is emblematic: «Between supercazzole and tests of faith. The apostolate of the Fathers de The Island of Patmos in times of pandemic ", born from the opening reflection in which the Dominican theologian Gabriele Giordano M. Scardocci explains the meaning of super cazzola, term taken by the philosophical lexicon to indicate meaningless turns of words. The reflections of all three follow, including the very precious ones of the Capuchin theologian Ivano Liguori who spent years of his priestly life serving in the great hospital of Cagliari, in daily contact with human life, sickness and death.

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If before it was appropriate to remember our non-fiction work, which we sincerely recommend reading, now it is necessary to articulate a premise, before opening the actual reflection.

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The movement of the so-called antivax it has its very virulent adherents even within our Catholic world, although they are Catholics in their own way. In fact, they range from millenarian catastrophists to those convinced of the diabolical immorality of vaccines in which the fetuses of aborted babies have been blended (!?). Those who identify the col vaccine follow mark of the beast which appears in the symbolic and at times hermetic narrative of the Apocalypse of the Blessed Apostle John and others who speak of the imminent final struggle that will see the definitive triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

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If to these various novax extremists of Catholicism do it yourself explain that the Holy See did not take long to clarify the morality of vaccines by responding first of all to the hoax of the fetuses of aborted babies smoothed inside them [see document of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith], the response of the anti-VAT integralist catto-idiot will not be long in coming: "The Holy See has now lost the authentic values ​​of the Gospel and has submitted to the strong world powers". Then follow the contumelies on the reigning Pontiff by many members of these pseudo-Catholic groups who solve the problem at its root by directly questioning the validity of his election to the sacred throne.. Making up, also in this case, to all the hoaxes that have been circulating for years about the fantastic invalidity of the act of resignation of the Supreme Pontiff Benedict XVI.

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Antivaxes who believe they are Catholic they are among all the worst, because they support their bizarre theories with the supernatural, while the secular antivaxes rely on their obvious psychotic disturbances, or on fantasy-conspiracies, without bothering God the Father, the Word of God Incarnate, the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Apocalypse of the Blessed Apostle John.

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The experience gained in these times of pandemic taught, to me and my fellow editors, that talking to the antivax is useless, because it is closed to reasoning and to the critical sense. All the most logical scientific reasons can be brought forward, which he will always and in any case refuse, supporting absurd theories varying from planetary plots to the non-existence of Covid-19 ironically called “pandemenza”, with no respect for the living who have been saved and for the memory of all those who have died and their families still suffering from the loss of their loved ones.

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However, the anti-vaccinist has an absurd answer that is always ready: does not deny that there have been several million deaths around the world, denies that they died from Covid-19, because according to him we have no proof. Needless to remind him of the 793 died in a single day on 21 March 2021 and the sad line of military trucks carrying the bodies out of Bergamo where there were no more burial and cremation sites, because the anti-vaccinist has a ready answer for this too: "It has not been proven that they died of Covid-19 because the autopsies were not performed". Faced with a similar response based on granitic illogical and anti-scientific beliefs, it can perhaps be explained that it is not possible to carry out autopsies on the bodies of a similar number of deceased in a moment of unprecedented emergency such as the one we experienced in 2020, with the hospitals exploding and the medical staff at the end of their strength? Or that maybe, rather than saving the lives of the living, autopsies had to be done on the dead? Or that perhaps the memory of doctors over 80 who have returned to service has been lost because, starting with doctors, the medical staff had been knocked out by the virus which had primarily affected doctors and para-doctors? Explaining all this is unfortunately useless, precisely because the antivax has an irrational denial answer ready for anything, while the pseudo-Catholic antivax even more and even worse. The one on the one hand, the others on the other hand, they connect to their trusted conspiracy sites and blogs and drink anything and everything like geese that have been given grains of salt in food.

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To these subjects impossible to scratch in their radical opinions, I have tried to recount certain sad experiences I had as a priest? Yup, I did it, narrating, for example, that he entered an intensive care unit with all the highest cautions because he was a doctor friend, 52 years of age, was at high risk of mortality. And as a desire, knowing that he is close to death, he asked about me. His colleagues made an exception, for this little man both the place and above all the name of the hospital. I didn't really go inside, but covered in overalls, with mask, gloves and eye visor, I saw him half a meter beyond the glass. From the inside, the nurses pushed the trundle bed up to the glass and one of the two activated the speakerphone of her mobile phone from the inside, I did the same with mine. I smiled at my friend and told him: «You want to ask the almighty and merciful God in your heart for your sins?». He whispered twice: «… and and …". Raising my hand in front of the glass I recited: «Ego, Faculty which the Apostolic See, And I grant remission of sin. In the Name of the Father, and sons, and of the Holy Spirit» (For the faculties conferred on me by the Apostolic See I grant you the remission of all your sins …). While then I started to recite: «During the sacred mysteries of our redemption, almighty God release you pay for all present and future life, may lead to the age-during, and to open the gates of the joys of the garden,». He began to roll his eyes and turn cyanotic. The nurses pushed the bed back into its position and I saw nothing but the backs of the two and three other members of the medical staff who came running.. When after a few minutes they separated from him, one of them turned to me shaking his head. At that point I saw my friend lying on the bed with his eyes upset and his mouth wide open. It was dead, on the other side of the glass, suffocated.

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I told this episode to some antivax who thrives on conspiracies and who jokes about “pandemenza” of Covid-19? Of course, I did it, but with these results: one answered me stating with great certainty and certainty that this was proven proof that people had been killed with the intubations, because if they hadn't given them artificial ventilation they wouldn't have died. Another replied that those were deaths deliberately caused to create a great socio-political instability and to put us all under control with a carpet vaccination.. I avoid going further with the absurd answers that were given to me, above all, devoid of human respect for the living and the dead. What scientific training these people had? From where they got their granite certainties? Simple, they jump from blog to blog, between conspiracies and anti-scientific theories, without anyone being able to scratch them, that's where they get their security. Have I ever advised them to view the Official site of the Ministry of Health or that of Medicines Agency? Of course yes, but for the antivax the only truths lie in the dangerous declarations of that scoundrel of Stefano Montanari and of that Italian shame of Antonio Pappalardo, who finished from his post as a retired general of the Carabinieri sent to trial for insulting the Head of State. This is the sad moral of the story: it is useless to talk to certain people, invite them to reason or to listen to the opinions of the experts who, far from being infallible, they certainly know more than antivax without any scientific training, because in any case they will continue to feed on buffaloes on social media. Talking to them is therefore a waste of time which involves two different efforts: first the necessary effort is made to get angry, then the necessary effort is made to calm down.

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The neurotic relationship is interesting of these people when they search the internet, where they find only and exclusively what they want to find in support of their opinions, everything else does not exist. They ruthlessly criticize virologists - it goes without saying without having scientific tools to do so -, accusing them of being servants of the occult powers or on the payroll of the strong ones and needless to say of the pharmaceutical multinationals, but none of these antivaxes have ever read their scientific articles, the statistics reported or listened to their lectures. Antivax has created a closed world from which it supports and shamelessly spreads anti-science, criticizing science with crude anti-scientific methods, all after refusing to read, listen and evaluate the reasons that science brings, because his world ranges precisely between Stefano Montanari and Antonio Pappalardo, the two poisonous subjects I mentioned earlier.

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Try to reason with an antivax it is like wanting to talk about respect for different religious cultures with an Islamist fundamentalist from Isis. At first it was thought that antivaxes should be treated with empathy, that is to say good-naturedly teased and just as good-naturedly ridiculed to try to induce them to take note of how bizarre and outside any scientific criterion their beliefs were. It was a mistake though, it would have been enough to ask some expert psychiatrist for guidance to take note that the fanatic possessed by political fanaticism, or worse still religious or pseudo-religious, besides not possessing an ironic and humorous vein, he is completely devoid of self-irony. As the only point of reference he has only the convictions that he has formed and about which he does not intend to discuss, except to become violent and aggressive.

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I use myself as an example remembering that by training I am a dogmatic theologian and a scholar of the history of dogma. It is obvious that for me dogmas are the founding pillars of our faith. But I have never had a problem dealing with people and scholars who consider the dogmas to be pure and simple human inventions., built and then defined by intelligent people, or entire assemblies of intelligent people - starting with the first great Council of Nicaea of ​​the year 325 - in order to keep the system upright the Catholic faith that certain non-believing scholars, an atheist, they consider elaborated at the table. So that Christianity had the success it enjoyed starting from the fourth century thanks to the Emperor Constantine, who in his own way was largely its creator, not just the advocate for purely political interests. In the face of this and more, because I am theologian and many of my confreres who are theological priests, we never had a problem having these exchanges? On the contrary, almost always mutual esteem and also beautiful human friendships between very different people were born, even if some believe and others deny your belief. Everything happened and continued to happen for the simple fact that on both sides there has never been a closed, obtuse and narrow-minded fundamentalist attitude. Antivax, on the other hand, is the paradigm of the closed person, obtuse and narrow-minded who structures her subjective feeling on forms of dangerous psychological integralism.

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Why us Fathers de The Island of Patmos we immediately got vaccinated our turn has just come? There are two main reasons: the first, because science has indicated the vaccine as the only possible remedy to stem or otherwise limit the effects of the virus. And none of us have scientific knowledge and skills to be able to say that science is wrong, so we followed, as everyone should do, the council of specialists and men of science. The second one, because as pastors in the care of souls and as theologians we have and live internally and externally, in substance and form, a deep sense of responsibility towards mankind. Request: science and men of science, they can make mistakes? Of course, it has happened several times and will happen in the future as well, But, if we really want to grant the benefit of human error, better to grant it to science and to men of science who seek to save human lives, rather than giving certain benefits to arrogant ignoramuses lacking the basic foundations of certain medical sciences. And this is called logic, it's called common sense, that almost absent in ideological antivaxes and unfortunately also in an increasingly consistent slice of the population.

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If you cannot reason with antivaxes, then how can you interact with them, scientifically established that the only system to reduce damage from Covid-19 is the vaccination of the entire population, whatever they may say? The problem is legal as far as the secular state is concerned, moral regarding our Catholic faith.

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Let's start with the secular state: we have seen groups of exalted antivaxes shouting «freedom, freedom!»On the streets to claim their" right "to say no to the vaccine. The first question that needs to be asked is the following: for these people, what is freedom? Let's proceed with the examples: by chance we want to indict a couple who decides to have sexual intercourse on a crowded beach or on the bench in a public place for lewd acts in a public place? They do it because they love each other and for this reason they freely decide to make love, it is their right to love each other and make love, or not? How can it exist in the 2021 a system so retrograde and puritanical that it dares to call “obscene acts” the freedom that two people have to love each other? So it is easy to say: the article 527 of the Criminal Code it should not simply be decriminalized, but just abolished as a figure of crime. As you can see, freedom is a concept in which everything can be enclosed, from the right of a couple to copulate in a public place to the absolute and indisputable right of the woman to abort a child, to follow with the equally absolute and indisputable right to practice euthanasia. All those who over time, in various countries of the world, they wanted to transform human life, his own but above all that of others, in an available good, they always did it by shouting two words: "Rights" and "freedoms". Obviously, in our speech, neither abortion nor euthanasia are in question, but health understood as a collective interest. The article 32 of the Constitution of the Italian Republic is very clear:

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"The Republic protects health as a fundamental right of the individual and as a collective interest, and guarantees free care to the indigent ".

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In a pandemic situation, people can harm the protection of the health of the community because for their purely irrational reasons, anti-scientific and ideological reject vaccination? The same article 32 however, he continues to specify:

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«Nobody can be obliged to a specific medical treatment if not by law. The law cannot in any case violate the limits imposed by respect for the human person ".

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Our Constitution is clear without misunderstanding in indicating that health is a collective good, but that at the same time no one can be forced to a specific health treatment, except in accordance with the law. They are both two fixed and rigid points. And this is precisely the problem: it must be established clearly and precisely that those who refuse vaccination for their purely irrational reasons, anti-scientific and ideological, or even for forms of rooted and invincible ignorance, they can actually cause serious damage to the entire community. However, everything must be proved in a very rigorous way in the relationship of cause and effect, enough to be able to invoke the obligation by virtue of the fact that no liberal country, democratic and truly civil has never conceded that the misunderstood subjective idea of ​​"freedom" can cause serious damage to the entire community. Personally - but my thinking, of course, it is an opinion that leaves the time it finds -, I believe that in the current situation all the legal elements could be used to impose the mandatory vaccination. As I repeat, however, everything must be clarified in the point of law in the most rigorous way possible, thus avoiding giving life, if not, to a dangerous precedent under which the permanence of a terminally ill patient or the birth of a child with Down syndrome can be declared unhealthy tomorrow.

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Using the good one as an example paterfamilias, we could say that the State is a bit like a parent who, having the duty to protect a very large family, cannot in any way allow some to cause serious harm to all the others. Certainly the State cannot act like that weak and spineless father who tries in every way to persuade an unreasonable and rebellious son not to harm others with a pained smile on his face., especially when this does not consider this a damage but rather the exercise of his free right. One can therefore warn him, twice, but at the third he will exercise his power in a coercive way and will force him to do what he must do in order not to harm everyone else.

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In a state like ours, mostly formed by politicians hungry for votes like voracious bulimics, ready to forget the Antonio Gramsci, the Palmiro Togliatti and the Enrico Berlinguer who have characterized their glorious past as the Italian Left, to bow to a poor illiterate like that certain Influence Lombard which moves twelve million followers. With, on the other side, a so-called populist Right that measures the menstrual temperature in the uterus of the square to try to understand how to please it and thus increase the electoral consensus in the future, someone sees a state on the horizon that can act with the wisdom of the good paterfamilias?

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I am truly amazed by our President of the Republic and of all the politicians who invite the novax fringes to a sense of responsibility, because it would be like asking a blind person to read the road signs or a deaf person to appreciate the voice of soprano Maria Callas. This is why I do not understand why the highest office of the state and politicians with common sense waste time uselessly through these exhortations that, as they say, they can have the only effect of making these fringes of people even more irrational. In my humble opinion, decisive legislative action is needed. It is not enough to say that without green pass it will not be possible to enter public places, therefore be subjected to a whole series of limitations. More is needed: it is necessary to establish with a precise and decisive decree law that people opposed to vaccination for ideological-irrational reasons, if they contract the virus in a severe form, they will have to pay all health costs from the first to the last, even because, a sick person admitted to intensive care, it costs the national community of public taxpayers 2.000 euro per day of hospitalization. Such a decision would also be useful to avoid other possible and not at all improbable social injustices, for example that a person to whom it is not possible to administer the vaccine due to his serious and complex diseases, is infected with the antivax which is then hospitalized in intensive care at the expense of the community, while for the patient who could not be given the vaccine there will be no place for hospitalization. Antivax will come out of intensive care and will continue to talk about conspiracies of the strong powers, if anything it will also denounce the doctors who with the excuse of “pandemenza” caused damage to his internal organs, while the patient who could not be given the vaccine will die, because the antivax has stolen his place in intensive care.

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These irrational ideologues must be asked and demanded consistency, if they contract the virus of “pandemenza”, there should be two solutions: or they treat themselves with their much exalted alternative medicine, with naturopathy, homeopathy and i cocktail of amino acids and vitamins, or else they pay the consequences of their cry of "freedom, freedom!»Paying all hospital expenses. Request: you can, morally, deny treatment and ICU admission to a person who cannot pay for it? I think yes, indeed I believe that it would not only be possible but also opportune and decisive, In this regard, it would be enough to recall how the season of kidnappings in Calabria and Sardinia was put to an end. Blocking assets from the families of the seized and making it impossible to pay the ransoms. Unfortunately, some kidnapped never returned home or even their corpses were found, however, the season of kidnappings ended definitively. Forever, Unfortunately, not only is it lawful, but it is even desirable and opportune to sacrifice a human life in certain particular situations to save a thousand others from the risk of death. I understood this apparently inhuman and cruel principle in the mid-nineties through the story of an elderly Jewish woman, mother of four children, that from the attic where she was hiding with the other three children she saw her eldest teenage son in the street, released for supplies - because being a teenager aroused less suspicion - captured by the S.S. in the winter of 1943. What he should have done? Running in the street screaming “give me back my son!”, thereby also capturing the other three, or she ends up being captured too and leaving the other three children alone, already fatherless? Minds that live on passions and express judgments dictated by pure emotions, what logical solution, rational and realistic would give in front of such a case?

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We conclude now with the worst: the novax who think they are Catholic and who claim the right to be Catholic in their own way, as indeed is typical in all forms of expression of the fundamentalists. First of all, what does it mean:

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"Precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of his faithful"? [Shall 115, 15].

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It can mean many things, starting from the fact that no one, through selfishness and ideological erroneous beliefs it can put the lives of the faithful at risk, so precious in the eyes of the Lord. It's still:

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«Give me intelligence and I will observe your Law; I will practice it with all my heart. Guide me in the path of your commandments, since in it I find my joy " [Shall 119, 34-35].

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How these words fit together with who, like the pseudo-catholic fondmentalist antivax, instead, he refuses intelligence to raise the illogical foolishness that he has decided to harbor within himself to the law? Even the last of the pseudo-Catholic fundamentalists converted to the modern pagan religion of anti-vaccinism - except for feeling a hard and pure integral Catholic - is able to recite as a spiel the phrase imprinted in the Book of Leviticus and then also reported by the mouth of Christ God in the Holy Gospels:

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«You won't hate your brother in your heart; scold your neighbor as well, but do not burden yourself with sin because of him. You will not take revenge and you will not hold a grudge against the children of your people, but you will love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord " [Lv 19, 17-18].

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The fanatic Catholic converted to the pagan religion of anti-vaccination, the words of the Holy Scriptures and the Psalms is not really able to receive them. If he then reads them, unfortunately he cannot understand them. The brother is undoubtedly our fellow man in flesh and blood, but it is also a large container within which all kinds of brotherhood are enclosed: brother is the medical and paramedical staff who carried out their work in a great time of health crisis. Brother are the virologists who instead of going on television - whatever people say, because I met them in the Mediaset studios and I spoke to them several times -, they would have preferred to stay in their hospitals and research laboratories. Hardly though, the National Association of Hairdressers or that of Beauticians could provide information in a moment of pandemic emergency, the National Order of Lawyers, that of Engineers or that of Architects. And if anything,, to go for information, them who were the only ones at that time qualified to do it, they sacrificed the little time they had left to spend an hour or two with their wives and children.

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In the writings, in messages, in the declarations of Catholic antivaxes there is an intolerable sarcastic contempt that denotes an almost total lack of Christian charity, it is enough to read certain blogs or online magazines to understand and touch their lowest human level. Words steeped in rancor, full of threats and moral judgments that are Christianly neither in heaven nor on earth.

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"Love your neighbor as yourself" it means first of all to protect and safeguard it, because there is no subjective reason, based on emotions based on anti-science, in the name of which one can cause great harm to one's fellowmen, starting with the refusal of vaccination.

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As a citizen of the Italian Republic, priest and theologian I affirm than to refuse vaccination at this time, after the best knowledge of modern world science has indicated it as the only remedy to avoid, or at least to greatly reduce the damage caused by Covid-19, it is morally unacceptable, that is to say sinful, as a sin against charity. And it is because the entire Old and New Testament narrative tells me exactly the opposite of what some poor wretches write, qualifying themselves as "true Catholics" and as "true Catholic thought".

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Thank God I am not a member of the Italian Episcopal Conference, if I were, I would not hesitate to propose to all the other brother bishops the adoption of a drastic decision: without green-pass you do not enter the church. Love of neighbor and our decisive and total refusal of all forms of idolatry impose this on us, including the modern pagan antivax religion based on the cult of an unspecified alternative medicine, of naturopathy and homeopathy. Subjects you can see people who die of suffocation from lack of breathing, but that with no respect for the dead and the living they will tell you that it is not true, which is all one “pandemenza”. It's true, it's a “pandemenza”, to be exact, the “pandemenza” ideological-irrational and unscientific antivax, unaware that the demented suffer from “pandemenza” they do exist, are they!

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The Catholic has a moral duty to get vaccinated out of a sense of deep responsibility towards mankind, because mankind is his neighbor that he must not only respect and protect, but that he must love as himself. What hard to make blind and obtuse subjects understand that they based their anti-scientific ideology first and foremost on the blatant disregard for the other, whether it is the individual or the entire world scientific community. And similar attitudes, for a Catholic, they are truly and deeply sinful.

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the Island of Patmos, 29 July 2021

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In the final note, I clarify: in the era of digital illiteracy, a large number of people, in addition to not having the ability to understand what they read, they have difficulty understanding the meaning of words whose root and etymology they ignore. And after having read the title and subtitle of an articulate writing like this one proposed for the attention of our readers, the digital illiterate, read only the title and perhaps the subtitle, begins to go crazy on social media offending and attributing to the Author what he never thought, said and written. I think I have sufficiently explained that certain subjects are irrecoverable because they are closed to even elementary mechanisms of reasoning. For the sake of clarity I specify that I have never supported the obligation to vaccinate, but only supported and clarified, from a legal point of view and from a moral point of view, the duty to vaccinate. And for anyone who knows the Italian language - except for digital illiterates -, the words “duty” e “obligation” they have two different meanings in the sphere of law and in the sphere of Catholic doctrine, therefore two different ways of application.

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Dear Readers,

please read the article written by the president of our editions [WHO vedere], in which we had asked for support for the fund of my court costs after I was made the subject of a lawsuit that, however unfounded, however, it requires me to proceed with my defense in court and therefore obliges me to spend money on legal fees. The logic is clear: hit one to frighten them and put a thousand of them to bed. So far we have collected almost the necessary.

For this I thank those who have so far sent a contribution for the provision for court costs and to whom I sent a message of thanks in private. Unfortunately, I have not been able to answer some of them, because along with their donation they did not send a message with their email, so it was impossible even and only to thank them. I thank them so much in these lines, sorry for not being able to send him a message.

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