ALDO MORO AT THE SEA IN A JACKET AND TIE, BISHOPS AND PRIESTS IN UNDERWEAR, WE “STIFF PRIESTS” CALLED “PHARISEES” E “FORMALISTS” IF WE DARE TO MAKE CALLS TO PRIESTLY DIGNITY

«When we went to the beach, dad always wore a jacket and when I asked him for an explanation he replied that being a representative of the Italian people he always had to be dignified and presentable".

 

 

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In these days of summer heat I came across a photo of one of our twentieth-century Italian statesmen, Aldo Moro, portrayed with his daughter while walking on the beach in a jacket and tie. Daughter Agnese remembers:

«When we went to the beach, dad always wore a jacket and when I asked him for an explanation he replied that being a representative of the Italian people he always had to be dignified and presentable" (cf.. WHO, WHO).

To those brothers who, not finding anything better, turn to me as a spiritual director or confessor, I often repeat:

«Each of us, perhaps without even realizing it, has as its models those priests known in the delicate years of childhood".

There are facts and situations in which we have the clear perception that we have not aged that much, but that we are considered old by those who have transformed the visible Church into a theater of the burlesque.

When I was a child I went for two weeks to a summer camp organized by the parish and run by the nuns. I wouldn't have needed to go to the colony to go to the seaside, where my family had summer homes. I also went several times with my maternal grandmother to the French coast for a summer stay with her sister. My parents sent me to those seaside colonies, then following the mountain ones above L'Aquila, so that I could spend periods of time with my peers.

In August, at the beginning of the marine colony, between 10 and the 11 in the morning the bishop of the diocese arrived on the inaugural visit accompanied by the parish priest and his secretary. Ten year old child that I was - so we are talking about fifty years ago - I still remember the bishop with his cassock threaded in purplish red and the other two presbyters with the black one. At the time in Italy, the use of white cassocks, it was only allowed from Naples downwards. After the greeting addressed to us children - as he used at the time and as he continues to use for many of us today -, one by one we went to kiss the bishop's right hand. When it was my turn, after kissing the bishop's hand, I looked at him and the other two priests and asked them if they weren't hot. The bishop smiled together with the other two and answered me:

«Yes we are hot, very much! However, if one day you happen to see a shepherd among his flock of sheep, you will notice that he is always dressed as a shepherd, in summer and winter. The sheep also recognize their shepherd by how he is dressed. Even the wolf that tries to attack the sheep, if he recognizes the shepherd he stays away and doesn't come closer".

Exactly half a century has passed since then, yet I always remember, not just the words, but even the tone of voice of that bishop, dead now for thirty-five years at the age of ninety. Today instead, some bishops and priests new generation, they smile when faced with stories of this kind, they give you a look mixed with tenderness and pain, then, as they say to the nostalgic poor, they respond: «But what are you thinking and going over again, were other times!». We are sure that priestly dignity and decorum are things of the past?

In the days before, Rome was dying of heat, between Borgo Santo Spirito, Borgo Pio and Via della Conciliazione was mostly a bustle of priests with shirts with short sleeves undone, not to mention the nuns with the t-shirt white that reveal the transparent bra laces, and to whom one might ask why they wear the veil on their heads, in those estates it would be better to go without. Wanting, with the heat, they could even do without a bra, if his breasts didn't reach his navel. Then there are the inevitable bishops with the low-cut shirt with short sleeves and the pectoral cross inside the breast pocket, so that the piece of chain left visible gives the image of "power" through what was once called the "pectoral cross", today it is instead called "panzoral cross", because it is no longer on the chest but hanging on the belly, or “tascoral cross”, because it is placed inside the shirt pocket.

Walking along Borgo Pio, in the direction of a crossroad that is located just before the end, three groups of people stopped me, the “stiff priest” with the cassock on, despite the heat; and some Latin Americans asked me for my blessing, two other small groups of people if I could bless them with the religious objects they had just purchased. As usual I blessed the people and objects. Among these, a young man asked me if I wasn't hot. I replied that I have always suffered a lot from the heat and that I was going to the laundry to pick up my two white light linen cassocks that I had brought to be washed and that I would wear if that heat continued or worse increased. Having said that, I clarified:

«Priestly decorum and dignity can be manifested both dressed and half-naked with two dirty rags on. Our martyr bishops and priests, died in Nazi concentration camps or in Gulag Communists, were they not perhaps also clothed with great dignity? But since we are neither inside the concentration camps nor inside the Gulag, It's a good idea to stay dressed from neck to ankles, even when it's hot".

I used other words, compared to those that bishop used with me half a century ago, but the substance was the same and I think the effect produced was the same. Like a good priest “stiff” no one has ever seen me walking around in shorts, let alone entering churches to celebrate Holy Mass in those conditions. No one has ever seen me at the beach in a swimsuit among people, the very few times that I go there during the summer, approximately three or four times, I go to isolated and depopulated places where I don't know anyone and where no one knows me. Matters of … rigidity.

Or as some dear detractors say who I particularly like and who wander around calmly in canvas trousers after having undergone six or seven years of fantastic training in the most holy seminary:

«Pay no attention to him, he doesn't text, he didn't even attend the seminar, he's a stiff!».

Empirical evidence shows it's worth saying: «Thank God!», if anything, reminding these of the gaps in the history of the Church, as well as in Catholic doctrine, that not even John Paul II did the seminary, Paul VI and before them not even Pius XII, the latter passed off as a student of the Almo Collegio Capranica, where, however, he only stayed two or three months, just to be able to say that he had passed through the corridor of a Roman seminary before being ordained a priest and catapulted the following day to the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy. The privilege of not having attended the seminary will certainly not allow me to become the Supreme Pontiff, I hope, however, that he can allow me to sanctify myself.

Definitely, the most holy seminary, the Bishop of Vallo della Lucania did it, photographed smiling in his underwear and put on the page social of his Diocese complete with a playful 8X1000 t-shirt (cf.. WHO), about which some people also wonder: like never in years, this revenue intended for us by Italian taxpayers, it's not even decreasing anymore, but in free fall? It may be that it depends on a lack of rigidity and on the excellent training given in our most holy seminaries to our bishops and priests new generation?

Since according to the best of the worst of the clericalese - exactly what you learn in the most holy seminaries -, the consolidated technique is to overturn the facts and then attack those who have made completely legitimate criticisms, Knowing certain priestly psychology, I would like to point out that the prompt reply regarding the fact that the photo was stolen by someone and then published, it doesn't hold up; especially since it was first published on the page social of the Diocese complete with an official message and shortly afterwards removed. The question is in fact upstream and goes far beyond the photo itself: a sixty-year-old bishop in a physical condition that is anything but toned and sporty, with plenty of belly and superfluous fat on him, it is appropriate for him to be a youngster by taking to the football field? This pertinent question is then followed by a second one: today's young and old, increasingly poor in Christ and illiterate in matters of doctrine and faith, the bishop, they prefer him in the classroom to teach and transmit those now lost truths of faith, or playing football matches in a sort of pathetic re-edition of the old and fun matches between bachelors and married men?

 

From the island of Patmos, 28 June 2024

 

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