The site of the magazine The Island of Patmos reopens today renewed and with good news: Jorge Facio Lynx, President of our Editions, is an Italian citizen

- Actuality -

THE MAGAZINE SITE THE ISLAND OF PATMOS REOPENS TODAY RENEWED AND WITH GOOD NEWS: JORGE FACIO LYNX, PRESIDENT OF OUR EDITIONS, IS AN ITALIAN CITIZEN

Without the closeness and the precious collaboration of this young man gifted with great human qualities, morals, spiritual and speculative, Fathers de The Island of Patmos they would never have been able to achieve what they have achieved together over the years.

 

Author
The Fathers of the Island of Patmos

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Dear Readers,

25 January 2022, Jorge Facio Lynx, president of the Editions The Island of Patmos, signs the notification of the Decree of the President of the Republic granting Italian citizenship in the offices of the Prefecture

The Fathers thank the webmaster Manuela Luzzardi who after several weeks of work has renewed the site of this magazine opened on 20 October 2014. From 1 January 2017 al 30 December 2021 The Island of Patmos It exceeded 100 millions of visits. Our average is equal to 20 million visits a year for a flow of about 60.000 visits a day. In November 2018 the homonymous ones were born Editions The island of Patmos, founded by Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo and directed by Jorge Facio Lince. Behind the editorial results of our work there is also his creative ingenuity, his commitment and his great work.

 

Dr.. Jorge Facio Lynx, born in Medellin Antioquia (30.10.1983) from a paternal family of Italian origin and a maternal family of Spanish origin, is a consecrated lay student of Father Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo, that he met in Rome in 2008 and with whom he has lived and collaborated together since May 2011. After the equivalent classical high school carried out in the Catholic school of the Archdiocese of Medellin, he obtained the master in classical literature at the University of Salamanca, a degree in philosophy in Rome with a specialization in the metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas and a degree in theology from the Pontifical Lateran University. Refined and cultured philosopher, theologian of profound and solid doctrine, he is also a scholar and expert in historical-artistic subjects for which he has been making his contribution to the activities of the art historian for years Licia Oddo, Student and collaborator of the art critic Paolo Levi, with which he edited several art catalogs for Mondadori Editions.

 

Without the precious collaboration of this young man endowed with great human qualities, morals, spiritual and speculative, Fathers de The Island of Patmos they would never have been able to achieve what they have achieved together over the years.

 

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We make you participate that the 25 January Jorge was summoned to the Prefecture where he was notified of the decree of the President of the Republic conferring Italian citizenship. The 15 February will take the oath of rite, accompanied by all of us.

 

To Jorge we express gratitude deep for the great work done over the years, happy and honored to have acquired a fellow citizen like him, of which we know well and in depth the valuable qualities.

the Island of Patmos, 31 January 2021

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«You will know the truth and the truth will set you free» (GV 8,32),
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The island of Patmos will close for a few days to shortly offer a surprise, also hoping for the help of our readers

 

THE ISLAND OF PATMOS WILL CLOSE A FEW DAYS TO SHORTLY OFFER A SURPRISE, ALSO HOPING FOR THE PRECIOUS HELP OF OUR READERS

In the last five years (2017-2021), we have passed i 100 millions of visits, equivalent to 20 million visits per year, 1.700.000 visits per month, 60.000 visits a day. We would never have expected such results when the 20 October 2014 we went online with this magazine of ours.

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Author
The Fathers of the Island of Patmos

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Dear Readers,

The webmaster Manuela Luzzardi, this “Mother” from The Island of Patmos, creator and editor of the site of our magazine and designer of the new site presto on-line

The Island of Patmos has entered its 9th year of activity, since the 20 October 2014 the site of our magazine went online. An idea born from Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo and built together with Antonio Love (1938-2020) and Giovanni Cavalcoli, still member of the scientific committee of our editions.

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Everything was possible thanks to the so-called offering of the poor widow [cf.. LC 12, 41-44], because our Association set up for cultural-religious purposes is financed only with offers from readers and proceeds thanks to the commitment of the president of the editions Jorge Facio Lince, ours webmaster Manuela Luzzardi who also takes care of all the graphics of the covers and books, of our precious editorial proofreader Ettore Ripamonti, to follow with the care of the book promotion edited by Licia Oddo, in addition to us Fathers who carry out our publishing activity as editors and writers.

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We never would have imagined the success we have enjoyed. We did not take long to notice when between the end of 2015 and early 2016 we began to have problems with the server which began to freeze due to the high number of visits. Like this, always thanks to the help of the readers, we managed to rent a dedicated server on one of the safest American platforms, but also expensive (A2 Hosting Inc. Miami – Florida).

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some titles of the Editions the Island of Patmos published between 2019 and the 2021

The 30 November 2018 the homonymous ones came to life Editions The island of Patmos, which offer high quality content works to a so-called “niche” audience, printing and graphics.

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In the last five years (2017-2021), we have passed i 100 millions of visits, equivalent to 20 million visits per year, 1.700.000 visits per month, 60.000 visits a day.

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After eight years of activity it was time to completely overhaul the site hosting this magazine, which required a great deal of effort, especially for the large archive memories and the various services and programs we use for our work.

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We usually ask readers for a contribution once a year, when we have to pay the dedicated server and renew the various subscriptions. This time we ask you for help to cover the costs of the new website of the magazine. We know everyone is asking, even the last of the amateur blogs dedicated to gossip o al science fiction conspiracy apply for contributions. But, those who intend to donate or support a work, rather than just saying “… But everyone asks”, will surely be able to evaluate and distinguish who “plays” by those who work hard like us to spread the culture of the Catholic faith and correct information.

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Friday 28 January this site will be blacked out and unreachable for the time necessary to put the new one online, approximately two or three days. Meanwhile, we are certain and confident to receive your free offers during these days to support this expense made to offer our readers services of ever-increasing quality.. Including people with disabilities who cannot read, in addition to our printable version, we have also made available the audio-reading of the articles. And all this has cash costs, as well capita, in addition to our tireless work which is all free the amor Dei.

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At the bottom of this page you can find the connection to the comfortable and safe system PayPal and the current account number de The Island of Patmos at branch no 59 of Rome of the Banca Popolare di Milano (BPM).

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We are truly counting on your generosity. So see you soon on the new website of the magazine The Island of Patmos completely renovated thanks to our work and your help.

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the Island of Patmos, 21 January 2021

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«You will know the truth and the truth will set you free» [GV 8,32],
but bring, spread and defend the truth not only of
risks but also the costs. Help us supporting this Island
with your offers by clicking on the logo of the secure Paypal system below:









or you can use our bank account:
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Subsidiary n. 59 From Rome

payable to Editions The island of Patmos

IBAN IT 74R0503403259000000301118

CODICE SWIFT: BAPPIT21D21
in this case, send us an email warning, because the bank
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The curious dystopia of Bishop Giacomo Cirulli that reminds us a lot “a lot nice” of Verdone who in the newspaper Avvenire blames the no-vax priests, the faithful traditionalists and the political enemies of the Pontiff

- Pastoral care -

THE CURIOUS DISTOPIA OF BISHOP GIACOMO CIRULLI WHICH MUCH REMINDERS US A "BEAUTIFUL SACK" OF VERDONE THAT IN THE DAILY FUTURE BLAME THE NO-VAX PRIESTS, THE FAITHFUL TRADITIONALISTS AND THE POLITICAL ENEMIES OF THE PONTIFF

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The bishops who are currently thundering and threatening some members of their clergy to proceed with their suspension from the exercise of the priestly ministry, in case of non-vaccination, when they saw some of their parish priests hugging Marco Cappato after signing at the banquet that collected the signatures for the referendum in favor of euthanasia, how they threatened these authentic shames of the Catholic priesthood to proceed against them with canonical penalties? How many, among those priests who have affixed their signature to such a proposal for referendum, have been suspended with a canonical disciplinary measure from the exercise of the sacred ministry?

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Author
Ivano Liguori, Ofm. Capp.

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Yesterday, 16 January, in the daily newspaper of the bishops Future an article signed by Gianni Cardinale has appeared which collects the outburst of the bishop of the diocese of Teano-Calvi, Alife-Caiazzo S. AND. Mons. Giacomo Cirulli. The prelate, as sorrowful as the king of Samaria Akhab whose vineyard Neboth refused [cf.. 1 Re 21, 1-16], opens the cataracts of his heart to the journalist of the bishops' newspaper. Thus we come to part of his immense pain that in these days the faithful and priests no-vax they procured him by reacting to the provision - he says of mere common sense - which consisted in banning some priests, deacons and lay ministers from the distribution of the Eucharist to the faithful of his diocese as guilty of not having vaccinated [you see who, who].

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The bishop, gemente e piangente, motivates his stance as the logical consequence of the serious worsening of the Italian pandemic situation but above all as conforming to the line of thought of the Italian Bishops' Conference and the words of the reigning Pontiff who considers vaccination as an act of love. In short, it almost seems to witness the remaking of Carlo Verdone's film A lot nice in which the character of Ruggero can only express his triumph: «Love, love, love!».

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But we are really sure about the resistances complained by the bishop are to be ascribed solely to the opposition of priests and faithful insensitive to such a beautiful and gratuitous act of love? I do not believe. Beyond all that can be said and thought about the issue of vaccines and the Italian pandemic management by both the State and the Church, what still seems to escape Bishop Cirulli - as I was able to clarify in one of mine previous article - essentially consists in the improvised modus operandi to paternally follow the whole question as one would expect from a bishop. Indeed, a different style would be expected from a successor of the Apostles, certainly more far-sighted, I would dare to say almost as a statesman of the spirit who is capable of looking at the present but essentially at the future and at the future consequences that are already determined today. Because all this will end sooner or later and Msgr. Cirulli, one tomorrow, he will still find himself bishop of that portion of the Church whose children have been mistreated with restrictive measures. What attitude will one have to expect from these priestly sons, deacons, ministers and laity? With what courage will he still be able to look at them without feeling red or with what embarrassment he will be able to bear their gaze veiled by a wounded trust? Look of souls destined for Paradise and not just bodies to be treated, this responsibility which must be held accountable to Christ the Good Shepherd, who took care of the bodies without forgetting the souls.

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Above all, a question is required, always premising, as already done in my previous article, that the absolute majority of the Italian clergy has undergone vaccination, including myself. This is the question, however, as usual, it is destined to remain unanswered: the bishops who are currently thundering and threatening some members of their clergy to proceed with their suspension from the exercise of the priestly ministry, in case of non-vaccination, when they saw some of their parish priests embraced a Marco Cappato after having signed at the banquet that collected the signatures for the referendum in favor of euthanasia, how they threatened these authentic shames of the Catholic priesthood to proceed against them with canonical penalties? How many, among those priests who have affixed their signature to such a proposal for referendum, have been suspended with a canonical disciplinary measure from the exercise of the sacred ministry? Some battle bishops tell us and answer: it is more serious than a frightened - perhaps even ignorant - priest afraid to get vaccinated, or is it more serious than a priest, after having just celebrated Holy Mass on Sunday, go out on the church square, sign in favor of the referendum on euthanasia, photograph yourself with Marco Cappato and then post the photo on your public profile social? Tell us, certain zealous bishops: of the two, which is the most serious? But most of all: how many of the priests who have done this - and there have been several around Italy [cf.. who, who, who] ―, they were removed from the parishes? Because to us it turns out the exact opposite: their respective bishops ignored it, they have not taken any measures and these priests continue to be parish priests. If I want I can add even more: one of these parish priests who signed in favor of referendum on euthanasia, a few weeks later he posted on the door of the parish church the notice that to participate in the sacred functions it was mandatory to GreenPass. Maybe, if for so much zeal his bishop even took him as an example to those very few priests who are frightened by the vaccine, but to whom it would never cross their minds to go and sign in favor of referendum on euthanasia?

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It is not my intention to criticize common sense and the reasonableness of the vaccine as a method currently in use to stem Covid-19 infection, indeed I go back to repeating, for the avoidance of doubt, that we Fathers de The Island of Patmos we all underwent the vaccination. Not only: to those who asked us for guidance we have always replied by premising that we are not specialists in the specific and delicate sector but that we are, even if it is not, common sense leads us to suggest the use of the only system that we currently have available, which is vaccination, to read too, wanting, as a sense of responsibility and respect for ourselves and for others. And as, on certain hot topics, the clarifications are never too many, then I clarify further. When I announced to Father Ariel this morning that I had just sent this new article to the editorial office, his answer was: «Right now I'm going to the vaccination center because after having done the III dose the 10 January I did not receive the SMS with the code needed to print the GreenPass. As soon as I return, we will assemble your item ". In short, he didn't tell me he was going to a demonstration no-vax, how Father Gabriel would not say it and how I would not say it. Having said this, however, it is good to specify that "good" and "bad" Catholics do not evaluate them on the basis of vaccination - which is opportune and undoubtedly necessary -, but on other moral and pastoral grounds. For example we are required to consider "bad", indeed very bad Catholics, those who publicly declare themselves in favor of abortion, the birth control pill, the abortion pill, to marriage between same-sex couples, or who call sweet death through euthanasia "mercy" because they say it is "cruel" to make a dying person suffer. And all this, some bad Catholics, they state this publicly in the name of a distorted and aberrant idea of ​​"Christian love". Those are the bad Catholics for us, indeed bad Catholics. Not those who, undoubtedly mistaken for weakness, fragility or ignorance, but also for the avalanche of contradictory news, of proclamations and denials, of changes of direction and ideas [cf.. who], everything always and strictly speaking without anyone ever admitting "we made a mistake in some evaluation", today they are terrified of being vaccinated.

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Having clarified this I continue: what I believe I can criticize in the legitimate exercise of the freedom of the children of God is the political style of dealing with these resistances to the vaccine that must not and cannot find acceptance in the Catholic Church. If you continue at this rate you do not want to hear reasons, gangrenous in the well-known clerical stubbornness, the only result will be that of cracking the filial trust of the faithful towards their bishops by making that very poor remnant of paternal authority that the Italian episcopate still retains but which seems willing to sell off with every care as soon as possible.

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With surprise we learn from the article that Bishop Cirulli regrets being attacked by Keyboard lions and which has received criticism, threats and insults from many fronts to such an extent as to push Digos to intervene in his rescue - without his having made any request - paying attention to the subversives. So I wonder, distancing oneself from the troublemakers and the disadvantaged who give free rein to violence without having the right logical arguments: It is possible that no one in the episcopal curia has suggested to the prelate to act differently, for example in a less reckless way? No one who felt obliged to make the bishop give up from a sure bad figure and from a media pillory whose sole responsibility can only be he alone?

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I say this because in the continuation of the interview with Future the most imaginative arguments worthy of the best Orwellian despotic conspiracy are reported as reasons for the media pillory. The bishop launches into describing theidentikit of the Catholic no-vax on the basis of what has been done by the newspaper The Republic in recent days [you see who], It is told: "I have the impression that there is a schism taking place", "I was able to understand that these are connected people who belong to a traditionalist world in opposition to the magisterium of Pope Francis". In short, the profile of the cattono-vax is outlined as one lobby well-organized schismatic, ultra-traditionalist, anti-bergogliana, all lace, lace and lace and - I would add - certainly of a conservative matrix and perhaps with right-wing sympathies. All this, however, is tragically and sadly false, because people frightened by the vaccine do not have a precise political connotation, as they do not belong only to the world of Catholic "gloomy traditionalism". Fear is a completely transversal phenomenon. Therefore, the so-called no-vax O anti-vax, we find them in politics on the far right as well as the far left, in the ranks of the most pushed Catholic progressivism as well as in those of the most radical Catholic traditionalism. And who does not see this, it can only give a completely distorted vision of reality, stating that fear, or if we want ignorance in the etymological sense of the term, it only belongs to a very specific category.

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Dear readers, understand why the credibility of the Church today it appears to be at an all-time low? If these are the strong arguments, it's easy to see why people no longer take us seriously but laugh at us. If everything is summed up in oppositional ideological issues then we are doing politics, propaganda, loyalty and party membership. As did the premier Mario Draghi during the last press conference that illustrated the latest anti Covid decree, also Msgr. Cirulli said that in essence the responsibility lies with the unvaccinated - be they consecrated or lay - thus facilitating divisions, creating suspicion, giving twine to the informers, stimulating tensions that will struggle to heal over time.

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And if maybe two years ago, in obedience to the words of the Pope and the Italian Episcopal Conference, the prelate would have been happy to hug a Chinese and eat an inclusive spring roll, today he would be careful not to hug a priest no-vax as a sign of relaxation and the resumption of ecclesial communion. What to say more, these are the times when everyone wishes to appear as Socratic philosophers, everyone feels strong in the assumption of the son of Sofroniscus who says that the rules are respected even when they are unjust and therefore we must do what they command us to do, even if we don't like them "either you eat this soup or you throw yourself out the window" sang Nino Ferrer.

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However, they forget that Socrates he chose to drink hemlock not on the basis of unjust laws but on a manipulated legal system, unable to respect the spirit of the law and the legislator who must provide for fair exceptions and derogations to save the integrity of man and his spirit from dangerous totalitarian drifts.

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Perhaps the next outburst of Msgr. Cirulli it will be entrusted directly to the newspaper The Republic and it will be there that we will learn from the Vatican spokesman Eugenio Scalfari that in some of his imaginative private dialogues with the Pope, vaccination will be one of the essential elements for the validity of the ministerial priesthood and the administration of the Sacraments and all this in order to have more «Love, love, love!». Of course, at this point of the narration it would not spoil the practical sense of the old communist dedicated to the house and family played by the legendary Mario Brega in the film A lot nice. Mario, widower but still capable of sacrificing himself for his only son Ruggero, does not understand the excessive «Love, love, love!» in his son's life experience, so much so that he was taken for a fascist by Fiorenza, whereupon rising to his feet he exclaims: «To me bundle? I bundle? A zoccolè, I don't know’ communist like that, to! So’ communist soììì !!!».

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there, dear readers, we are not yet accustomed to such levels of practical common sense and perhaps we will never get there, at least among the pastors of the Catholic Church.

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Laconi, 18 January 2021

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THE LATEST BOOK BY FATHER IVANO LIGUORI IS IN DISTRIBUTION

YOU CAN BUY IT WHO

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«You will know the truth and the truth will set you free» [GV 8,32],
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Gabriele Giordano M. Scardocci
Of the Order of Preachers
Presbyter and Theologian

( Click on the name to read all its articles )
Father Gabriele

The "Apostolic Catholic Church". How many words we use and recite without knowing their meaning? At the roots of the concept of "Apostolic"

— Theologica —

THE "APOSTOLIC CATHOLIC CHURCH". HOW MANY WORDS WE USE AND RECIT WITHOUT KNOWING THEIR MEANING? AT THE ROOTS OF THE CONCEPT OF "APOSTOLIC"

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It is undoubtedly a mnemonic phrase, that stamped in the part of I believe in which we recite «I believe the one Church, santa, catholic and apostolic ". How many, however, know the true and profound meaning of "apostolic"? This part is explicitly recited in the I believe last, but this does not mean that it has a last place in theological reflection, therefore in the practice of the life of faith.

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Author:
Gabriele Giordano M. Scardocci, o.p.

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PDF print format article

 

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It is undoubtedly a mnemonic phrase, that stamped in the part of I believe in which we recite «I believe the one Church, santa, catholic and apostolic ". How many, however, know the true and profound meaning of "apostolic"? This part is explicitly recited in the I believe last, but this does not mean that it has a last place in theological reflection, therefore in the practice of the life of faith. So last, but not for this last in importance, the note of ecclesial apostolicity builds a bridge between the personal and community aspect of faith. This connotation, indeed, describes the foundation of the community of believers, in a threefold sense:

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  1. The Church is built on the foundation of the apostles [Ef 2,20], the witnesses chosen and sent on mission directly by Christ,
  2. It guards and transmits, with the help of the Holy Spirit who inhabits it from within, the teaching of Christ, the good deposit of faith and the sound words heard by the Apostles;
  3. «Until the return of Christ, the Church continues to be educated, sanctified and guided by the Apostles thanks to their successors in the pastoral mission: the College of Bishops, assisted by priests and united with the Successor of Peter and Supreme Pastor of the Church " [ CCC n. 857].

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In a nutshell these three points they offer an overview of the apostolicity of the Catholic Church. Now we will see them analytically, starting from Sacred Scripture where we find clear references to the presence and choice of Jesus of the Twelve Apostles:

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"Then, called to himself his twelve disciples, gave them the power to drive out unclean spirits and to heal any disease and any infirmity " [Mt 10, 1-4]. The names of the Twelve Apostles are these: the first, Simone called Pietro and Andrea his brother; James of Zebedee and John his brother; Filippo and Bartolomeo; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; Giacomo d’Alfeo and Taddeo; Simon the Canaanite and Judas the Iscariot, the same one who then betrayed him.

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The Evangelist continues:

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«He then went up the mountain, he called to himself those whom he wanted, and they came to him. He appointed Twelve to be with him and also to send them to preach and to have the power to cast out demons [MC 3, 13].

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It's still:

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«In those days he went to the mountain to pray, and spent the night praying to God. When it was day, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve, to whom he also gave the name of apostles " [LC 6, 12].

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The Twelve Disciples are called apostles, the greek ἀπόστολοι (apostles), in Hebrew Messengers (shelichim, plural of delivery person, shaliach, which in both of these languages ​​means literally: sent, because through their ministry Jesus continues his mission. In welcoming the twelve, the whole person of Christ is welcomed, as we read in «Who welcomes you, welcomes me " [Mt 10, 40]. Christ chooses Twelve Apostles precisely. The number of twelve symbolizes universality and refers to the Twelve Tribes of Israel. The greatest novelty in the following of Christ, it consists not so much in the number, as in the fact that it is the teacher who chooses the disciples: while generally in ancient times it was the disciples who chose the teacher from which to draw teachings for the spiritual life. After choosing them, Jesus sends them to preach first throughout the land of Israel and then later to the pagans (defined peoples or gentiles). In this way they begin to pass on and transmit the authentic teaching of Christ. In this way Jesus then forms a college, that is, a stable group of envoys with the permanent mission of transmitting his message and headed by the Apostle Peter. In carrying out this mission, the Holy Spirit gives the apostles all the means and the necessary strength that he needs, through a very special grace: they therefore have the same powers as Christ: the envoys are therefore able to announce and propagate the divine mysteries, to forgive and remit sins and to heal and cast out demons. Furthermore, the Holy Spirit gives him the intelligence to deepen, meditating and announcing the mystery of Christ better.

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Within the group of apostles, we have seen that the presence of the figure of Simon Peter. He is invested with a special role: he is commissioned by Christ as the principle of unity and communion of faith; he is therefore the visible head of the Church; the apostles are to be in communion with him and below him as regards the doctrine of Christ: this, as we shall see, will also apply to the successor of Peter, dad, and to the bishops who are in obedience to him: cum Petro e sub Petro (with Peter and under Peter)

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Let us then deepen the figure of Peter: he is commissioned by Christ to a special mission. It is described in a very important passage of the Gospel:

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«Simon Peter answered: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God ". And Jesus: "Lucky you, Simon son of Jonah, because neither flesh nor blood have revealed it to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you: You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it "". [Mt 16, 16-18].

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Simone, whose name Jesus changed to Peter, he is the first and only to recognize that Christ is the son of God, of the living God. He therefore "anticipated" the other apostles in this act of faith: therefore he is placed by Jesus as head of the apostolic college. Three very special powers are bestowed on Peter, that the other apostles do not possess: first of all he will never fail, because Peter is the visible and stable stone of the community of believers; secondly, he has the power of the keys of the kingdom e, third, the power to untie and bind. By this we mean:

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"The power of the keys designates the authority to govern the house of God, which it is the Church. Jesus, the Good Shepherd [GV 10, 11], confirmed this post after the resurrection: "Feed my sheep" [GV 21, 15-17]. The power to bind and loose indicates the authority to absolve from sins, to pronounce judgments in matters of doctrine and to make disciplinary decisions in the Church. Jesus gave this authority to the Church through the ministry of the Apostles [cf.. Mt 18,18] and particularly of Pietro, the only one to whom he explicitly entrusted the keys of the Kingdom " [cf.. CCC n. 553].

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We traditionally know that Peter was martyred in Rome in 64 after Christ on the Vatican Hill. Previously, he had been imprisoned at the Mamertine prison, very close to the Capitol. Peter therefore, being head of the apostles, in his martyrdom near Rome he also testifies to the primacy of the Roman see over other communities of believers. A primacy that is not one of domination and despotism, but of service and coordination of all the other dioceses and churches around the world. We anticipate an important concept from now on: the Petrine primacy does not want to diminish collegiality, synodality and common and community work: indeed, Peter and his successors are called to guarantee and confer the dignity and authority of all the apostles and their successors, the bishops. In fact, as we will see shortly, the bishops are the successors of the Apostles. Let us then clarify that the successors of Peter are those placed at the head of the Diocese of Rome, or precisely the bishops of Rome. Historically, the bishop of Rome, it is called by a series of names: Pontiff Maximus, Augustus Pontiff, his Holiness, holy Father, Most Holy Father, or with the more famous one of Papa, which according to a historical theory would be the abbreviation of shepherd of the shepherds, shepherd of all shepherds, O father of the poor, father of the poor.

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Returning to the analysis of the figures of the apostles, we know all the apostles, except for Giovanni, died at a very old age, they will be martyred during their missions in the East and in the territory of the Roman Empire. Even from the martyrdom of the apostles, we find confirmation that the purpose of the foundation and the apostolic presence is to bring the whole community to an eschatological and holiness goal; all apostolic work has the purpose of leading everyone to the kingdom of God.

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Whereas the apostles and their first successors (apostolic fathers) martyrs were dying, it was necessary that the message of Jesus be transmitted in any case: for this they chose successors to perpetuate the mission of Christ. Then they conferred the Holy Order of the Episcopate, what kind of consecrated bishops (bishops), with mandate to continue the apostolic mission as successors of the Apostles. In this sense we will also say that the Church receives the profession of faith from the apostles through the successors of those who were the first adherents to the Jesuit movement..

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Now let's try to understand why the bishops, receiving the Holy Order, they become the official successors of the Apostles. If we read in Acts of the Apostles [cf.. 6, 26] we find that the apostles themselves first gave themselves successors with the task of continuing and consolidating the work of evangelization begun by the Apostles. This work is called the Traditio by two ancient writers of Christianity, Tertullian and Irenaeus of Lyons. The Traditio from the Latin it comes from the verb deliver and it implies the action of handing down and transmitting the faith preached by the Apostles; therefore the bishops by divine institution took the place of the apostles as pastors and guides of the ecclesial community. This handover takes place in a very specific act. So, apostolic transmission, it is conferred through the reception of the Sacrament of Orders, through episcopal consecration.

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Let's clarify this passage of the ordination of bishops. Christ instituted the Sacraments, that were not born of human creativity, they are all enclosed in the Revelation and in the Gospels. This is in order to clarify incidentally that certain currents of non-Catholic Christianity, teaching that the Seven Sacraments, or part of them, they are only a human creation that took place after the Emperor Constantine, starting from the 4th century to follow, I am in blatant error, because all the sacraments are of divine institution. Among the Seven Sacraments is the Sacrament of Holy Orders, which is unique, but internally divided into three degrees: episcopate (or fullness of the apostolic priesthood), presbyterate and diaconate. Those who receive this sacrament, in their individual and personal ministry they are called to the mission of leading the whole Church to the common good and to holiness. It is therefore a task, at the same time singular and at the same time communal. The action of conferring Holy Order is called ordination: in it it is Jesus who, acting in person Christi through a bishop, he orders a priest and consecrates him bishop: therefore it confers on the priest the fullness of the apostolic priesthood to carry out this mission. The episcopate is therefore the fullness of the sacrament of Orders because it contains the very source from which the three degrees of the Sacrament of Orders derive. In fact, the bishop is also the one who ordains deacons and priests, and precisely as mentioned above, orders a priest to become a bishop.

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Briefly we will say that the line of succession provides that an apostle, received full powers from Christ to transmit his teaching and to administer all the sacraments, ordained an apostolic father, giving it the same powers and mission; in turn the apostolic father ordained a bishop, for the same purposes. This bishop, around you, ordained another bishop and throughout history, in ordering all the bishops in succession, it has come down to today. Everything is defined: apostolic succession.

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The transmission of the mandate to transmit and administer the Sacraments to multiple bishops around the world, how many were the apostles originally, it shows that the Church has an apostolic nature, therefore collegial and community. The collegiality and apostolicity of the Bishops implies on the one hand the unity between the Pope and the Bishops because the College of Bishops is linked to its visible head. The Supreme Pontiff is not a tyrant but a guarantor of the very ministry of the Bishops. In fact, he is the guarantor of the unity of the ecclesial body and is the visible material concrete foundation of ecclesial unity (Collegiality = element of Union in the distinction).

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On the other side, the collegiality of the Bishops it implies that this college has a high degree of authority over the whole Church. The individual dioceses collaborate with each other, each bishop can make decisions about the faithful entrusted to him without always asking for authorization from the See of Rome. Moreover, the bishops, they actively collaborate with each other and with the Roman Pontiff in some special moments: nei synodi o, eg, in an ecumenical council. A synod or council convened by the bishops is accepted and confirmed by the Roman Pontiff, but collegially guided: therefore even these ecclesial meetings are never carried out by the Roman Pontiff alone, to which, however, it is only up to, in the end, to decide.

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Now we have understood how the Bishop of Rome and the Bishops of the world, as successors of the Apostles they received the mandate of Christ. We will say that in this mandate they have specifically committed themselves to three specific tasks with respect to the people of God: these tasks are called gifts (from Latin duty, task and also gift) and I'm the the task of teaching, the the task of sanctifying and the governing office / steersmanship.

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The task of teaching it is the duty to teach, transmit the teaching of Christ; it is also called the ordinary magisterium of the bishop. This magisterium / teaching is concretized by the bishop when he teaches with authority, which comes from Christ, and takes place when the bishop teaches concretely in matters of doctrine and morals and these teachings are in communion with the Supreme Pontiff and the Universal Church. This is a teaching of divine origin; then the the task of teaching it is the bishop's first task and concretely with it is meant to preach and teach these truths to the faithful. The faithfuls, from them, they are called to listen in active obedience with sincere filial adherence to their bishop even by asking questions, doubts and clarifications to better understand these teachings, to deepen the doctrine and live it better.

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With the task of sanctifying: the duty to lead all the people of God to holiness is indicated. The bishop is the bursar, that is, the one who distributes the grace of Christ and the Holy Spirit in equal parts in the Church; this happens in the administration of the sacraments and even more particularly in the Eucharistic celebration, where it is the Eucharist that makes the Church, it sanctifies it and unites it in catholicity; therefore the true presence, real, substance of Christ in the species of bread and wine unites all the faithful (clergy and faithful); at the same time it is the Church that makes the Eucharist, therefore the Church that administers and celebrates it.

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With the office of governing/governing the duty of the bishops to govern and govern the individual Churches is indicated local or dioceses; they have their own jurisdiction which is exercised for himself by each bishop in an ordinary way. By this we mean that the Divine power that every bishop immediately possesses does not provide for the mandatory delegation to other people: on a concrete level, But, the bishops can however decide to appoint mediators and delegates to better manage the territory, for example priests who perform the role of episcopal vicars, foranei, judicial and who therefore exercise various duties in the name of the bishop.

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In conclusion these three gifts /Duties they are implemented with the help of presbyters or priests, that despite not having the fullness of the sacred order like the bishop, they too participate and are jointly responsible for the three gifts. The the task of teaching afor example when they preach, they teach and govern God's people, especially in the parish. Here the parish priest is also the one who accompanies and therefore governs the People of God to holiness (exercise of office of government); finally the priest celebrates worship then administers the sacraments and prays for the needs of the people and at the same time administers the sacrament of confession (exercise of the task of sanctifying).

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Also wanting to synthetically analyze the first degree of the order, we can quickly describe the activity of deacons. They too fall within the ecclesial hierarchy because they are called to service: deacons is a Greek word that can be translated as servant. They still fall within the apostolicity of the Church, because they are assistants to the liturgy, they can have catechetical and para-liturgical duties, although their main task, their vocation is not the call to administer the sacraments in the same way as priests. Deacons participate in apostolicity as they are called to service, especially works of charity, the management of administrative activities of the Church. In some cases, however, the deacon can give the sacrament of baptism and bless the wedding. in some cases, however, the deacon can give the sacrament of baptism and bless the wedding.

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Rome, 18 January 2022

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For those wishing to learn more about the topic, I recommend reading these books:

Catechism of the Catholic Church, 553; 857 – 865.

Vatican Council II, (C)dogmatic institution Lumen gentium,18 – 23.

  1. McDowell, The fate of the apostles. Examining the martyrdom accounts of the closesest followers of Jesus, Routledge, 2016.
  2. Virgil, The resurrection of Jesus, Crossroads, Amazon publishing, 2020.

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Father Gabriele

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The death of sexuality and faith in self-styled Catholics from social media who hate in the name of a “Christian love” made up of androgynous Christs and languid Madonnas, of aggressive and violent vajasse

- Church news -

THE DEATH OF SEXUALITY AND FAITH IN THE CATHOLIC SEDICENTS FROM SOCIAL MEDIA WHO HATE IN THE NAME OF A “CHRISTIAN LOVE” MADE OF CRISTI ANDROGINI E MADONNNINE LANGUIDE, OF NEEDED AGGRESSIVE AND VIOLENT

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… and having said this I informed the pinzochera that the Word of God, true God and true man, he had a psycho-physical sex and sexuality, precisely because he was God incarnate in a real man. This is the textual answer: “You are a blasphemer, a priest's shame, a son of the devil, convert ... blasphemer!». I replied: “I will also be a blasphemer, however, I just can't imagine Our Lord Jesus Christ pissing holy water from his ears because he lacks an unseemly attribute like the male sex which is needed when needed, on a purely and naturally physiological level, also to urinate ".

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PDF print format article

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“The guillotine of the tribunal of social media“, cover of the book of the Fathers of The Island of Patmos on the theme of the pandemic, made by the Roman painter Anna Boschini (the book is available for purchase WHO)

This magazine of ours it is a place where historical arguments are addressed, philosophical and theological that we undertake to make accessible also to the general public eager to deepen the mysteries of the faith through the articles of a group of priest-theologians invested by the Holy Church of Christ with the mandate to teach, sanctify and guide i believers of Christ. And the gift priestly, O three gifts of the Church: the task of teaching, the task of sanctifying, office of government. Quite clear elements in that toxic sewer to which i are reduced social media, where an army of pinzochere rages who have confused faith with psychological terrorism, the Word of God made man with a sexless Jesus Christ photoshopped, the Virgin Mary with a Cassandra announcing catastrophes and imminent ends of the world. Each of their speeches is seasoned with rancid sauces pulled out of the great container of returning neo-paganism, if not worse by the more degenerate Pelagianism. Talk to these people, whose profiles social abound in stabbed Madonnine, unfortunately it is a waste of time. Because any priest who dared to point out their errors in matters of doctrine and faith, hence the way for an authentic journey of Christian life, well that goes you will hear an answer: «Be ashamed, you are not worthy of being called a priest!». And although he has written it and explained it several times, I go back to repeat it again: today, we priests and theologians, as absurd as it may seem, we are considered religious guides and scholars of sacred sciences - and as such also respected - by ultra secularists and non-believers, which obviously have a completely different feeling and lifestyle, while for every trifle we are badly attacked and publicly offended by lay Catholics, or self-styled, which they believe to be banners of truth, pure and authentic Christianity. These are the facts that lead me to say how right the Professor Enrico Medi, stating in the early seventies that he was not so scared of air pollution, for the atomic bomb or the danger of any new wars, but instead of being so because of the collective madness towards which humanity was falling. And of this madness, today, i social media they are model and paradigm.

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In this jungle without rules, where with a fantasy identity you can attack and insult anyone in the worst way, some souls cloaked in modesty have accused me of making frequent indirect references, or sometimes direct, to human sexuality, declaring themselves authentic Catholics scandalized by certain jokes made by a priest. Well I will tell you that for some time I have been convinced that this kind of people are the ones who gave inspiration to the lamentation Anna Marchesini, because it is likely that she was inspired by them, when he did his hilarious sketch comedians in the role of Merope Generosa, specialist in sexology.

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These unspecified Catholics it gives social media they are characterized by three elements all in radical contrast with faith: sexophobia, the pessimistic catastrophism, hatred that feeds on hatred and that seeks fetishes as an outlet.

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Let's start with the first element: sexophobic, because they tend above all to identify the center of sin in human sexuality, or rather the sin of sins. If you dare to correct them and remind them that original sin does not come to life because Adam and Eve committed a sin of lust but pride - which of the seven deadly sins is the most serious of all, enough to be placed in the first place as queen and charioteer driving all the deadly sins -, their reaction will be this: «Modernist heretic slave to the perversions of the world!». But what does modernist mean to them? Above all, what do they know about this movement of thought condemned by the Holy Pontiff Pius X with the Encyclical Feeding of Dominic's Sheep? Nothing they know, it is just a word with which they try to attack and silence the interlocutors, ignoring how and why this current of thought was born and developed within the Church, not least also due to a closure and a rigor that was sometimes obsessive. Just like those who, having no arguments, try to silence the interlocutor by yelling at him "fascist!"Or" communist!”, except, however, not being able to explain how these two different socio-political currents come to life and develop. Or like when a woman who wanted to give herself a certain tone published the photograph of a designer's collection stating: "It's a collection of metaphysically inspired clothes". I asked her: "Excuse me, he explains to me what metaphysics is?». A few seconds later a handful of insults came in response, simply because by asking her that "innocent" question, I had implicitly given her an ignoramus who used words inappropriately without knowing their meaning. And I repeat sexophobic because these are not better specified Catholics, but above all Catholic, they have a love life, sentimental and sexual so disastrous, to the point of changing sex and human sexuality into absolute evil. And precisely by negativizing sexuality in this way they forget some fundamental elements of faith: the Word of God became man, and he was a man, Jesus Christ, with all the sexual and manly attributes of the case. So I once reminded a pinzochera by pointing out to her that Joseph and Mary presented Jesus to the Temple to have him circumcised on the eighth day of life in compliance with the Mosaic Law [cf.. LC 2, 22-39]. I explained to her that this ancient rite is called Circumcision (Brit Milah, verbatim: Pact of the Alliance) and it is performed by a pious Jewish religious who performs the function of circumciser. Then I specified that with circumcision the foreskin is removed from the male virile member leaving the glans completely uncovered. This was the circumcision of the little infant Jesus, just in case someone thought he was introduced to the Temple by a blonde Swede with blue eyes, such is Mary depicted, accompanied by a limping 80-year-old who escaped from a geriatrics ward, such is represented Joseph. For this the infant Jesus was presented to the Temple, to remove the foreskin from the divin pea, certainly not to style the blond curls with which he is depicted in the iconographic holy cards, as if instead of in the Middle East he was born in Stockholm. And having said this I informed the pinzochera that the Word of God, true God and true man, he had a psycho-physical sex and sexuality, precisely because he was God incarnate in a real man. This was the textual answer: “You are a blasphemer, a priest's shame, a son of the devil, convert ... blasphemer!». I replied: “I will also be a blasphemer, however, I just can't imagine Our Lord Jesus Christ pissing holy water from his ears because he lacks an unseemly attribute like the male sex which is needed when needed, on a purely and naturally physiological level, also to urinate ".

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The second element is pessimistic catastrophism, typical of people unable to grasp God's love and his actions of grace on us even in the most tragic and painful situations. Suffice it to mention among the many St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe so hungry for Christ that he agreed to starve in storage of Auschwitz to save the life of a family man who was his fellow prisoner. In these self-styled Catholics, but above all Catholic, catastrophism and pessimism take on morbid features and connotations, to the point of becoming unable to see that supreme good summed up in the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity. It is precisely the virtue of hope, which is in the middle and which binds faith and charity together - the latter indicated as the most important by the Blessed Apostle Paul [cf.. The Cor 13] - they just don't know where you live. Like this, to unleash their dark and destructive pessimism through images of a catastrophic future, they usually use the Blessed Virgin Mary, making havoc of apparitions and messages that are not recognized as authentic by the Church in practice and rigor. When they then take the apparitions and messages that have instead been recognized as authentic as pretexts to support their peregrine ideas, first of all they manipulate them, then they accuse the Church, for example in the case of Our Lady of Fatima, of having concealed and censored the texts, which obviously, needless to say, they would be terrifying. Soon said: in the name of “purity” their faith and theirs “truth” all of it neurotic-subjective, they do not hesitate to change the Church, who is mother and teacher, in a lying mother. On several occasions I have tried to explain to the fanatical pinzochere of the catastrophic Mariology they have changed into pagan mariolatry, than the messages of Our Lady of Fatima, like those of the Madonna della Salette, of Amsterdam and so on to follow, they do not constitute elements of the deposit of faith and that in I believe of the Catholic Church, also called the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, we do not profess to believe in the secrets of Our Lady of Fatima and in the revelations given by herself to that or that seer, including those recognized as authentic by the Church. Having said this, I went on to explain that a Catholic could also be completely indifferent to certain Marian apparitions, because he is not obliged to be devoted either to Our Lady of Lourdes or to that of Fatima or to others, on which his faith and even the health of his soul cannot depend. What a Catholic cannot do is deny the authenticity of what the Church has recognized as authentic, or worse still, to declare instead authentic for one's own emotionality and personal stinginess, what the Church has never recognized as such, for instance The Gospa of the liars. In short, as an explanation, that date, it had to be clear. But no, at least according to the angry response of the pinzochera that on social media he yelled at me: "Heretic! She is worse than Luther. Shame, a priest who hates Our Lady and who thinks worse than a Protestant ... get converted, because Our Lady's judgment on her will be terrible ". I reply to the possessed pinzochera, avoiding asking for what reason he allowed himself to point out a presbyter to the public contempt as a hater of the Blessed Virgin, so I go to the point and clarify: "You see, when we profess in I believe “one day he will return to glory to judge the living and the dead” we refer to Christ the divine judge, not to Our Lady, who will judge no one at all, neither the living nor the dead, because it's not his job. And if there is an extraordinary creature who has always known how to stay in her own place and in the role entrusted to her by God in the mystery of the economy of salvation, this is precisely the Blessed Virgin Mary ".

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The third element is hatred, typical of people who do not feel loved, or that have not been loved, made for them various reasons and existential problems completely incapable of loving, until reaching a process of spiritual inversion which in itself is more serious than all the worst sexual perversions put together: use love and the concept of Christian love to vent their hatred. I social media are full of self-styled Catholics and crazy pinzochere that in the name of a “love of god” and a “love for faith” completely emptied of its deepest essence, they hate fiercely. Then, if a priest dares to call them to that effect, their reactions always tend to be violent and aggressive, especially destructive towards the priest, who will end up attacked by people who will first of all question his human and spiritual virtues, its doctrinal orthodoxy, his theological preparation and his pastoral experience. The concept of “love” of these people is comparable to the bloodthirsty crowds during the terror period of the French Revolution, who in the name of an unspecified freedom cut off the heads on the guillotines, then, after having hoisted them on poles, they carried them triumphantly around the streets of Paris like hideous trophies. The whole, I repeat, in the name of an unspecified freedom, which is equivalent to the concept of “love” of certain self-styled Catholics who go crazy on social media. For this we Fathers de The Island of Patmos, when we put our book to the press The Church and the coronavirus, where we also address the issue of the great experts who swarm on social media, we made our friend realize, the teacher Anna Boschini, Roman painter, a cover depicting the three of us climbing the stairs towards the guillotine, while under the stage the judges of the social media.

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Let's go back to sexuality again, key element to analyze and understand the mental perversions of certain self-styled Catholics from social media. The modest white souls, ready to scream at the scandal from above of their unspecified catholicity, they usually ignore a fundamental element: the first thing any young or old has to deal with, if he thinks he is called to the priesthood, it is precisely his sexuality. And when the word sex and sexuality is overlooked in seminars, or we are tinged with blush like the legendary Merope Generosa played by Anna Marchesini, then it happens that at best monsters are brought out, not to mention worse: subjects with unbalanced sexuality and morally disordered. The priest does not have to repress his sexuality at all, your own libido and your own erotic dimension, it must transform the whole into something else, that is, in a different way of loving and living one's sexual virility.

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As a priest I have a human sex and sexuality, unless someone wants to deny - also in this case with the aura of the comic modesty of the legendary Merope Generosa - that the first and essential requirement is, in the absence of which the others could not possibly exist, is that the candidate for the sacred priestly order must be a male. If we wish, we can also add that the Church has never allowed access to the priesthood to men suffering from deformities such as to prevent the performance of regular sexual activity, always forbidding priestly consecration, the penalty of nullity, of subjects who had been emasculated by accident or by the criminal will of others. Being male, as known, it means to have, anatomically, a very specific genital organ in the middle of the legs that has a not slight impact on the psyche as well, in the same way that the uterus affects the psychology of women.

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I can calmly and sadly affirm, from priestly and pastoral experience, that problematic priests are those who have not come to terms with their sexuality upstream, or what to become ministry bosomes they have always chosen the wrong way: that of repressing one's sexuality, precious and essential gift of God that leads us to such an impulse of love to the point of making us eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven:

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"" There are in fact eunuchs who were born in this way from the womb of the mother; there are some who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are others who have become eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. Who can understand, understand "" [Mt 19, 12].

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A priest who has matured and transformed his sexuality into something else, becoming a eunuch out of love for the Kingdom of Heaven, naturally he will have a very virile and masculine human and spiritual attitude and approach. If that's missing, it would be good to ask some very serious questions. Because virile is certainly not the libertine who jumps from one bed to another, imprisoned over fifty in a bleak adolescent dimension. Manly seriously, if anything it is the elderly priest who, despite never having known a woman in his life, because he entered the seminary a 14 years and lived in perfect continence for his whole life, when he confronts you and looks you in the face, however, all that masculine and spiritual testosterone oozes that the unrepentant libertine does not even know where to lodge. Incidentally, a personal note, but perhaps necessary to make certain concepts better understood: up to now I have had two bishops, one who died recently, the other in the chair in the full exercise of his / her duties. Two totally different personalities, in many respects even opposite. One thing, But, in their diversity it united them: two truly and profoundly virile men in faith and in the practice of faith, hence in their male psychology. But so were all the formators to the priesthood that God gave me the grace to have, including the senior bishop who for years has taken care of my ongoing formation in the priesthood, that he would be able to make even a powerful head of state tremble with a single glance.

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The Catholic Church has been invaded in recent times by unspecified faithful that transform the extraordinary comedy of Merope Generosa into a tragedy that then, in practice, it ends up falling on us priests, often with painful and even painful implications. E, always pastorally speaking, I can say that i social media they are an extensive and complex field of study which on the scientific and pastoral level is truly extraordinary. Of course I will limit myself to Catholics, or rather to those who feel they are, especially to women.

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The unspecified Catholics, on social media they reach levels of offense against those priests who at times talk to them, how come a man would get there. It is not a hypothesis, but a statistic. Ready to weigh every syllable, to cry out to scandal, worse: to heresy. Women who from the top of their chair of dogmatics and ecclesiology erected on social media the Supreme Pontiff in the lead is accused of apostasy from the faith, the Bishops and all of us presbyters to follow. Women who ignore the fundamentals of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, who confuse the Virgin Mary with the Fata Morgana or who think that the action of the Holy Spirit is that of Merlin the magician ... but who are ready to overwhelm you with insults, if in a paternal and calm way you dare to call them back and correct them.

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At this point one might ask: and, there are many personality disorders, then there is the great planet of hysteria, which not by chance derives from the Greek root of ὕστερον (hysteron), which means uterus, purely female disorder. Indeed, when in spoken language someone has indicated a man to me as “hysterical”, I replied that in the colloquial context this term, which is not correct in itself, can also pass, but that on a scientific level a man cannot be affected by such a disorder, at least as science has defined it. Man is in fact deprived of the raw material: the uterus. So a man can be suffering from hysteria, understood in a classical clinical way, in the same way that a woman can be prone to inflammation of the prostate. In the world of neurological and psychiatric sciences there have been over time scholars who have tried to locate forms of “male hysteria”, starting with the Viennese neurologist Sigmund Freud, but without obtaining particular successes and credits in the international scientific community.

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Why all this my attention to sexuality? I am perhaps a sex addict, as someone accused me of being? Soon said: for years I have discovered, ascertained and repeatedly experienced that behind this army of pinzochere who play intransigent Catholics on social media, hiding behind the image of a spiked Madonna and behind a name of pure fantasy, there are women who live situations that are sometimes on the verge of frustration on a human level, sexual and sentimental. For instance, one such - closely followed by several others - called me a heretic and, obviously, of the shame of a priest, simply for having written and explained that on a moral level, an abortion performed by one woman can be completely different from that practiced by another. In some particular cases an abortion, while being in and of itself an abomination, it can even be reduced to a venial sin. Incidentally: the digital illiterate is the one who is not really able to understand what he reads, then cut three words, it fossilizes on them and then leaves with a burst of insults. And this pinzochera, from all my explanation understandable and not liable to be misunderstood, given the extreme delicacy of the subject dealt with, he cut off two words inappropriately, accusing me of having affirmed that today abortion is only a venial sin. Yet in that articulate and precise speech of mine - or as they say foolproof -, I had explained and clarified everything well, also making use of the case of an immature young woman of 18 year old, very simple, devoid of culture and elementary knowledge, who got pregnant was led to have an abortion in the absolute certainty that in this way she would do the right thing, for his sake and for the creature itself that it was not opportune to give birth. However, the advice was given to her by the elderly family doctor, venerated as the seat of wisdom by all his relatives. Not only, also another, a big doctor of the city hospital where she was taken from her village, he had told her the same. And if two great scholars explain to an immature girl, simple and fragile, what it should do and how it should do it, she puts the advice into practice, if anything, even thanking those who gave it to him, caring for his good in this way. And here it should be remembered that conscience is needed to commit crimes and sins, will and deliberate consent. In such a case, how can one speak of a vile mortal sin? Of course, when grown up, matured and left his provincial family farmer environment, he came now twenty-five in tears to me to explain what he had done years ago, first of all I consoled her, then in simple words I explained to her what I have explained so far, absolving her and above all begging her not to consume herself in useless feelings of guilt. The sense of guilt for the forgiven sin, it is not good, quite the opposite: it is a challenge to the mystery of love of God's grace and forgiveness.

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At this point the pinzochera on duty enters the scene, self-styled Catholic self-proclaimed Doctor of Moral Theology sui social media, strictly hidden behind a fantasy name and with a Madonna stuck in her profile instead of her photo, that unleashed Hell on me. The two milder accusations - which is saying a lot - were those of "heretic, apostate and antichristic priest ". Then he wrote a long rant to disprove me and affirm that «the sense of guilt, after committing certain sins, he must never abandon us, even if one has been acquitted ". What to say: the great master of Catholic morality Alfonso Maria de ’Liguori, Bishop and Holy Doctor of the Church, in the face of so much theological science he would surely have pale and sunk into inferiority complexes. Shortly after I was contacted by a priest brother who, struck by that avalanche of insults, explained to me who this woman really was., expelled several times by the parish priests of various parishes, to one of whom he even interrupted his Sunday homily by starting to invoke him: «You don't know the Gospel, converted: modernist!». So much so that the parish priest, under of the article 405 of the Criminal Code denounced her for disturbing the exercise of a public religious function within a place of worship. But that's who this woman was: a poor unhappy mischief left by her husband, a trader who made money and came close to sixty years of age dumped her in the throes of her menopause to go and live with a thirty-year-old Slavic girl - after having cheated her for a lifetime -, as well as the mother of a daughter known throughout the district, because starting from the age of 13 years he jumped relentlessly from one boy to another, to the point that not only the mothers of little girls, but even those of the boys did not want their children to attend her. At the age of just 16, on a Sunday morning, perhaps while his mother was in who knows which parish church pissing off some poor priest, she arrived at the city emergency room with her friend from raids to ask for the “morning after pill”, to avoid problems after the stunts on Saturday night.

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Behind certain fantasy profiles, on which photoshopped androgynous Christs and languid Madonnines stand out, I really discovered everything and more, because with the good offices of some dear friends I have come to the true identity of several pinzochere, so today I am able to do not only analyzes but even statistics. For instance, the one who yelled at me and wrote me all in capital letters: «Be ashamed, shame on you, shame on you!», for having posted on a page social my photo with the trans Vlady Guadagno, my friend, known to the general public with the artistic name of Luxuria, while we were smiling together in the Mediaset studios in Cologno Monzese, she was the mother of a boy who was not only outspoken gay, but who was living with his partner with whom he had gone to get married in the Canaries. Then, the hubby amorous left him for another boy. A quel point, the poor consort betrayed and abandoned, attempted suicide. Yet she was the very mother of this hubby betrayed that hidden behind a fake name and a photo of San Pio da Pietrelcina put in place of his face, covered me with insults calling me the "bad priest" and the "priest without morals". And you know what my being a priest without morals consisted of? It consisted in having explained and then reduced the masturbation of adolescents to a small sin, in that speech of mine scrupulously adhering to what is written and explained in the Catechism of the Catholic Church which it recites:

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"To form an equitable judgment about the subjects' moral responsibility and to guide pastoral action, It will take into account the affective immaturity, force of acquired habit, conditions of anxiety, or other psychological or social factors that may mitigate, if not minimize, moral culpability " [see n. 2352].

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From time to time I deal with the themes of human sexuality on a theological and ecclesiological level certainly not devoid of smug amusement, knowing how certain subjects immediately jump out into the open in an aggressive and violent way on social media. This is how people who do not feel loved or do not have the ability to love themselves react and come out into the open, they sink into reactive hatred, finding in certain social media a portentous relief valve, which, however, risks worsening their human and psychological conditions, dragging many other people into the mechanism of hatred who then contribute to creating a hateful-quarrelsome environment.

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To understand the levels of hatred and violence which can reach psychologically unstable subjects, especially those who are affected - indiscriminately men, but alas mostly women - from delusional aggressive narcissism, I will tell you about an episode in which I found myself involved a couple of years ago. I am only telling you this because it is a cross section, indeed a paradigm of the world of social in which anyone can affirm and write without any filter and control what they want, especially falls of nonsense stronger than those of Niagara.

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Here's the story: one day I received a page update social of a self-styled Neapolitan. And here I open a long section: I say “self-styled” because being Neapolitan understandably does a lot chic. I would like to see the opposite: Naples was one of the largest capitals in Europe. Many of the capitals that are so celebrated today, for example Vienna, Paris, Berlin, but also our own Milan, compared to Naples in the sixteenth-nineteenth century they were little more than towns. Not to mention the historical assets, artistic and monumental. Naples, and together with it the other capital of the Bourbon Kingdom, Palermo, they were not only two great European capitals, but above all places of art and culture without equal in our ancient continent.

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - to take just one among many purely by way of example - going to Italy he was not impressed by Milan and its Ducal Theater, but he literally went into ecstasy when he arrived in the great Naples in May of 1770, where he was fascinated by that city and its great theater, especially from art, from the culture and musical school of the Partonepe people.

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This is to clarify what to say "I'm Neapolitan" undoubtedly gives a certain tone to the person. Like when I boast my Roman family roots, although to be honest I must specify that I was born in the lower Tuscan Maremma, a few kilometers from the border with Lazio, from a paternal family of old Roman origin and from a Tuscan maternal family. Therefore, to those who ask me about my birthplace, I have to answer that I am Tuscan-Roman. Then, if the son of two immigrants from lower Calabria who was born in Rome, in a light-hearted tone he tells me ... «Ah, roman you?», at that point it will be up to me to reiterate that the Roman origins of my ancestors are lost far back in time, contrary to yours. And here I am reminded of a young woman from an old Roman family who cannot be older, to be exact, belonging to a cadet branch of the Torlonia, born in the United States of a Roman father and an American mother. When a cheerful pischello, trying to approach her - she was a beautiful girl - he asked her where she came from, in response he retorted: "I come from a Roman family". The boarder laughed amused: "Already, Roman with this American accent?». Impassively she asks: "I can know what your last name is?». he responds: «Mancuso, why do you ask me that?». The beautiful girl smiles slyly: "You see, my surname is Torlonia. I will also have an American accent, since I was born in the United States of America, but I am certainly Roman from a Roman family much more than a Mancuso ". Last name, to clarify to the reader, widespread in the Calabrian area of ​​Catanzaro, ancient and noble city of ancient Magna Graecia.

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Before this dutiful incident I was narrating that one day I received a page update social of a self-styled Neapolitan. And I say self-styled because the “noblewoman” in question lived in a suburb of Caserta, which as we know is not exactly the Vomero, Capodimonte or the Spanish Quarters. The poor wretch, putting together a jumble of black legends today denied even by liberal scholars and Protestant historians, with a clumsy copy and paste he had written a celebratory post on the figure of “great” ed “heroic” Giordano Bruno from Nola, burned at the stake in Campo dei Fiori in 1600 from the bad Church of the time. Having a new phone that I didn't know how to use well yet, reading that post I leave without wanting to and noticing it emoticon of a smiling face. I was aware of this when another notice came to me with this delicate message: “What the fuck are you laughing at?». After some perplexity, I said to myself: "No, it is not possible that it is Donna Fiammetta Caracciolo Carafa, that I met in his time with his noble consort Don Oderisio de’ Sangro di Fondi. Not just because, at this point, they are both dead, but why would a Neapolitan noble of such ancient lineage and princely lineage never address a priest on a public page in this way? social».

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… when some ladies approached me as a priest in this tone, after which they even protested to my Bishop

A quel point with pastoral amiability, as well as fulfilling my duty as a scholar, I replied that the emoticon with the laughing face I had left without my even noticing and therefore it was to be considered involuntary. Having clarified everything, I wrote her a post of about twenty lines, specifying that it was not serious to launch publicly into such complex historical and juridical topics., given, among other things, that the judges of the Inquisition Tribunal did their utmost and even impossible to save Giordano Bruno. His trial lasted 15 long years, was canceled twice for laughable defects of form and in the meantime everything was done to induce him to repent of his very serious heresies. Because, that Giordano Bruno was a heretic, there is very little to discuss about this. And I concluded by inviting this lady - always with great kindness - not to throw herself into trades on a historical level, juridical and theological which were not really his professions. Shortly after the noblewoman “very Neapolitan”, resident however in the suburbs of Caserta, throws me a string of insults to make a prostitute leaning against the lamppost turn pale, cursing on a rainy night for lack of customers. A quel point, always without ever leaving the lines, after being inundated with vulgar sexual insults, after being attacked by his wives in the lower-Caserta washhouse who called me "half a priest" wearing a "shit tunic", jokingly e, I repeat, never ever offensive, I reply saying: «In front of a woman like you, I thank and bless God for the great gift of celibacy and chastity ". And shortly after, in a dialect from the slums of Caserta comes a public reply which I offer you translated directly into Italian. The noblewoman, I speak publicly with another of his mates from the slums, he writes verbatim about me: “If he hadn't taken the vow (of chastity) he would only have done the saws, with the cock that a woman like us gave it to an asshole like Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo ". A very short note: looking at the photographs of this Lady and her Wives published on their page social, anyone would have instantly understood how in front of such beauties the whole Addams family, even it uncle Fester.

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delicacies on the part of quarrelsome ladies unleashed on social media

I hope the politically correct don't accuse me of inciting violence against women, if in the face of such vulgarities I affirm in a hilarious tone: if such women do not have fathers or husbands who, after reading certain public messages, do not give up two pedagogical slaps, or if they have no children that similar mothers do not say they feel ashamed for them, it is evident that if husbands and children are not worse, at least they are as they are to mothers. A quel point, always in an ironic and never offensive way, I reply: “Be a civilized woman, she and her friends who wrote these comments, because you are proving to be worse than needed to the wash house ". I confess that the word in the shed I learned it from my brother priest of the Order of Capuchin Friars Minor Ivano Liguori, which is half Campanian for the paternal branch and half Sardinian for the maternal branch. Let's clarify: this term of the Neapolitan dialect means, in an etymological sense, “the edge” O “domestica”. Later it became synonymous with a woman of low social extraction characterized by coarse attitudes, vulgar and quarrelsome. And so it was that the noblewomen, after insulting me from head to toe, after showering me with vulgar insults, finally feeling defined needed, they started screaming at the lese majesty attack. Then, totally distorting reality, they turned me into an offender by presenting themselves as poor vilified victims.

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I stop at this point in the narrative, because I think it will be enough. Now I go on to tell the absurd consequences of social schizophrenia, always to clarify what levels the freaks who go crazy on certain platforms can reach ... and so these women, in the head the ferocious administrator of that page, all ’ today, after more than two years, they continue to pour out the worst kind of wickedness and vulgarity on me, attributing to me what I have never written and affirmed. From time to time they take two and three lines from some of my articles, they cut them, make one screen-shot and they attribute to me what I never even thought. As the article itself demonstrates from which that cut of two or three lines was made, in which I affirm just the opposite of what is attributed to me.

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Before proceeding further it is important to clarify with a concrete example this last delicate and above all fundamental step, illustrating in detail the technique with which haters make mud bombs to detonate on social media to damage the image, reputation or scientific credibility, intellectual, ecclesiastical or theological of the person they have decided to strike. So here is the concrete example served: in a previous passage of this narration of mine, within a very serious speech in which I speak of the incarnation of the Word of God and of Christ true God and true man, making use of a rhetorical hyperbole I affirm: «[…] I just can't imagine Our Lord Jesus Christ pissing holy water from his ears because he lacks an unseemly attribute like the male sex ". Soon said: to cut these two lines from a very serious context, everything related to the fundamental mystery of faith of the incarnation of the Word of God, it would be so dishonest as to cross every limit of human decency. But this is precisely the dishonesty on which they have always played needed certainly not used as single and poor people but only as a paradigm, able to cut a sentence of this kind from a writing, make one screen-shot and then spread it on social media pointing me to public contempt as an infamous priest who even dares to satire on Jesus Christ (!?). "A priest to whom one does not understand at all" - the thunders vajasse-paradigm in their comments - "how can they leave the cassock on". Obviously, and always practice, at the screen-shot the link where anyone could open the article, read it in full, then ascertain that the Author indicated to the public contempt wrote the exact opposite, all in an articulated and precise speech. A quel point, under the post in which that was reported screen-shot of two lines, the ferocious and offensive comments of various other wives begin to multiply, far from going to look for the article in question and ascertain what this "unworthy priest" really wrote, they begin to issue ferocious sentences on those two lines, without knowing either the Author and least of all his writing. Obviously this is all true, not discussed, there is proof: there he is screen-shot! You understand well that we are far beyond the problem of digital illiteracy of those who - far from reading an article from top to bottom -, read the title and subtitle and in a few seconds sifted through a text that, if anything, deals with historical topics, philosophical, very complex theological and socio-pastoral, in the end they decide to understand what they want to understand. In the case just illustrated we are instead faced with bad faith with connotations of authentic wickedness. Exactly that bad faith that arises from the typical malice of people who lie knowing they are lying, just like these vajasse-paradigm animated by the irrepressible need to unload hatred on a person who for reasons or psychological discomfort of their own decide to use as target practice, forming a group and conditioning each other through hatred that generates hatred, telling lies to each other, then convincing one another that those falsehoods are truths beyond any possible doubt. I could be an object of hatred in the same way that the Prime Minister of the Italian Republic in office today could be, or what was before him, or virologists accused of incompetence and ignorance by people who, if asked about it, would not be able to explain even in an elementary way what a virus is, to follow with us priests guilty in various ways of betraying the authentic message of Jesus Christ, all affirmed with severity and violence by people of an unspecified Christian spirit who in their previous comments have just declared themselves in favor of abortion, all’eutanasia, to marriage between same-sex couples and so on, all justified by the fact that they say "… but Jesus is love!». It doesn't matter what the object is, because it can be the most disparate, from the basketball player to the cancer surgeon, the important, for these people, is to focus on a subject, to target it and transform it into a fetishist object on which to unload hatred in the worst way.

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Having clarified everything I consider useless, at least now, to open another complex discourse on the great masters of the social media, that on this round of hate that generates hatred they make money, except to trigger the censorship if one dares to post the image of Venus of Botticelli, read by their absurd algorithms as a pornographic image. In short, certi social media they are not the realm of science, of art and culture, but the ideal universe where they live and go crazy vajasse-paradigm liars, violent and quarrelsome.

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Reading invectives of this kind addressed to Father Ariel sui social media , one of his Chinese confreres who had lived in Rome for many years commented on this: “During the Mao revolution the priests were captured and at best jailed in hideous prisons, but no Maoist Communist has ever addressed them and poured out such vulgar verbal violence on them ". That is all to say …

After having violently insulted a priest, the vajasse-paradigm they contact my Bishop, thus committing one crime after another. A, presenting himself as a lawyer about to sue me and ask for me, roughly, the same sentence a 25 years of imprisonment imposed ad Ali Agca for having made an attempt on the life of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II. Another asked for a telephone conversation with my Bishop to inform him - listen, hear! - that if he had imposed on me the "due" and severe canonical penalties they would have desisted, granting me … clemency. And here we fall into various types of offenses related to the abuse of a professional qualification - that of a lawyer which requires registration in a professional register and a qualification to practice the profession - put in place, moreover, with the representative of a body governed by public law, such is the bishop of a diocese according to the law, from the vajassa-paradigm on duty fully qualified to exercise the legal profession. After this they sent to my Bishop only the screen-shOt in which in an amused and ironic tone I responded - without insulting any of them - to attacks of unspeakable vulgarity and truly unprecedented violence. Obviously, I immediately proceeded to send the Bishop what these ladies had written and thrown at me. Needless to say, she was very ill both for the violence and for the vulgar tones with which the commoners in the washhouse of the slums of the village had allowed themselves to turn to one of her priests in the way in which she would never have dared to become a professional prostitute. And I, that in Rome I dedicated part of my apostolate to prostitutes who worked on the stretch of the Via Aurelia that goes from the capital to Castel di Guido, I am well aware of the courtesy these women had towards the priest, always using respect and affection towards him.

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the trophy exhibited on social media give her needed: the return receipt of the registered letter sent to the Supreme Pontiff with a request - or rather with the order given by them - to proceed as soon as possible to "expose" Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo

Since the Bishop he didn't give them credit, they sent a letter to the Supreme Pontiff, then publishing the return receipt of the registered letter in their profiles, as if it were a cross between a trophy and a bull of excommunication. In that letter they asked approximately “spretizzarmi”. Then they got angry with my Bishop, they say guilty of not having carried out directives and commands given to them. Because, as is well known, a Bishop would be required, indeed forced to take directives from vulgar and quarrelsome washerwomen who spend most of their time on social media to insolent in the worst way those who decide to target, following the orders that they gave after having insolent a priest in the worst way possible. Otherwise, if it doesn't do this, what kind of bishop he is?

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With an ironic joke now let's try to summarize it all, to fix with a pertinent image at what levels of delirium and dissociation from reality certain people can live in concrete facts. Let's say that I, while I was in Mediaset's offices in Milan for the various programs in which I participated, I had told Paolo Del Debbio: "I felt, my friend, I need to speak to Silvio Berlusconi urgently ". Obviously he would have laughed thinking about a joke of mine, knowing full well that I am an intelligent and rational mind, not an idiot. Said this, I insist. At that point he asks me the reason for my urgent need. To which I reply: «Because in my house, Rete4 sometimes doesn't see well, for this I demand that Silvio Berlusconi arrange the reception of my television antenna for me in the way in which I will show him to do ". Something like that said by me to Paolo Del Debbio, it would have made him die laughing, then, soon after, he would go around the entire editorial office making all the editors laugh, that knowing how much I am an intelligent and rational mind, they would have said that Father Ariel has a hilarious sense of humor. In the case of vajasse-paradigm true Neapolitan aspirants, emblem of violence, of manipulation, of the barbarians cut and sew made by certain people on social media and the psychophysical need to hate, you have to laugh on the other hand. Indeed, these noblewomen, after declaring their regret for my Bishop who had not taken off my cassock and publicly condemned, they were further embittered because the Holy Father to whom they had written twice - as declared by them and with a receipt of the registered letter presented -, he had never taken any action on me, thus giving executions to the orders given by the violent and quarrelsome washerwomen not only to my Bishop, but even to the Roman Pontiff, which at least should have requested Castel Sant’Angelo on loan for use from the Municipality of Rome to lock me up in its internal prisons and then throw the key to the cell into the waters of the Tiber. So they just couldn't get over it, to the point of continuing to write: “How can they not severely punish such a priest, after all we wrote to Pope Francis?». In short, they demanded that Silvio Berlusconi, behind subtle threat to do as they wanted and the way they wanted, arranged to fix the television antenna, otherwise they would have reported it to the European Community, what am I saying, directly to the United Nations League, otherwise requesting the immediate intervention of the UN peacekeepers. to besiege the citadel of Mediaset in Cologno Monzese.

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A former classmate of mine, today Attorney of the Republic in a regional capital, in an entirely amused tone, but very irritated, told me some time ago that the Public Prosecutors, day after day they file absurd complaints presented for the craziest and most irrational reasons by people who, more and more, they truly believe that the Law can be applied - and strictly speaking even with absolute severity - to do the utmost justice to the irrepressible hyper-susceptibility and hypertrophic narcissism of certain subjects who live in the surreal planet of social media rather than in the real world. He confided to me that one of his Prosecutors made him read a lawsuit one day in which a woman had sued a man because under the photo she posted on her public page social, with her portrayed in a bathing suit, had posted a emoticon with a laughing face that made a tongue out.

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With this example the magistrate friend summed up the drama of the vajasse-paradigm tested narrates and various similar. All these people also have another characteristic in common, or rather the habit of using the terms medieval and medieval as insulting words with which to brand those who have changed into fetishes on which download hate, roughly like a sorcerer voodoo practice the macumba planting pins on a rag doll. And try to explain it to this army of digital illiterates and violent brawls that the Middle Ages is that Benedictine monasticism that gave life to the concept and to the very word of Europe and that has passed on to us centuries and centuries of knowledge., that without the circuit of Benedictine monasteries it would have been lost forever. Or that the Middle Ages are Anselmo d’Aosta and Tommaso d’Aquino, to follow with Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarca and Giovanni Boccaccio. And then try to explain that the Middle Ages, divided into three distinct eras over a span of nearly ten centuries, it was a flourishing of arts and sciences everywhere. What they understand as the Middle Ages - but which never existed in the true Middle Ages - is what exists today in the world of social media, through which man, under false pretexts of progress and freedom, he has lost all kinds of continence, modesty and measure, up to regress to the stones and the slingshot of prehistory, to the point of giving the worst of himself as he had never done before. For this reason, Umberto Eco was right in affirming:

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«I social media they give the right to speak to legions of idiots who previously only spoke at the bar after a glass of wine, without damaging the community. They were immediately silenced, while now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It is the invasion of imbeciles ".

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Maybe today's man had a speculative mind, the creative flair and critical sense that the bass man had, middle and late Middle Ages, maybe! And unfortunately, from this great and uncontrollable sewer, many self-styled Catholics and variously frustrated and unhappy women hidden behind fluid Christs and languid little Madonnas also come to the surface, which constitute the worst negation of the Christianitas.

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inside i social media I enter, I write and debate with the spirit of the good shepherd who does not hesitate to enter, if necessary, even in a brothel in the worst slums, in the knowledge that he will never be able to get all the prostitutes who work there out of the loop, But, one or two, it may even be that it manages to induce a change of life. The good shepherd does not hesitate to go to a circle of drug addicts, or criminals, aware that very few will be those who will be able to wrest from drug addiction or the circles of organized crime, but we know how much for God even one soul is very precious.

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Dad, because every now and then on social media say bad words? It's true, every now and then I use colorful language. But I ask you: someone really thinks he does it by accident, or worse for verbal incontinence? Well I confess it to you: within the social media I have led more people to reason with a dirty word than with one Ave Maria. Each business requires precise techniques of action, each area requires its own expressive language: one does not speak of metaphysics to an illiterate and at the same time one should not treat a metaphysician as if he were a perfect illiterate. At a gala dinner at an embassy, ​​shrimps are shelled with a knife and fork, the peel is also removed from the fruit, while in a fishermen's tavern you peel the shrimps with your hands and peel the fruit with a knife, holding it tightly in your hands. You don't use your hands in some contexts and in others it would be offensive for everyone present to use a knife and fork instead. All this is called simply and nothing but common sense.

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These are today, in the very happy world we live in, the great and difficult pastoral challenges that we priests have to face, if necessary with a knife and fork, in other contexts by greasing his fingers with shrimp shells. And believe me if from experience as a priest, pastor in the care of souls and theologian I tell you very clearly: as an enterprise it is by no means a small thing, in the modern world of the man of stone and the slingshot that today rages on social media, except ironically with all his crass ignorance about the open mind, creative and speculative that the man of the Middle Ages had instead.

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the Island of Patmos, 14 January 2022

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I social media they work like this: believe that you have the right to offend anyone without limits and without filters, But, if the offended person responds in kind, at that point, who offended you, immediately state that he has been offended by you (!?). Then, if the offender is a woman, in that case, who was offended and dared to argue, is gravely guilty of having “offended a woman”. This is the “logic” of the social media.

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Some pearls of wisdom of the vajasse-paradigm who spend their days on social media to give history lessons, philosophy, medicine, policy, quantum physics, theology, art and so on and so forth … and who attack and insult without filters and limits anyone who dares to contradict the expressions of theirs “high wisdom”, in those social media now reduced to a planet "invaded by legions of imbeciles who have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner", as Umberto Eco complained several years ago.

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Thoughts on the concept of filial freedom in a time of pandemic, regarding certain bishops who have forgotten that they are the fathers of the vaccinated and the unvaccinated

- Pastoral care -

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE CONCEPT OF BRANCH FREEDOM IN A TIME OF PANDEMIC, ABOUT CERTAIN BISHOPS WHO HAVE FORGOTTEN THAT THEY ARE FATHERS OF VACCINATED AND UNVACCINATED

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That beautiful soul of Monsignor Cirulli loses sight of the fact that if necessary it is in his full right to impose a ban on the Catholic faithful from using condoms or birth control pills or even more so the use of morning after pill or even worse than the abortion pill. Just as it can forbid its priests to go to women or men or to ask them to scrupulously observe liturgical and canonical norms, but it cannot force the clergy and the faithful to vaccinate simply because this is beyond its function.

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Author
Ivano Liguori, Ofm. Capp.

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Franco Califano (Tripoli 1938 - Rome 2013) "Damn boredom", to open the video click on the image

On the Sunday just passed, feast of the Baptism of the Lord, at the time of the homily I reflected with my parishioners on the fact that in baptism the Christian, in addition to the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity receives above all the most precious gift of filial freedom. For us Christians, being free is a prerogative of being children. The Blessed Apostle Paul underlines this very well in his letter to the Galatians [cf.. Gal 4, 4-ss].

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Already the biblical hagiographer, in the Book of Genesis, describing the creation of man, it says that each was made in the image and likeness of God [cf.. GN 1, 26], by similarity we mean those mental qualities, moral and social values ​​proper to God, that the Creator has imprinted in the human creature differentiating it from all the other created ones. From this divine likeness it is sanctioned, in a clear and definitive way, the difference and superiority of man compared to all other creatures, including animal ones.

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We pay attention and clarify immediately a fundamental concept: the gift of filial freedom is not a personal merit that man can boast of but it is an acquired grace that we obtain from the Father (as the Letter to the Galatians will say with the Greek expression dià theōu!) in view of the incarnation of the Word, of Christ the only begotten Son, who made it possible to be children in the Son in a full and lasting way by redeeming man from that condition of sin and death on which ancient slavery was supported, as Jesus remarked before the Jews: «If therefore the Son sets you free, you will be truly free " [GV 8, 36].

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If we understand that Christian freedom it is the prerogative of the Son and of those who knew how to welcome him [cf.. GV 1,12], enough to become the legitimate heirs [cf.. RM 8,17], we can also understand the full possibility of each baptized person to relate fully to God the Father and the Holy Spirit as Christ did. Indeed, only if we are authentically children in the Son can we also exercise that full freedom which implies a recognition of a relationship with the Father as the lover and with the Holy Spirit as love.

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At the time of our baptism, therefore, God's grace gives us the gift of filial freedom just as it was given to Christ who was free before the Father and remained so in his earthly life precisely because he was a beloved son in that anointing of the Holy Spirit which is the guarantee of every perfect communion and communication with God [cf.. RM 8, 14-ss] in freedom.

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From these theological assumptions, it is not difficult to understand how Christian freedom supposes, to be such, of constant relational communication. Just as God is fully liberated in himself precisely because in his intimate mystery the most august persons of the Most Holy Trinity cannot but relate to each other in fullness - which also refers to the Word after his incarnation - so man is truly free only when he is capable of entering into communion with God and relating to creatures.

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Unfortunately, to the proven proof of the facts, to speak of Christian freedom today as a rediscovery of one's baptism and therefore as an evangelical commitment to be witnesses in the world of the freedom of the Son is not at all easy. The current pandemic health crisis has distorted the concept of freedom not only in its theological reference but also in that philosophical and social reference that underlies every civilization. In less than two years we have gone from a health crisis to a social one that has left heavy repercussions on the political and economic sphere of the country, so much so as to undermine those certainties once considered obvious. This global crisis has not spared even the faith that is experiencing a very deep crack so as to lead the freedom of the baptized faithful to drift in favor of a mirage of freedom that is made up of "benevolent concessions" that day after day mortgage filial freedom on altar of emergency, today of the health one and tomorrow of who knows what other.

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Stoically we have been able to bring sacrifice of the distance from the Sacraments, of the suspension of Holy Masses, from the remodeling of religious traditions and all in the hope of being able to start again, something that seems increasingly difficult today. Is to the outside that to enter of the Christian world, as well as the civil one, we are witnessing a continuous decrease in the concept of freedom which is curtailed to such a proportional and gradual extent with respect to the increase in the communal distance between man and man and between man and God. We assist helpless, two years now, the impossibility of creating stable relationships, frank dialogues, mature comparisons between the parties. Everything falls under the light of suspicion, of illegality, of clandestinity: we no longer see a Socratic dialogic communication that gives birth to a free and liberating truth and that recognizes in man the most beautiful work done by the Creator. The distance between individuals is palpable and in our churches we experience the desolation of the empty pews where the baptized, once beloved children, they are looking for a father who cannot be found. And paternally a part of our bishops remain closed in their own curie-fortresses to produce Manzonian cries alert and vigilance to the virus, perhaps envying the civil institutions that with a decree can prohibit the weepers some slices of social life fueling the illusion of paradises Covid free held upright by an ethereal GreenPass and from a terrorist communication that is the daughter of a freedom that has lost the reference to paternity and of a communion that is unable to meet one's neighbor.

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We men of the Church, as well as the men of the state, we are finding it very difficult to communicate with people who are no longer seen as children, brothers and citizens to protect and protect, but as categories to be labeled, good in the part of the scapegoat to whom it is right and right to put on. So then there are also the faithful in parishes and convents pro-wax e no-vax; conservatives and progressives; the traditionalists and the reformists. E, together with all this dialectic of opposition, it moves forward on the control and elimination of the opposing party, confusing the truth, with the acceptance of the unique narrative of its own line-up; freedom, with conforming to this partisan truth and the common good with what is affirmed by the majority.

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All this long reasoning it serves me as a necessary introduction to a pastoral issue that creates in me a feeling of inner sadness combined with a pitiful commiseration. As a priest and baptized I assist daily and in a systematic and methodical way, to the dismantling of the Christian freedom of so many faithful who find themselves mistreated by their pastors who now have more propensity to sanitize souls than to their sanctification. The last case in order of time is the one that concerns S. AND. Mons. Giacomo Cirulli, bishop of the Dioceses of Teano-Calvi and Alife-Caiazzo who banned the distribution of communion to those priests not vaccinated (you see who, who), but also to those deacons and laity labeled as no-vax who serve in his diocesan Church. The prelate, who apparently has a degree in medicine, as a good medical officer, he orders the draconian suspension of the pastoral liturgical service of his clergy considered to be reluctant to serum, thus creating a unique pastoral and canonical precedent that has no precedent in the history of the Church until now.

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And yes, because that beautiful soul of Monsignor Cirulli loses sight of the fact that if necessary it is in his full right to impose a ban on the Catholic faithful from using condoms or birth control pills or even more so the use of morning after pill or even worse than the abortion pill. Just as it can forbid its priests to go to women or men or to ask them to scrupulously observe liturgical and canonical norms, but he cannot force the clergy and the faithful to vaccinate simply because this is beyond his duties even if he is a medical graduate, because he as bishop was consecrated essentially to be a father who speaks to the heart of the children that Christ has entrusted to him, which must be exhorted and recovered, even in the unfortunate case in which these departed from the paternal house making a bad use of their freedom.

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We devoutly wish to give advice to Monsignor Cirulli, which is common sense advice and consists in appealing to the conscience and freedom of one's children - priests and lay people - and seeing vaccination not as a dogmatic obligation but as one of the many practicable tools that medicine suggests in this time of emergency health care together with the other appropriate treatments made available to the medical art. Or better understood: at this time, in the current state of scientific knowledge, science and medicine suggest and recommend vaccination to avoid contagion - we know and we have been told by specialists that vaccinated people can get infected -, but to avoid the devastating effects of Covid-19 with all that it can bring to the health of the individual, or to medical personnel who have been experiencing an emergency for almost two years and have to assist the hospitalized, to follow up with the entire national health system which risked collapse during the first wave.

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Suspend like this, in coercive mode the power ministerial of their own priests, until proven otherwise they are not affected by any canonical penalty, in fact requires a lockdown to the conscience of the presbyter who has the duty to rush attentively to every member of the faithful who legitimately requests his spiritual assistance. I also see a clever and malicious use by the bishop of the words spoken by the Roman Pontiff to get vaccinated. Indeed, the phrase of the Pope: "Getting vaccinated is an act of love" obviously makes sense, but it is a paternal parenesis and not a pronouncement from the throne, a dutiful exhortation, not a dogmatic pronouncement that binds in matters of faith and morals. Because, at this point, also vaccinating for other diseases can rightly be considered an act of love, as well as maintaining a healthy body or observing a healthy and morally irreproachable life. I ask, there is a need for the Pope or a bishop to understand this or exhort this? We Fathers de The Island of Patmos, that we were all three authors of a book dedicated to this delicate subject The Church and the coronavirus, we have publicly stated on several occasions that we have been vaccinated, when the vaccine was available and when it was our turn, because we have freely and consciously decided to trust science and the indications given by experts and specialists. But pay attention to the words and the meaning of the words: we did it by exercising our freedom and by deciding to trust, so we acted for act of trust, which is an action never to be confused with a act of faith, which is quite another thing. Today one seriously wonders: the science we first trusted, but above all the politics that sometimes seems to use science as a blunt instrument, he wants one of ours act of trust or one of ours act of faith? Because faith is based on dogmas, but science is not, indeed, if anything, it specializes in laughing at it, up to reaching certain currents of psychiatry that place religiosity in the context of neuroses.

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I do not seem to remember that episcopal exhortations have been made in the past to ensure that the secular or religious clergy ate or drank more moderately - in the face of the many cases of chronic alcoholism and severe obesity still present among consecrated persons - let alone the advice to practice a more sporty life, something that he would no doubt have avoided wearing, already from the years of seminar formation, the size 52 of the trousers that increases with the increase of the assignments received. And I do not want to dwell on the pitiful and delicate case of the priests who have fallen into the various addictions, something that cannot be said for clerical modesty but which from time to time comes to the fore in the news columns [you see who, who], but if anyone wants to deepen these painful issues related to the moral decay of the clergy, just read the book And Satan made him triune at Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo.

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Most Reverend Excellency what we do? We also ban ai fat people, to drunkards and employees of various kinds the care of souls because they are incapable of acts of love? We want to propose to the Congregation for the Clergy a pastoral catharism in which only the hard and pure can exercise the priestly ministry while the others are sent home? While Your Excellency thinks about it, I would like to reiterate the concrete danger of using the alibi of love free from everything and everyone as a reinforcement of one's own ideologies slogan. We have already seen legions glitterate e rainbows of men who want to convince us to the sound of Love is Love, this theme to which Ariel S and I. Levi di Gualdo we have dedicated our book: From Prozan to Prozac. At this point, if an act of love is enough to fix things, how can we still blame him? If an act of love is enough to justify everything, we also consider euthanasia as an act of love towards the dying or abortion as an act of love towards a woman who wishes to fulfill herself.

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The truth, Excellency, it does not consist in the fact that his priests are reluctant to offer their arm to the homeland to be vaccinated - considering that almost all of us Italian priests are vaccinated -, but that there is probably an obvious difficulty in relating to them. This precludes all freedom, favoring hasty limitations and tightening between the parties.

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If God did this to us every time we sin or that we deliberately disobey his will, what would become of us? What would become of God? But no, God continues to have a relationship with us, a communion proper and above all when our freedom as children is more shaky and fails. God continually sends his incarnate Word to give us that mercy made flesh which is the only one that can restore our compromised filial freedom to health.. We are free only if we are in communion, as father bishop you wait with concern and trembling for his sons, priests and lay people on the doorstep, not to circumscribe them with restrictive measures but to wrap them with that hug around the neck [cf.. LC 15, 20] which dissolves all resistance and makes it clear that the father is always such, especially when he makes a mistake, and he is the father of the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, who as a father seeks, sometimes with difficulty, the unit, it certainly does not lend itself to creating dramatic fractures and divisions. Therefore he is the father of consecrated virgins and at the same time - perhaps even more so - of women who have abortions, in need of his acceptance and his forgiveness much more than we do the consecrated virgins.

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But these of ours are Catholic speeches, perhaps obsolete and perhaps even annoying, while everything else is boring, as Franco Califano sang: but boredom, girl, girl …

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Laconi, 13 January 2021

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Story of a betrayed love that never went out: Luigi Negri died, he was bishop of the Diocese of San Marino-Montefeltro and later Archbishop of Ferrara. A bishop's disaster but a true believer and a man of faith

- Church news -

STORY OF A BETRAYED LOVE THAT HAS NEVER EXTENDED: LUIGI NEGRI IS DEAD, HE WAS BISHOP OF THE DIOCESE OF SAN MARINO-MONTEFELTRO AND THEN ARCHBISHOP OF FERRARA. A BISHOP DISASTER BUT AUTHENTIC BELIEVER AND MAN OF FAITH

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In these mournful circumstances the clerical hypocrisy of the ecclesiastics always manages to give the best of itself, followed by that of the lay clerics which far surpasses it. Like this, enveloped for a few days by the sense of insane respect for death which, according to some, would cancel everything, we proceed with the beatification of the deceased, first of all magnifying the virtues he did not have.

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Rome, 1° May 2010, sacristy of Santa Prisca on the Aventine, Luigi Negri, Bishop of the Diocese of San Marino-Montefeltro, shortly before the priestly consecration of Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo

The 31 December 2021 Luigi Negri died, who was bishop of the Diocese of San Marino-Montefeltro (2005-2012), later Archbishop of Ferrara (2013-2017). Complex and contradictory personality, with an impulsive and passionate character that created many problems for him, to those who were close to him and to the two dioceses he governed.

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In these mournful circumstances the clerical hypocrisy of the ecclesiastics always manages to give the best of himself, followed by that of the lay clerics which far surpasses it. Like this, enveloped for a few days by the sense of insane respect for death which, according to some, would cancel everything, we proceed with the beatification of the deceased, first of all magnifying the virtues he did not have.

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I got to know Luigi Negri very well, because of his passion and imprudence, which have often generated poor pastoral governance, I have experienced them on my skin and, in a sense, I will pay them throughout my priestly life, while not having any personal fault or responsibility, neither I nor my current Bishop, who in perfect antithesis to Luigi Negri is a pastor in the care of souls to such a caring and loving point that he will leave an indelible memory of himself for many decades to follow.

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As can sometimes happen with some fathers, instead of an inheritance, Luigi Negri left me debts to be paid to unintended creditors that were not contracted by me, ended up in the unfortunate condition of having to extinguish them and therefore pay all the consequences. This was Luigi Negri for me, My confreres of the particular Church of San Marino-Montefeltro are well aware of this, none of whom seem to have ever wondered why, in my Diocese of belonging, in 12 years of priesthood I have never celebrated Holy Mass even once, nor have I ever attended the Chrism Mass, or at the assembly of the clergy. Having said that, I clarify: I won't either, at least until the day I am presented with those apologies that I owed me from the first to the last. Not for me, but for the sacred respect due to the priestly ministry, because if the first not to respect the priesthood are bishops and priests, it certainly cannot be complained that the sacred priestly ministry is not respected by the faithful. And these are due excuses, especially on the part of this Holy Church so pleasant and politically correct that even the last of the Tunisian ex-convicts who land clandestine on our shores to end up peddling drugs on the streets of Italian cities is pining, but who believes that he can treat presbyters in such a barbaric way that the proven evidence of the facts never gave rise to problems of a moral nature, doctrinal and asset. E, given the times that exist, it is appropriate to say - without aura of presumption - that a presbyter like me should be taken as an example of priestly life, until proved otherwise not easy. And whoever proves otherwise had it, that he flies it to the four winds on the public square.

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It is from this that, by apparent paradox, my troubles derive all from the imprudence and lack of care of Luigi Negri. Indeed, not only does the contrary proof of what I have just stated does not exist, because there is worse: I have no skeletons in the closets, therefore I cannot be blackmailed morally and economically. And today, if a priest cannot be blackmailed, it cannot even be entangled in certain dioceses which establish their strange balances on the mechanism of blackmail, that under the test of facts we are paying with our increasingly empty churches and with a crisis of credibility in which the clergy were not even in the 11th century, at the time when San Pier Damiani wrote his Free Gomorrhianus. We are priests, with our inadequacies and laziness, with our quiet life and with our doctrinal and moral deficiencies, that we have emptied them, not the Covid-19 pandemic.

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To understand the great heart of Luigi Negri's father and pastor I will narrate a scene of my priestly consecration, which took place in Rome in the Church of Santa Prisca all Aventino on 1 May 2010. Since the previous month, I begged the bishop to be able to talk to him for half an hour before the sacred ordination. On the evening of 30 April arrived in Rome at 21,30 at the international priestly house where I was staying, he greeted me and asked to withdraw. At which I accompanied him to the room reserved for him, all in the space of five minutes. Before closing the door in my face he said: "See you tomorrow morning after breakfast". All 8 the next morning I served him breakfast, but without being able to talk to him, because there were all the other priests of the house. Then he withdrew telling me: "See you at 9.30". All 10 his companion calls me and announces me: "The bishop told me to tell you that you will see each other directly at the church". Five minutes before 11 comes to the church, welcomed at the door by the rector, by me and by the acolytes of the Almo Collegio Capranica who served in the liturgy, while 92 concelebrants and four assistant deacons were already waiting for him in the sacristy. Time to parade and we leave in procession, without having exchanged even two words between us.

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After the proclamation of the Holy Gospel he gave a homily in which he even highlighted the virtues that I didn't even know I had, only at that moment did I take note, I must also say with great happiness, precisely because I was completely ignorant of them. The concelebrants - which I repeat were 92 presbyters from various parts of the world - were impressed and talked to each other for days:

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"It rarely happens that a bishop says similar words about one of his presbyters demonstrating a will so determined to ordain him with profound episcopal pride".

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The solemn pontifical ended, while in the sacristy I received the hugs of numerous confreres, the Bishop disappears. Later I was told a scene that unfortunately remained in the annals: my brother Paolo, with her baby by the hand, at the time 5 year old, he ran to the Bishop's car to greet him, because Luigi Negri was leaving without even deigning to greet my mother and my brother.

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Perhaps the Holy Father was waiting for him in a private audience? No, he had an appointment with the senator of Forza Italia Marcello Pera, a socio-political scientist passed off as a great philosopher, one of Luigi Negri's various friends, to which three months later, when I had the opportunity to see him for scarcely five minutes, complaining about his behavior I said:

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"If an inveterate sinner who has not confessed for thirty years has a regurgitation of conscience, or if a dying person needs to be comforted with the Sacraments, send us Marcello Pera, or, she knows I'm telling her: send us Silvio Berlusconi directly, thus the eternal salvation of the soul will be guaranteed one hundred percent ".

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Temperamentally more touchy than a monkey, the consequence was that for a year he didn't even answer the phone. I could go on with many other stories, before which the novel Heart, well-known tearjerking work written by Edmondo De Amicis in 1886, compared to certain sad and painful episodes I experienced, it would be more entertaining than a hilarious comedy-theatrical show staged at the Brancaccio Theater by the great and late Gigi Proietti.

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Christ God really wanted me to be his priest at all costs, because immediately after my sacred ordination I was put in conditions that were not only unsustainable, but in conditions that exceeded the human endurance capacity, as two of my trainers admitted, one of whom is a bishop of long experience. For much less, priests have been seen abandoning the priesthood on the spot after a couple of years, even after a year, or even after only six months. That I have a very strong character is recognized by everyone, but not even a strong character is sufficient in certain situations. This is where I saw the bursting action of God's grace on me, because she and she alone supported me, I have no merit. And if I have merit, I have it, it is only one: to have freely accepted the working and transforming grace of God. Only today I understand the reasons that yesterday I could not understand, these: for years now, as a confessor and spiritual director, I carry out a delicate and intense pastoral work in support of priests who are in serious difficulties. How can one understand the pain of the cross without having carried it on one's shoulders and then having been nailed to it? Yup, it took years, but I finally understood my role in the economy of salvation, who had to pass through my cross in order to play the role of one who helps to carry the cross to others, instead of saying, with the style of new generation migrationist bishops: "Maybe you need the help of a good psychologist". No, villains who are nothing else! A priest in trouble, always and strictly speaking he needs another priest capable of supporting him, as well as a bishop worthy of the name, but today more and more difficult to find, they are so busy crying on the boats of illegal immigrants or on the ideological poor. Or maybe someone knows other ways, to the present, to become bishops and then remain on their own episcopal chair, if not the pandering flattery and the demeaning and depersonalizing homologation to certain current pastoral trends as devastating as they are bankruptcy on which, albeit aware of the enormous damage, no one breathes and to which all are homologated?

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With all due respect to the laudators post mortem and of the cielline supporters who for a few days will be unleashed narrating endless wonders about the great Luigi Negri pupil of the first hour of the great Luigi Giussani, I can and must say, with all the most realistic and unfortunately merciless spirit of truth, that as a bishop it was a disaster. Because this is the underlying problem: Luigi Negri was not really meant to be made a bishop. You don't catapult a man, a 64 years of age, from a chair of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan to the episcopal chair of one of the smallest rural dioceses in Italy, all scattered among the uninhabited plains and mountains of Montefeltro. But, when this happened by mistake, Luigi Negri could have seized the opportunity to sanctify himself and sanctify his clergy and the People of God entrusted to him, because not infrequently Divine Grace also makes use of errors, to insert us on the way to holiness. Instead, not even two years passed, Luigi Negri was already pawing between the Congregation for Bishops and the members of the college of cardinals to give him a diocese at his height, possibly one of those that were also residential cardinals. On the other hand, it was the minimum due, for a bishop who has reached over sixty years of age totally lacking in concrete pastoral experiences and who immediately proved unable to govern a small diocese, left to the whims and free will of the vicar general, while he was spinning like a top from one part of Italy to the other to hold conferences and meetings. Let me be clear: for a presbyter, have had pastoral experience, to the point of being suitable for the episcopate, it certainly does not mean having spent your life in politics between the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan and the Lay Movement of Communion and Liberation. Pastoral care for a priest is quite another thing, especially for a bishop. Indeed, when the government of the Diocese of San Marino Montefeltro passed from Luigi Negri to that holy man of God by Andrea Turazzi - who for forty years was the parish priest and the trainer of priests - from the dense darkness it passed into the light of the sun that shines in the sky at noon.

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When a bishop is an ambitious career who does not feel at ease in a diocese, soon the clergy and the faithful feel this. The consequence will be the distrust and disaffection of the clergy and faithful towards the bishop.

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To talk about the two great virtues of Luigi Negri, bad bishop and bad pastor in the care of souls, you have to paint the reality of a man who has spent his life sneaking in every way and every way in politics, his great and irrepressible passion, without ever having understood or ever wanted to understand that a bishop must be a caring father to both those on the Right and those on the Left, avoiding creating, as usual he did, useless controversies that have always revealed his being a biased man, rather than above the parties. The task of a bishop is to announce the Holy Gospel, do not campaign, always avoiding using the Holy Gospel for political ends, propaganda and above all electoral. I said just now that to talk about the virtues of this complex and contradictory personality, one must start from its serious defects. The year was 2011 When, now the dream of the bishopric of Milan has vanished - which the good Luigi Negri believed he was entitled to -, by now he was certain that he was moving to Venice in the place of Angelo Scola, promoted to the Ambrosian See. It was then that I took him to the chest and told him:

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“Your Excellency has taught me much more with your faults than with your virtues. She gave me a lesson that will accompany me throughout my priestly life, this: if the Devil manages to catch us in vanity and ambition, he can literally do with us what he wants, first of all by taking away our freedom, consequently conditioning our behaviors. She was entrusted with a Church to love and care for, who is his bride. Therefore try to be a faithful husband, she who speaks to the right and left of the great family values, which are not just mere political values ​​useful for staging polemics with the post-communist or liberal Left, but they are basic Christian values. So you don't aspire to have a richer and more senior wife, as do those husbands who leave their wives and children to run away with another woman, because he sees, maybe she doesn't realize it, but betrayal and adultery have many faces, and even bishops can be traitors and adulterers ".

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Since then to follow, in practice I have not heard from it again e, when I sometimes got to meet him, I barely had time to kiss his hand and offer him a greeting. but yet, among the various priests he consecrated during his episcopate, not a few of whom have said terrible things about him - except to magnify on the occasion of his death the extraordinary virtues they had never noticed before -, I believe I was the most faithful and truthful of all. Several times I told him to his face that he was about to make serious mistakes, just as many I reproached him for being wrong, even severely. And after having told him this, I have always obeyed him, I have been faithful to him and paid for his mistakes, above all I have always defended him in front of priests and chatty bishops who, behind his back, teased him for his immoderate career ambitions, which with almost childlike naivety he could not even conceal, why Luigi Negri, what he wanted, he said it publicly, as the bishopric of Milan, which he believed to belong to him almost by right. One time, misunderstanding the classic monsignorino poisonous of the Vicariate of Rome, in a very severe and angry way I intimated him:

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"Never again allow yourself to be ironic about my bishop and disrespect him in front of me, that I am one of his presbyters, because you run the serious risk of me breaking even some bones ".

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The hell that this gray employed placed in the command rooms he created me, it turned out terrible, suffice it to say that for two years it was possible for me to celebrate Holy Mass only in the Catacombs of Priscilla, while an army of alcohol-addicted priests, some even on drugs, many to a turbulent nightlife of immoral debauchery, they celebrated quietly in the main Roman parishes. But I'm an "old school" priest, therefore the bishop does not touch himself, because regardless of its merits or demerits, he is the one who holds and unites together all the members of the Mystical Body of Christ. Indeed, as I have often said and explained, especially in our age where everything hinges on emotional passions, on "I like" or "I don't like", the bishop is sacred, was also the worst episcope of the entire universal Church. To an unworthy bishop or not up to his role, I could also say that I have no respect for him, However, I would never question its legitimate authority, nor would I ever disrespect his sacred person. Because I solemnly promised the bishop filial respect and devoted obedience. The non-Stim, I didn't promise that. Therefore, if he wants it, must earn it, because it is not due to him. While respect and obedience do, that is due to him, always, regardless of its merits or demerits.

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To Luigi Negri, my consecrating bishop, I revered it, respected, obeyed and at the opportune moment defended with drawn sword. Estimate no, I didn't estimate it, I also told him, but he never cared about that. He was interested in the esteem of the various Marcello Pera, of Gianni Letta and of the elders of the Center Right to follow more or less in business with the political consortiums of Communion and Liberation. Then, that the most Catholic of these had at least two divorces behind him and that at the age of sixty he was living with a girlfriend of twenty-five, it was not of interest to this indomitable defender of the family's supreme political values. This is the reason why a consistent and faithful priest had no value for Luigi Negri, for him who built his irrepressible political being on the inconsistency and the obvious spirit of contradiction, seriously damaging his pastoral being.

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I am Christianly proud of having been consecrated a priest by him, I have always told everyone and today I repeat it. Pride that is based on the objective existence of two great virtues that Luigi Negri was gifted with, as I told Cardinal Carlo Caffarra in one of our many private talks:

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«Luigi Negri is a castle of contradictions and inconsistencies, a man who proved himself not up to the pastoral role of a bishop, but he is a true believer and a man of faith. And I will always be proud of having been ordained a priest by a believer and a man of faith. Something that is not at all obvious these days, be consecrated priests by bishops who are believers and men of faith ".

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What Cardinal Carlo Caffarra replied to me I'll take it to my grave with me, I can only say that his were words of response given by the sensitive heart of a great and true shepherd.

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I loved Luigi Negri in truth, I loved it by accepting it with all the complex baggage of its defects, many of which derive from evident unconscious complexes of inferiority that conditioned his entire existence. And I am sure that in his heart he has always admired in me the respect for truth and consistency, aware that if I had accepted certain compromises and closed my eyes on so many sad events that are affecting the Church, today my ecclesiastical status would be quite different, But, like many of my career brothers, I would have paid for a purple or red robe at the price of the eternal damnation of my soul, I would not have sanctified myself and I could not have sanctified the believers of Christ. And when one day, just after having ordained me a deacon, taking my inevitable ecclesiastical career for granted Luigi Negri told me:

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“You will remember me, when I will be an old bishop emeritus forgotten by everyone and you will be in who knows what high roles within the Church?».

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Making him laugh in his face, as is often done to those who have not understood anything about people, or at least very little, answered:

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“I will always be a priest held on the fringes, because if I have to choose between the uncomfortable truth, my peace and my personal gain, I will always choose the truth, which has very high prices to pay, although it is true that Jesus Christ died on the cross ".

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That first of May 2010, in his homily for my priestly consecration, Luigi Negri said:

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«… The joy abounds in me today to give the Church a priest faithful to the truth, to sound doctrine and truly ready to give his life for the Church and for the Papacy up to the ultimate sacrifice ".

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A bishop who says things like that, how can he not even stop to talk for half an hour with the ordinand before the sacred ordination and how can he escape five minutes later, as a perfect and rough peasant - this Luigi Negri in fact was - without even saying goodbye to his family, incidentally, they gave me free to the Church, within which I have always paid for everything and at full price, without costing my Diocese a single cent during all the years of my formation for the priesthood, carried out in Rome at a high price, at full price and at full price? How can a bishop say these words and then abandon one of his presbyters to feed the beasts and be totally disinterested in him? Simple answer: because at that moment it was not Luigi Negri who spoke but the Holy Spirit who is the Spirit of Wisdom and Truth and because I, priest, I was consecrated by Christ, who used that bishop's hands and mouth, which was only and nothing more than an instrument.

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I salute you, my beloved and venerated Bishop, you can count on a presbyter who will always celebrate Holy Masses for you, that from your light purgatory you will surely be grateful to me. Contrary to those who have thrown everything and more on you, in shovelfuls of mud, murmuring like little women between the private lounges and the closed sacristies, but that at your funeral they will narrate wonders about you such as to make the virtues of the Holy Bishops and Fathers of the Church pale, in the head of all those bishops who have mocked you for years of sitting in the living room with poisonous jokes like: "If they don't make him a cardinal, poor Negri will die depressed ".

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If there are no impediments due to the strict restrictions for Covid-19 which limits gatherings to a minimum, I will also attend the funeral. I will sit between the benches with the faithful, if there is room, otherwise I will remain praying outside the door of the Church. Because coherent I am lived and coherent I intend to die, paying up to the last cent the debts that my Bishop contracted and that he then left me to pay.

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Given the current times, perhaps I will arrange for my future funeral services, the day that will be, take place at dawn in a strictly private form, to prevent a consistent man, but now reduced to a helpless corpse, must undergo the filthy anthology of stupidity that priests manage to say in certain circumstances, but worse still the bishops. Then I will be buried in a small cemetery, in a remote fraction of my diocese to which I belong, where in the total indifference of the priests, today all ready with a tear in the eye to pull the water at the mill of the ideology of the poor and migrants, I have never celebrated Holy Mass even once.

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A little bad, I'll go there dead, if anything, by writing on the tombstone:

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«Here lies a sinner who has sinned in thoughts all his life, word and deed, but not in omissions, for nothing that was as true as it was inconvenient has he ever failed to say until God has given him breath. Who passes in front of this tomb, pray for the soul of Father Ariel ".

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the Island of Patmos, 1January 2022

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«You will know the truth and the truth will set you free» [GV 8,32],
but bring, spread and defend the truth not only of
risks but also the costs. Help us supporting this Island
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