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ROMA DECADENCE. THE PASSION OF THE MYSTICAL BODY AND THE ILLUSION OF ACTIVISM

The historical body of the Church suffers from its wounds and from the sins of its members, but as the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, the Church is "holy and at the same time in need of purification"; it is not holy due to the virtue of its members, but because its head is Christ and its animator is the Holy Spirit.

— Theologica —

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

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Dear readers of the Island of Patmos, I am writing to you at a time that many, not wrongly, define of Roma decadence, an era in which the evaporation of Christianity, as Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi also lucidly observed[1], it is no longer a dystopian prophecy, but a tangible reality.

However, faced with this scenario, a theologian looks at the Church not with the worldly eyes of sociology, but with the gaze of faith that recognizes in the Mystical Body the living presence of Christ and His Spirit.

This article of mine was born from dialogue social with dear Alessandro, also a digital pastoral operator (who his site). I would like to divide our reflections into three moments.

The Ecclesial Kenosis: between the Holy Saturday of history and the heresy of efficiency. As Don Giuseppe Forlai writes, but the theme returns in many reflections carried out in multiple areas, the Church in Europe today resembles the body of Jesus taken down from the Cross: lifeless, consummate, apparently defeated, and yet - and this is the divine paradox - a treasure chest of eternal life persists in it. We must not be scandalized if the Bride of Christ appears disfigured; she is reliving the mysteries of her Spouse's life, including the passion and burial[2]. In this sulphurous ecclesial, the greatest temptation is to replace mystery with organization, grace with bureaucracy, falling into that Pelagianism that Pope Francis and his predecessors have often stigmatized. A young Saint Benedict of Nursia, in the face of the corruption of Rome, he did not found a party or a protest movement, but he retreated into silence to "relive with himself" (to live with him), laying the foundations for a civilization that was not born from a human project, but from the search for God (To seek God). This contemplative silence is not mutism but prayerful listening to the Word and is the only adequate response to the crisis. The historical body of the Church suffers from its wounds and from the sins of its members, but as the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, the Church is "holy and at the same time in need of purification" (CCC 827); it is not holy due to the virtue of its members, but because its head is Christ and its animator is the Holy Spirit. Because of this, a serious way of reforming the ecclesial community is not frenetic activism. Already Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, of venerable memory, he wisely remembered that a shepherd must feed the sheep and not vice versa, and serve the sanctification of people. Following the teaching of Saint Paul in the Letter to the Philippians: “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Fil 2,12), we must stop looking for scapegoats or structural solutions to problems that exist, in their root, pneumatic and spiritual. They take time, study and prayer.

The fundamental mistake I think it lies in a sort of "heresy of action" which forgets a basic principle of Scholasticism: Acting follows being (the Act follows the be). If the being of the Church is emptied of its supernatural substance, his actions become an empty shell, a background noise that converts no one. Today we are witnessing what we could define as an obsession with structures, almost as if by modifying the organizational chart of the Curia or inventing new pastoral committees we can infuse the Holy Spirit on command. I'm not saying that planning or reorganization are bad things in themselves, indeed they are welcome. But let's remember that the Spirit blows where he wants, not where our human planning forces it. This efficiency mentality betrays a lack of faith in the intrinsic power of Grace. We behave like the Apostles on the boat in the storm before Christ woke up: we get agitated, we row against the wind, we scream, forgetting that He who commands the winds and the sea is present, albeit apparently dormant, aft.

The current condition of the Church in Europe, which we defined above as "deposed from the Cross", it reminds us of the mystery of Holy Saturday. It is the day of great silence, not of desperate inactivity. On Holy Saturday, the Church does not proselytize, does not organize conferences, it does not draw up five-year synodal plans; the Church keeps vigil next to the tomb, knowing that that stone will not be overturned by human hands. The mortal danger of our time is wanting to "reanimate" the ecclesial body with worldly techniques marketing or sociological adaptation to a century, transforming the Bride of Christ into a compassionate NGO, pleasing to the world, but barren of divine life. Let us remember what Saint Bernard of Clairvaux wrote to Pope Eugene III in On Consideration: «Woe to you if, to worry too much about external things, you end up losing yourself[3]. If the Church loses its mystical dimension, it becomes flavorless salt, destined to be trampled by men" (cf.. Mt 5,13). Moreover, this anxiety about «doing» often hides the fear of «being». Standing under the Cross, stay in the cenacle, stay on your knees. The crisis of vocations, the closure of parishes, cultural irrelevance cannot be resolved by lowering the bar of doctrine to make it more attractive - a failed operation, as demonstrated by the now deserted liberal Protestant communities - but by raising the temperature of faith. The Church is Crawford Prostitute, the Fathers loved to say: chaste due to the presence of the Spirit, a prostitute for the sins of her children who prostitute her to the idols of the moment. But purification does not occur through human reforms, but rather through the fire of trial and the sanctity of individuals.

Non serve, so, a Church that is agitated, but a Church that burns. We need to return to that priority of God that Benedict XVI tirelessly preached: where God fails, man does not get bigger, but he loses his divine dignity. The remedy for Roma decadence it is not an «activist Rome», but a "praying Rome". We must have the courage to be that "little flock" (LC 12,32) who does not fear numerical inferiority, provided that he keeps the deposit of faith intact. Like yeast in the mass, our effectiveness does not depend on quantity, but by the quality of our union with Christ. Therefore, Let us commit ourselves not to let ourselves be robbed of hope by prophets of doom, nor by the strategists of creative pastoral care, let's go back to the tabernacle, at the Lectio Divina, to the passionate study of the Truth. Only from there, from the pierced and glorious heart of the Redeemer, the living water capable of irrigating this western desert will be able to flow. The Church will rise again, not because we are good organizers, but because Christ is alive and death no longer has power over Him. Because Christ offers everyone a profound act of contemplation if we know how to grasp it.

Rediscover Dogma against the dictatorship of sentiment. Faith that seeks understanding: Faith seeking understanding. To avoid falling into sterile quietism, But, we must understand that Christian contemplation is intrinsically fruitful and that love for the Church requires a radical return to the foundations of our faith. There is no charity without truth, and there is no real reform that does not start from the rediscovery of deposit of credit. In a liquid world where faith risks dissolving into mere emotional feeling and truth is sacrificed on the altar of social consensus, it is urgent to return to the Symbol of our faith which is not a nursery rhyme to be recited, but the route of our Christian existence. About that, I would like to suggest reading the latest book by Father Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo: I think to understand: Journey in the Profession of Faith. In quest’opera, Father Ariel explains each article of the Symbol or Creed making it taste its original power: not cold formula, but to a «word to live by». The text takes the reader on a theological journey where reason, illumined by faith, he bows before the mystery without abdicating, but finding its fulfillment. As Saint Thomas Aquinas taught, faith is an act of the intellect that adheres to divine truth under the control of the will moved by grace (cf.. QUESTION, II-II, q. 2, a. 9); for this reason, study the dogma, understand what we profess every Sunday, it is an operation of the highest contemplation. Approach the ineffable mystery of the Trinity, connate ourselves with the mysteries we profess, so that action becomes a reflection of our being in Christ. Sacred art, the liturgy, theology is not aesthetic frills, but vehicles of the Truth that saves. If we don't understand what we believe, how will we be able to testify to this? If the salt loses its flavor, It is good for nothing other than to be thrown away (cf.. Mt 5,13). Father Ariel's book teaches precisely this: give flavor to our faith, giving back to the word I believe the sense of perfect adherence to the incarnate Truth.

We live in an era afflicted by another serious spiritual pathology which we could define as "sentimental fideism". The erroneous idea has spread that faith is a blind feeling, a consoling emotion detached from reason, or worse, that dogma is a cage that imprisons the freedom of God's children. Nothing could be more false and dangerous. As a preacher brother, I strongly reiterate that the Truth (Veritas) it is the very name of God and that the human intellect was created precisely to grasp this Truth. Rejecting the intellectual effort to understand dogma means refusing to use the highest gift that the Creator has given us in his image and likeness. Culpable ignorance of the truths of faith is the ideal breeding ground for every heresy. When the Catholic stops forming, when he stops asking "who is God" according to Revelation and begins to build a god of his own size and likeness, he inevitably falls into the idolatry of his own self.

Give back meaning and value to the Creed it means rediscovering the constitutional charter of our Christian life. Each of his articles is not abstract philosophical lucubration, since they are linked to the Christian fact, to the history of salvation that has affected man and the entire cosmos. Saying "I believe in one God" or "I believe in the resurrection of the flesh" is an act of disobedience to nihilism that leads to desperation and the detriment of spirit and matter. The intellectual reconstruction I'm talking about is, ultimately, an act of love. You can't love what you don't know. If our knowledge of Christ is imperfect our love for Him will remain childish, fragile, unable to withstand the impact of the trials of adult life and the seductions of dominant thought.

On this journey that I propose to you let us learn to see theology not as a science for initiates, but what does the Church do when it bends over revealed data and therefore what it breathes and therefore lives from. The study, done on your knees, it becomes prayer; the understanding of the Trinitarian mystery becomes adoration in Spirit and truth. We need not fear the complexity of dogma: it is like the sun which, while being bright enough to be looked at directly without hurting the eye, it is the only source that allows us to clearly see all the rest of reality. Without the light of dogma, the liturgy becomes choreography, charity becomes philanthropy and hope becomes illusion. So let's get back to studying, to read, to meditate. Let us make St. Peter's exhortation our own: “Always be ready to answer anyone who asks you why the hope is within you” (1PT 3,15). But to give reasons (logos) of Christian hope we must honor reason as we seek to possess the things of God and in this theology is a great help.

The A small herd and the power of grace. Beyond desperation, theological hope. I conclude this itinerary by inviting "cautious optimism" that flows from the virtue of theological hope. The decadence of Christianity in Europe is a historical fact, but the story of Salvation does not end with Good Friday. Our identity, as the Scriptures and the testimony of many saints remind us, must be based on the awareness of being "useless servants/simple servants" (LC 17,10). This "uselessness/simplicity" is not devaluation, but the recognition that the main actor of history is God. I'll try to explain myself.

Christian hope is the polar opposite of worldly optimism. This could arise from a statistical or simply humoral prediction that "things will get better". theological Hope, instead, it is the certainty that God does not lie and keeps his promises even when things happen, humanly speaking, they go from bad to worse. Abraham "had faith, hoping against all hope" (Sa foot against hope, RM 4,18), just when biological reality presented him with the impossibility of having a child. We today are called to the same faith as Abraham. The numerical decline of believers and the loss of appeal of the Church must not lead us to a sectarian retreat, but to the awareness that God, as the history of salvation teaches and the biblical idea of ​​the "remnant" advocates, it has always operated not across ocean masses, but using a a small herd, a small faithful flock that takes charge of the whole. This appears in Scripture and in the history of the Church as a constant: some few pray and offer themselves for the salvation of many.

From this perspective, the definition of "useless servants" that Jesus talks about in the Gospel becomes our greatest liberation. Useless (useless) does not mean "worthless", but "without any claim to profit", that is, without claiming to be the efficient cause of Grace. When man, even within the Church, forget this truth, ends up building pastoral towers of Babel that collapse at the first breath of wind. The history of the 20th century, with its atheistic totalitarianisms, he showed us the hell that man builds when he decides to do without God to save humanity with his own strength. But be careful: there is also a spiritual totalitarianism, thinner, that creeps in when we think that the Church is "our thing", to be managed with corporate or political criteria. No, The Church is of Christ. And the Christian's action is fruitful only when it becomes teandric, that is, when our human freedom allows itself to be so permeated by divine Grace that it becomes a single act with Christ. This is what Saint Paul expressed by saying: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me " (Gal 2,20). This synergy between God and man is the antidote to despair. If the work were only mine, I would have every reason to despair, given my smallness; but if the work is of God, who can stop it? Under the leadership of the Holy Father Leo XIV (Robert Francis Prevost), we are called to guard this flame. It doesn't matter if our cathedrals empty or if the media laughs at us; what matters is that that flame remains lit and pure. Like the myrophores on Easter morning, like Joseph of Arimathea in the darkness of Good Friday, we are the keepers of a promise that cannot fail.

The beauty that saves the world is not a façade aesthetic, but the splendor of the Truth (The Splendor of Truth). It may appear uncomfortable, give the sensation of cutting like a sharp sword, but it is the only one capable of making man truly free. I think it's fair to say that we shouldn't be afraid to go out into the world and speak against the grain. Just as I think it is important to study our Creed to profess it in its entirety, though, even among priests, there are those who consider it obsolete and "don't believe in it" (4)[4]. In the silence of our rooms, in our families, in parishes or convents, wherever you operate, we are preparing the spring of the Church. We may not see it with our mortal eyes, but we are building it in faith and wisdom-based charity. Everything passes, only God remains. And who is with God, he has already won the world. The Cross stands while the world revolves: the Cross stands still while the world turns. Let us cling to this glorious Cross, and we will be immovable in hope.

Santa Maria Novella, in Florence, 29 January 2026

_____________

[1] Speech by Cardinal Matteo Zuppi at the opening of the 81st General Assembly of the CEI, Assisi, 17 November 2025. The full text can be found on the website of the Italian Episcopal Conference: Who

[2] Summarized by G. Forla, church: reflections on the evaporation of Christianity, St. Paul, Cinisello Balsamo (MY) 2025, p.133-134

[3] Paraphrased from this original text “Tibi feet, if you have completely abandoned yourself, and you have reserved nothing for yourself!“ (Woe betide you if you give yourself everything to them [to administrative matters] and you will not reserve anything of yourself for yourself!). In On Consideration Book I, Chapter V, paragraph 6.

_________________________

ROME DECADENCE. THE PASSION OF THE MYSTICAL BODY AND THE ILLUSION OF ACTIVISM

The historical body of the Church suffers from its wounds and from the sins of its members; yet, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, the Church is “holy and at the same time in need of purification” (CCC 827). She is not holy by virtue of her members, but because her Head is Christ and her animating principle is the Holy Spirit.

— Theologica —

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

.

Dear readers of The Island of Patmos, I write to you in a time that many — rightly so —define as one of Rome decadence, an era in which the evaporation of Christianity, as Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi has also lucidly observed, is no longer a dystopian prophecy but a tangible reality. Yet, in the face of this scenario, a theologian looks upon the Church not with the worldly eyes of sociology, but with the gaze of faith, which recognises in the Mystical Body the living presence of Christ and of His Spirit.

This article arises from a dialogue on social media with my dear friend Alessandro, himself engaged in digital pastoral ministry (his website may be found here). I would like to divide our reflections into three moments.

Ecclesial kenosis: between the Holy Saturday of history and the heresy of efficiency. As Don Giuseppe Forlai writes — and the theme recurs in many reflections developed in various contexts — the Church in Europe today resembles the body of Jesus taken down from the Cross: lifeless, consumed, apparently defeated, and yet — and here lies the divine paradox — within her there persists a casket of eternal life. We should not be scandalised if the Bride of Christ appears disfigured; she is reliving the mysteries of her Bridegroom’s life, including His Passion and burial. In this ecclesial kenosis, the greatest temptation is to replace mystery with organisation, grace with bureaucracy, falling into that Pelagianism which Pope Francis and his predecessors have frequently denounced. A young Benedict of Nursia, confronted with the corruption of Rome, did not found a party nor a protest movement, but withdrew into silence in order “to dwell with himself” (to live with him), laying the foundations of a civilisation that did not arise from a human project, but from the search for God (to seek God). This contemplative silence is not muteness but prayerful listening to the Word, and it is the only adequate response to the crisis. The historical body of the Church suffers from its wounds and from the sins of her members; yet, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, the Church is “holy and at the same time in need of purification” (CCC 827). She is not holy by virtue of her members, but because her Head is Christ and her animating principle is the Holy Spirit. For this reason, a serious way of reforming the ecclesial community is not frenetic activism. Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, of venerable memory, wisely recalled that a shepherd must pasture the sheep and not vice versa, and must serve the sanctification of persons. Following the teaching of Saint Paul in the Letter to the Philippians: “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12), we must cease seeking scapegoats or structural solutions to problems that are, at their root, pneumatic and spiritual. They require time, study, and prayer.

I believe the fundamental error lies in a kind of “heresy of action” that forgets a basic principle of Scholastic theology: Agere sequitur esse (action follows being). If the being of the Church is emptied of its supernatural substance, her action becomes an empty shell, a background noise that converts no one. Today we witness what might be defined as an obsession with structures, as though by modifying the organisational chart of the Curia or inventing new pastoral committees one could infuse the Holy Spirit at will. I do not say that planning or reorganisation are in themselves erroneous — on the contrary, they may be welcome. But we must remember that the Spirit blows where He wills, not where our human planning attempts to constrain Him. This efficiency-driven mentality betrays a lack of faith in the intrinsic power of Grace. We behave like the Apostles in the boat during the storm before Christ awoke: we agitate ourselves, row against the wind, cry out, forgetting that the One who commands the winds and the sea is present, though apparently asleep, at the stern.

The current condition of the Church in Europe, which we have described above as “taken down from the Cross,” leads us into the mystery of Holy Saturday. It is the day of great silence, not of desperate inactivity. On Holy Saturday, the Church does not engage in proselytism, does not organise conferences, does not draft five-year synodal plans; the Church keeps vigil beside the tomb, knowing that the stone will not be rolled away by human hands. The mortal danger of our time is the attempt to “reanimate” the ecclesial body through worldly techniques of marketing or sociological adaptation to the a century, transforming the Bride of Christ into a compassionate NGO, pleasing to the world yet sterile of divine life. Let us remember what Saint Bernard of Clairvaux wrote to Pope Eugene III in On Consideration: “Woe to you if, by occupying yourself too much with external matters, you end up losing yourself”. If the Church loses her mystical dimension, she becomes salt without flavour, destined to be trampled underfoot by men (cf. Mt 5:13). Moreover, this anxiety of “doing” often conceals the fear of “being”: being beneath the Cross, being in the Upper Room, being on one’s knees. The crisis of vocations, the closure of parishes, and cultural irrelevance are not resolved by lowering the bar of doctrine in order to make it more palatable — an operation that has failed, as demonstrated by liberal Protestant communities now largely deserted — but by raising the temperature of faith. The Church is Crawford Prostitute, as the Fathers used to say: chaste by the presence of the Spirit, a harlot through the sins of her children who prostitute her to the idols of the moment. Purification does not occur through human reforms, but through the fire of trial and the holiness of individuals.

What is needed, therefore, is not a Church that agitates, but a Church that burns. We must return to that primacy of God which Benedict XVI tirelessly preached: where God fades away, man does not become greater, but loses his divine dignity. The remedy for Rome decadence is not an “activist Rome,” but a “praying Rome.” We must have the courage to be that “little flock” (Page 12:32) that does not fear numerical inferiority, provided that it preserves intact the deposit of faith. Like leaven in the dough, our effectiveness depends not on quantity, but on the quality of our union with Christ. Therefore, let us commit ourselves not to allow hope to be stolen from us — neither by prophets of doom nor by strategists of creative pastoral planning. Let us return to the tabernacle, to Lectio Divina, to the passionate study of Truth. Only from there, from the pierced and glorious heart of the Redeemer, can living water flow to irrigate this Western desert. The Church will rise again, not because we are skilful organisers, but because Christ is alive and death no longer has power over Him. Because Christ offers to all a profound act of contemplation, if we know how to receive it.

Rediscovering dogma against the dictatorship of sentiment. Faith seeking understanding: faith seeking understanding. In order not to fall into sterile quietism, however, we must understand that Christian contemplation is intrinsically fruitful and that love for the Church requires a radical return to the foundations of our faith. There is no charity without truth, and there is no true reform that does not begin with the rediscovery of the deposit of credit. In a liquid world where faith risks dissolving into mere emotional sentiment and truth is sacrificed on the altar of social consensus, it is urgent to return to the Symbol of our faith, which is not a nursery rhyme to be recited, but the course of our Christian existence. In this regard, I feel compelled to recommend the latest book by Father Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo, I think to understand: Journey in the Profession of Faith. In this work, Father Ariel explains each article of the Symbol or Creed, allowing its original power to be tasted — not as a cold formula, but as a “word to be lived.” The text accompanies the reader on a theological journey in which reason, illumined by faith, bows before the mystery without abdicating, but rather finding its fulfilment. As Saint Thomas Aquinas taught, faith is an act of the intellect assenting to divine truth at the command of the will moved by grace (cf. QUESTION, Ii-ii, q. 2, a. 9); for this reason, studying dogma, understanding what we profess every Sunday, is an act of the highest contemplation. Approaching the ineffable mystery of the Trinity, becoming connatural to the mysteries we profess, so that our action may become a reflection of our being in Christ. Sacred art, liturgy, and theology are not aesthetic ornaments, but vehicles of the Truth that saves. If we do not understand what we believe, how can we bear witness to it? If the salt loses its flavour, it is good for nothing but to be thrown out (cf. Mt 5:13). Father Ariel’s book teaches precisely this: to restore flavour to our faith by returning to the word I believe its full meaning of perfect adherence to the Incarnate Truth.

We live in an age afflicted by another grave spiritual pathology that might be described as “sentimental fideism.” The erroneous idea has spread that faith is a blind feeling, a consolatory emotion detached from reason, or worse, that dogma is a cage imprisoning the freedom of the children of God. Nothing could be more false or more dangerous. As a preaching friar, I reaffirm with force that Truth (Veritas) is the very name of God, and that the human intellect was created precisely to grasp this Truth. To refuse the intellectual effort to understand dogma is to refuse to use the highest gift the Creator has bestowed upon us in His image and likeness. Culpable ignorance of the truths of faith is the ideal breeding ground for every heresy. When a Catholic ceases to be formed, when he stops asking “who God is” according to Revelation and begins to fashion a god in his own image and likeness, he inevitably falls into the idolatry of the self.

To restore meaning and value to the Creed means rediscovering the constitutional charter of our Christian life. Each of its articles is not an abstract philosophical speculation, but is bound to the Christian event, to the history of salvation that has marked man and the entire cosmos. To say “I believe in one God” or “I believe in the resurrection of the flesh” is an act of disobedience to the nihilism that leads to despair and to the degradation of spirit and matter. The intellectual reconstruction of which I speak is, ultimately, an act of love. One cannot love what one does not know. If our knowledge of Christ is imperfect, our love for Him will remain infantile, fragile, incapable of withstanding the impact of adult life’s trials and the seductions of dominant thought.

In the journey I propose, we learn to see theology not as a science for initiates, but as what the Church does when she bends over the revealed datum — and thus what she breathes and lives by. Study, when done on one’s knees, becomes prayer; understanding the Trinitarian mystery becomes adoration in Spirit and truth. We must not fear the complexity of dogma: it is like the sun, which, though too luminous to be stared at directly without harming one’s sight, is the only source that allows us to see all the rest of reality clearly. Without the light of dogma, liturgy becomes choreography, charity becomes philanthropy, and hope becomes illusion. Let us therefore return to study, to reading, to meditation. Let us make our own Saint Peter’s exhortation: “Always be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet 3:15). But in order to give reasons (logos) for Christian hope, we must honour reason as we seek to possess the things of God—and in this, theology is a great aid.

The a small herd and the power of grace. Beyond despair, theological hope. I conclude this itinerary by inviting to a “cautious optimism” that flows from the theological virtue of hope. The decline of Christianity in Europe is a historical fact, but the history of Salvation does not end with Good Friday. Our identity, as Scripture and the testimony of so many saints remind us, must be founded on the awareness of being “unworthy servants / simple servants” (Page 17:10). This “uselessness / simplicity” is not devaluation, but the recognition that God is the principal actor in history. Let me explain.

Christian hope stands at the opposite pole of worldly optimism. The latter may arise from statistical forecasts or from a merely emotional expectation that “things will get better.” Theological Hope, by contrast, is the certainty that God does not lie and fulfils His promises even when, humanly speaking, things go from bad to worse. Abraham “believed, hoping against hope” (hope against hope, Rom 4:18), precisely when biological reality placed before him the impossibility of having a child. We are called today to the same faith as Abraham. The numerical decline of believers and the loss of the Church’s cultural appeal must not lead us into sectarian withdrawal, but into the awareness that God, as salvation history teaches and as the biblical notion of the “remnant” proclaims, has always acted not through vast masses, but by means of a a small herd, a small faithful flock that bears responsibility for the whole. This appears in Scripture and in Church history as a constant: a few pray and offer themselves for the salvation of many.

In this perspective, the definition of “unworthy servants” spoken by Jesus in the Gospel becomes our greatest liberation. Useless (useless) does not mean “without value,” but “without claim to usefulness,” that is, without the presumption of being ourselves the efficient cause of Grace. When man, even within the Church, forgets this truth, he ends up constructing pastoral Towers of Babel that collapse at the first breath of wind. The history of the twentieth century, with its atheistic totalitarianisms, has shown us the hell that man constructs when he decides to do without God in order to save humanity by his own strength. But let us be careful: there also exists a more subtle spiritual totalitarianism, which insinuates itself when we think the Church is “ours,” to be managed according to corporate or political criteria. No — the Church belongs to Christ. And Christian action is fruitful only when it becomes theandric, that is, when our human freedom allows itself to be so penetrated by divine Grace as to become a single action with Christ. This is what Saint Paul expressed when he said: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20). This synergy between God and man is the antidote to despair. If the work were only mine, I would have every reason to despair, given my poverty; but if the work is God’s, who can stop it? Under the guidance of the Holy Father Leo XIV (Robert Francis Prevost), we are called to guard this little flame. It does not matter if our cathedrals empty or if the media mock us; what matters is that the flame remain lit and pure. Like the myrrh-bearing women on Easter morning, like Joseph of Arimathea in the darkness of Good Friday, we are the custodians of a promise that cannot fail.

The beauty that saves the world is not a superficial aesthetic, but the splendour of Truth (The Splendor of Truth). It may appear uncomfortable, may feel like the cut of a sharp sword, but it alone is capable of making man truly free. I believe it is right to say that we must not be afraid to go out into the world and to speak against the current. I also believe it is important to study our Creed in order to profess it in its entirety, even though, tragically, even among presbyters there are those who consider it obsolete and “do not believe in it”. In the silence of our rooms, in our families, in parishes or convents — wherever one may labour— we are preparing the springtime of the Church. We may not see it with our mortal eyes, but we are building it in faith and in sapiential charity. Everything passes; only God remains. And whoever abides in God has already overcome the world. The Cross stands while the world revolves: the Cross stands firm while the world turns. Let us remain clinging to this glorious Cross, and we shall be immovable in hope.

Santa Maria Novella, Florence, 26 January 2026

_______________________

ROMA DECADENCE. THE PASSION OF THE MYSTIC BODY AND THE ILLUSION OF ACTIVISM

The historical body of the Church suffers for its wounds and for the sins of its members., but, as he teaches Catechism of the Catholic Church, The Church is "holy and at the same time in need of purification" (CIC 827); It is not holy because of the virtue of its members, but because its Head is Christ and its life-giving principle is the Holy Spirit.

— Theologica —

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

.

Dear readers of The Island of Patmos, I am writing to you at a time when many, not without reason, define as Roma decadence, a time when the evaporation of Christianity, as Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi has also lucidly observed, It is no longer a dystopian prophecy, but a tangible reality. However, in this scenario, a theologian looks at the Church not with the worldly eyes of sociology, but with the look of faith, that recognizes in the Mystical Body the living presence of Christ and his Spirit.

This article of mine is born from dialogue on social networks with dear Alessandro, also the operator of digital pastoral (here). I would like to divide our reflections into three moments.

The sulphurous ecclesial: between the Holy Saturday of history and the heresy of efficiency. As Don Giuseppe Forlai writes — and the theme reappears in numerous reflections developed in different areas —, The Church in Europe today resembles the body of Jesus taken down from the Cross: let's examine, consumed, apparently defeated, and yet — and here lies the divine paradox — a chest of eternal life persists in it.. We should not be scandalized if the Bride of Christ appears disfigured; She is reliving the mysteries of her Husband's life., including passion and burial. Herein sulphurous ecclesial, The greatest temptation is to replace mystery with organization, grace for bureaucracy, falling into that Pelagianism that Pope Francis and his predecessors have repeatedly denounced. A young Saint Benedict of Nursia, in the face of the corruption of Rome, He did not found a party or a protest movement, but he withdrew into silence to "dwell with himself." (to live with him), laying the foundations of a civilization that was not born from a human project, but of the search for God (to seek God). This contemplative silence is not muteness, but listen prayerfully to the Word, and it is the only appropriate response to the crisis. The historical body of the Church suffers for its wounds and for the sins of its members., but, as he teaches Catechism of the Catholic Church, The Church is "holy and at the same time in need of purification" (CIC 827); It is not holy because of the virtue of its members, but because its Head is Christ and its life-giving principle is the Holy Spirit. For this reason, a serious way to reform the ecclesial community is not frenetic activism. Already Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, of venerated memory, wisely remembered that a shepherd must feed the sheep and not the other way around, and serve the sanctification of people. Following the teaching of Saint Paul in the Letter to the Philippians: "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling" (Flp 2,12), We must stop looking for scapegoats or structural solutions to problems that are, at its root, pneumatic and spiritual. They require time, study and prayer.

The fundamental error, I think, resides in a kind of "heresy of action" that forgets a basic principle of Scholasticism: Agere sequitur esse (working follows being). If the being of the Church is emptied of its supernatural substance, his work becomes an empty shell, a background noise that converts no one. Today we are witnessing what we could define as an obsession with structures, as if by modifying the Curia's organizational chart or inventing new pastoral committees the Holy Spirit could be infused at will. I'm not saying that programming or reorganization is wrong in itself.; on the contrary, may be welcome. But let us remember that the Spirit blows where it wants, not where our human plans force it. This efficiency mentality betrays a lack of faith in the intrinsic power of Grace.. We behave like the Apostles in the boat during the storm before Christ woke up: we stir, we row against the wind, we scream, forgetting that He who commands the winds and the sea is present, although apparently asleep, in the stern.

The current condition of the Church in Europe, which we have defined above as "descent from the Cross", It refers us to the mystery of Holy Saturday. It is the day of great silence, not from desperate inactivity. On Holy Saturday, The Church does not proselytize, does not organize conferences, does not prepare five-year synodal plans; the Church watches next to the tomb, knowing that that stone will not be removed by human hands. The mortal danger of our time is wanting to "reanimate" the ecclesial body with mundane marketing techniques or sociological adaptation to the a century, transforming the Bride of Christ into a compassionate NGO, pleasing to the world, but barren of divine life. Let us remember what Saint Bernard of Clairvaux wrote to Pope Eugene III in the On Consideration: «Woe to you if, for worrying too much about external things, you end up losing yourself!». If the Church loses its mystical dimension, turns into tasteless salt, destined to be trampled by men (cf. Mt 5,13). Besides, This anxiety of “doing” often hides the fear of “being.”: be under the cross, be in the cenacle, kneel. The crisis of vocations, the closure of parishes, cultural irrelevance are not resolved by lowering the bar of doctrine to make it more attractive — a failed operation, as demonstrated by the liberal Protestant communities today practically deserted —, but by raising the temperature of faith. The Church is Crawford Prostitute, the Fathers said: caste by the presence of the Spirit, prostitute for the sins of her children who prostitute her to the idols of the moment. But purification does not occur through human reforms, but through the fire of trial and the holiness of individuals.

It is not necessary, well, a Church that shakes, but a Church that burns. It is necessary to return to that primacy of God that Benedict XVI preached tirelessly: where God disappears, man doesn't get bigger, but loses its divine dignity. The remedy to Roma decadence It is not an "activist Rome", but a "praying Rome". We must have the courage to be that "little flock" (LC 12,32) who does not fear numerical inferiority, in order to keep intact the deposit of faith. Like yeast in the dough, our effectiveness does not depend on the quantity, but of the quality of our union with Christ. So, Let us commit ourselves not to let the prophets of calamity or the strategists of creative pastoralism steal our hope.; let's go back to the tabernacle, to the Lectio Divina, to the passionate study of the Truth. Just from there, of the pierced and glorious heart of the Redeemer, living water capable of irrigating this western desert may spring forth. The Church will resurrect, not because we are skilled organizers, but because Christ is alive and death no longer has power over Him. Because Christ offers everyone a profound act of contemplation, if we know how to welcome it.

Rediscover the Dogma against the dictatorship of feeling. The faith that seeks understanding: faith seeking understanding. To avoid falling into a sterile quietism, We must understand that Christian contemplation is intrinsically fruitful and that love for the Church requires a radical return to the foundations of our faith.. There is no charity without truth, nor is there a true reform that does not start from the rediscovery of the deposit of credit. In a liquid world where faith runs the risk of dissolving into mere emotional sentiment and truth is sacrificed on the altar of social consensus, It is urgent to return to the Symbol of our faith, that it is not a song to recite, but the route of our Christian existence. For this purpose, I would like to suggest reading the latest book by Father Ariel S.. Levi di Gualdo, I think to understand: Journey in the Profession of Faith. In this work, Father Ariel explains each article of the Symbol or Creed, allowing you to savor its original power: not a cold formula, but a "word to live by". The text accompanies the reader on a theological journey in which reason, illuminated by faith, bows before the mystery without abdicating, finding in it its fulfillment. As Saint Thomas Aquinas taught, Faith is an act of the understanding that assents to divine truth by command of the will moved by grace (cf. QUESTION, II-II, q. 2, a. 9); for it, study the dogma, understand what we profess every Sunday, It is an operation of the highest contemplation. Getting closer to the ineffable mystery of the Trinity, connaturalize ourselves with the mysteries we profess, so that acting becomes a reflection of our being in Christ. sacred art, the liturgy, theology is not aesthetic decorations, but vehicles of the Truth that saves. If we do not understand what we believe, How can we bear witness to this?? If salt loses its flavor, It's good for nothing but to be thrown out. (cf. Mt 5,13). Father Ariel's book teaches precisely this: restore flavor to our faith, restoring the word I believe the sense of perfect adherence to incarnate Truth.

We live in an affected time due to another serious spiritual pathology that we could define as "sentimental fideism". The erroneous idea has spread that faith is a blind feeling, a consoling emotion unrelated to reason, or even worse, that dogma is a cage that imprisons the freedom of the children of God. Nothing more false and dangerous. As a preaching friar, I strongly reaffirm that the Truth (Veritas) is the very name of God and that the human intellect has been created precisely to grasp this Truth. Rejecting the intellectual effort to understand dogma means rejecting the use of the highest gift that the Creator has granted us in his image and likeness.. Guilty ignorance of the truths of faith is the ideal breeding ground for all heresy.. When the Catholic stops forming, when he stops asking himself "who is God" according to Revelation and begins to build a god in his own image and likeness, inevitably falls into the idolatry of one's own self.

Return meaning and value to the Creed means rediscovering the constitutional charter of our Christian life. Each of his articles is not an abstract philosophical musing., because they are linked to the Christian fact, to the history of salvation that has affected man and the entire cosmos. Saying "I believe in one God" or "I believe in the resurrection of the flesh" is an act of disobedience to nihilism that leads to despair and the deterioration of spirit and matter.. The intellectual reconstruction I speak of is, ultimately, an act of love. You can't love what you don't know. If our knowledge of Christ is imperfect, our love for Him will remain childish, fragile, unable to resist the shock of the trials of adult life and the seductions of dominant thought.

On this path that I propose to you we learn to see theology not as a science for initiates, but as what the Church does when it leans on the revealed data and, therefore, what she breathes and lives. The study, performed on knees, becomes a prayer; the understanding of the Trinitarian mystery is transformed into worship in Spirit and truth. We must not fear the complexity of dogma: It's like the sun that, even though it is too bright to be fixed directly without damaging the eyesight, It is the only source that allows us to see everything else clearly. Without the light of dogma, liturgy becomes choreography, charity in philanthropy and hope in illusion. let's go back, well, to study, to read, to meditate. Let us make the exhortation of Saint Peter our own: "Always be ready to give an account of the hope that is in you" (1 Pe 3,15). But to give reasons (logos) of Christian hope it is necessary to honor reason as we seek to possess the things of God, and in this theology is a great help.

The a small herd and the power of grace. Beyond despair, theological hope. I conclude this itinerary by inviting a "cautious optimism" that springs from the theological virtue of hope. The decline of Christianity in Europe is a historical fact, but the history of Salvation does not end with Good Friday. Our identity, as the Scriptures and the testimony of so many saints remind us, must be based on the awareness of being "useless servants" / simple servants (LC 17,10). This "uselessness" / simplicity" is not devaluation, but the recognition that the main actor in history is God. I try to explain myself.

Christian hope is at the antipodes of worldly optimism.. This may arise from a statistical forecast or from a purely emotional expectation according to which "things will go better.". Theological Hope, instead, It is the certainty that God does not lie and keeps his promises even when, humanly speaking, things are going from bad to worse. Abraham "believed, hoping against hope" (hope against hope, Rom 4,18), precisely when the biological reality presented her with the impossibility of having a child. Today we are called to the same faith as Abraham. The numerical decrease of believers and the loss of attractiveness of the Church should not lead us to a sectarian retreat, but to the awareness that God, as salvation history teaches and as the biblical idea of ​​the “remnant” proclaims, has always acted not through oceanic masses, but using a a small herd, a small faithful flock that takes charge of the whole. This appears in Scripture and in the history of the Church as a constant: a few pray and offer themselves for the salvation of many.

In this perspective, the definition of "useless servants" what Jesus talks about in the Gospel becomes our greatest liberation. Useless (useless) does not mean "worthless", but "without any pretense of usefulness", that is to say, without the pretension of being the efficient cause of Grace. When the man, even within the Church, forget this truth, ends up building pastoral towers of Babel that collapse at the first breath of wind. The history of the 20th century, with their atheistic totalitarianisms, has shown us the hell that man builds when he decides to do without God to save humanity with his own strength.. But attention: There is also a spiritual totalitarianism, more subtle, that is insinuated when we think that the Church is "our thing", that must be managed with business or political criteria. No: the Church is of Christ. And the action of the Christian is fruitful only when it becomes theandric., that is to say, when our human freedom allows itself to be penetrated so deeply by divine Grace that it becomes a single act with Christ. This is what Saint Paul expressed by saying: «It is no longer I who lives, but Christ lives in me" (Gal 2,20). This synergy between God and man is the antidote to despair. If the work were only mine, I would have every reason to despair, given my smallness; but if the work is from God, who can stop her? Under the guidance of the Holy Father Leo XIV (Robert Francis Prevost), we are called to guard this little flame. It doesn't matter if our cathedrals are empty or if the media ridicules us; What matters is that that flame remains lit and pure. Like the myrophores on Easter morning, like Joseph of Arimathea in the darkness of Good Friday, We are custodians of a promise that cannot fail.

The beauty that saves the world is not a facade aesthetic, but the splendor of Truth (The Splendor of Truth). It may seem uncomfortable, give the sensation of cutting like a sharp sword, but it is the only one capable of making man truly free. I think it is fair to say that we should not be afraid to go out into the world and speak against the current.. I also believe that it is important to study our Creed to profess it in its entirety., although, tragically, Even among priests there are those who consider it obsolete and "do not believe in it". In the silence of our rooms, in our families, in parishes or convents, wherever you work, we are preparing the spring of the Church. Maybe we don't see it with our mortal eyes, but we are building it in faith and in sapiential charity. everything passes, only God remains. And whoever remains in God has already overcome the world. The Cross stands while the world revolves: The Cross stands firm while the world turns. Let us remain clinging to this glorious Cross, and we will be immovable in hope.

Santa Maria Novella, Florence, a 29 January 2026

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