WHY HAVE WE FATHERS OF THE MAGAZINE THE ISLAND OF PATMOS NOT TALKED ABOUT THE SYNOD? BECAUSE WE ARE PRIESTS AND THEOLOGIANS, NOT GOSSIPARIES THAT EXCITE THE IRRATIONAL MOODS OF THE PEOPLE

Even before it began, this latest Synod was preceded by proclamations from unspecified internet experts who sowed terror not so dissimilar to that of the Hamas terrorists, to give a completely absurd-paradoxical hyperbolic example. If in fact Hamas terrorists kill innocent civilians, this other type of terrorist kills, in the increasingly lost faithful, the little that remains in them of faith and ecclesial feeling, of being members of the living body that is the Church.

— News in brief —

Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo

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In one of my latest articles to which I refer you (see WHO) I spoke about the decline of the principle of authority in relation to social media, where even the least imbecile can launch into dealing in a grotesque and surreal way with topics that are the subject of complex historical debates on a scientific level, historical, social, politico, theological…

We the Fathers of this magazine we have convinced ourselves that when faced with certain desolations the ancient saying of Publius Terentius Afro is valid (190-159 a.C), universally known as Terence: «They are silent, praise them enough» (They are silent and in doing so they praise). With this maxim, the famous Roman playwright of probable Berber origin meant that sometimes silence prevents words from being expressed, also clearly, end up being distorted or even deliberately misunderstood by those who are inclined to misunderstand or look for any excuse for a dispute. From this maxim by Terenzi was born the famous popular saying "a beautiful silence was never written".

A personal note: for reasons that need not be explained, during this last Synod I had the opportunity to come and go from Martha House Sancthae several times, to meet and speak with various bishops from various parts of the world, clarifying the obvious that I certainly don't need to clarify, because the whole thing, for me as for many other scholars and theologians, it falls within the scope of obvious things about which there would be absolutely nothing to discuss. But, as I wrote in my previous article (see WHO) sometimes it is necessary to explain especially the things that seem obvious to us, in this crazy decadent world in which a boundless army of people thinks of giving maximum and unappealable sentences with a Tweet o a post su Facebook, after having fed themselves on the blogs of people who speak and discuss complex issues that they really don't know about practice and rigor.

Even before starting this latest Synod was preceded by proclamations from unspecified internet experts who sowed terror not so dissimilar to that of Hamas terrorists, to give a completely absurd-paradoxical hyperbolic example. If in fact Hamas terrorists kill innocent civilians, this other type of terrorist kills, in the increasingly lost faithful, the little that remains in them of faith and ecclesial feeling, of being members of the living body that is the Church (cf.. With the 1, 18).

For weeks we have read and heard proclamations in which certain web terrorists gave the best of themselves to disorient simple and increasingly lost Catholics by foreseeing the imminent customs clearance of priestly celibacy and married priests, women priests, or at least women deacons, the blessing at the altar of homosexual couples and so on to follow. And all these elements that to define as fantastic is just an understatement, they were announced as certain, indeed presented as taken for granted.

At the end of the Synod the Supreme Pontiff Francis spoke publicly, clarifying that priestly celibacy would not be affected in any way, reiterating what we have known for centuries: priestly celibacy, which has its roots since the first apostolic era and which has great value on a spiritual level, ecclesial and pastoral, it is not a dogma of faith but an ecclesiastical discipline. There is proof that even in the Catholic Church there have always been Eastern Rite priests who are married and have families. Having said this, the Holy Father reiterated that he does not intend in any way to modify ecclesiastical discipline on the celibacy of priests belonging to the Latin rite community, specifying that nothing similar "will happen under my pontificate".

Regarding the issue of women priests, the Supreme Pontiff Francis had already expressed himself several times in the past, therefore he did nothing but reiterate the pronouncement given in definitive form by his Holy Predecessor John Paul II which clarified for the present and future future: «The Church does not have the power to grant sacred priestly ordination to women» (cf.. WHO).

If in the preparatory stages of the Synod there was talk of the LGBT world, from the draft of the final document this acronym has completely disappeared, to the certain displeasure of that cheerful character Father James Martin supported not long ago with an article in the well-known pseudo-Catholic weekly slush Christian, originally born as Christian family, which he announced: «Pope Francis has restored dignity to LGBTQ people and this is a blessing for everyone» (cf.. QUI). So no blessing to the happy rainbow couples under the steps of the altars for the obvious reason that the Church, with the excuse of blessing the people who always need to be blessed, is not so naive and unprepared to end up blessing what for Catholic doctrine and morality remains the sin against nature (Catechism, n. 2357), which as such cannot be blessed, not even with the excuse of only blessing people. This is a topic on which the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith had already expressed its opinion (cf.. WHO). Several times over the last few years I have written and explained that the Church has the duty to welcome the sinner, especially the worst sinners, because if she did not do so she would betray the mission that Christ God has entrusted to her (cf.. Mt 9,13), always being careful, however, never to welcome sin, which cannot be welcomed, much less blessed.

This is why we remained silent, because we are priests, theologians and above all men of faith aware that even today the Church is experiencing very delicate moments, or if we want even confused and sad, In any case, she will never be able to betray the mission that Christ God has entrusted to her to meet the whims of the world, because God chose us from the world but we are not of the world (cf.. GV 15, 18-19).

Let's move on and conclude with two elements. The first: the essence of ecumenical councils and synods of the Church; The second one: the unusual attitude, perhaps even questionable and ambiguous of the Supreme Pontiff Francis.

The Catholic Hamas terrorists who have carried out campaigns for months and weeks aimed at exciting people, now at terrorizing them, they demonstrated first of all that they have no idea what councils and synods are in the two-thousand-year history of the Church. First let's see the difference between the two: by ecumenical council we mean, as the word itself says, an extraordinary event that involves all the bishops of the universal Church. The term “ecumenical” in fact it derives from Greek world (oikoumene) and it means universal. Otherwise instead, the Synod, which can be local or even global, it involves a slice of the episcopate, or invited and selected participants, which can also represent Catholic universality, but which do not constitute an ecumenical council, that is, that most important and solemn act of the Church which requires and implies the participation of the entire Catholic episcopate.

In both cases, whether it is an ecumenical council or a synod, participants are simply not entitled, but precisely the duty to discuss everything and its exact opposite. In discussions they can, indeed, even the most unlikely or even absurd hypotheses must be raised. Perhaps the great Fathers and Masters of classical scholasticism did not do this, often starting in their disputes even from surreal and paradoxical elements, in order to stimulate the speculative sense and arrive at wise judgments? What does this take to make clear to the aggressive blogger or to those who have a sentence on Twitter they have solved problems that have not yet had a definitive answer for centuries. Therefore, than certain fringes of the episcopate, that is, the inevitable Germans and Northern Europeans, have raised certain questions, It shouldn't have surprised anyone, including hardcore bloggers and tweeters, if only they had known the rudiments of Church history.

The Supreme Pontiff Francis for its part remains an enigma, as I defined it in an old article of mine from 2013 commenting on his first ones 100 days of pontificate (see WHO) where I compared him to the Pied Piper of Amelin, which deserves enormous credit: having made all the mice come out for what they really are, after they had hidden themselves in the most false and calculated condescension for thirty years under the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. At least today, thanks to this Augusto Pifferaio, we get to know the mice one by one for what they are and what they really think. This will make it especially difficult for them, or rather, really impossible to be able to recycle it at the next change of helmsman of Peter's boat, given that a 87 years and with health problems of no small importance, the Supreme Pontiff Francis will certainly not last forever. If so tomorrow, as if nothing had happened, a playful cardinal even went so far as to lower himself into a manhole to reconnect electricity to the inhabitants of an illegally occupied building (see WHO), if he showed up with three meters of cappa magna and a galero on his head - something that certain chameleons would be capable of doing because by their nature they lack the very sense of modesty - we would all ask him: "But you, Were you perhaps not the one who, under the pontificate of Francis, went in trousers and rolled up shirt sleeves to bring coffee in the evening to the tramps who had transformed Bernini's colonnade into a public urinal?, after showing off gold cufflinks and artfully pleated purple robes under the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI?”.

For the umpteenth time the Supreme Pontiff Francis brought them together, speak and vent in a Synod, causing them all to come out into the open again. Once the discussions were over he announced "then we'll see", concluding with a "see you next year", assuming of course that the Holiness of Our Lord is always alive.

Of the two one: or we are faced with a man who alone is crazier and more deranged than Joanna of Castile, Henry IV and Ludwig II of Bavaria all three combined, or we are faced with a man who in a very difficult and complex historical moment did what was best and most appropriate to have been done, using his state grace wisely and prudently, although at the moment his actions cannot be understood. In fact we cannot affirm either one thing or the other, because we lack the elements to be able to do it. Maybe it will take many years, but one day history will clarify the great "enigma" for us Francesco, how I defined it in 2013 after the first ones 100 days of his pontificate, revealing him as the right man who rode out an extraordinarily delicate season in the best way.

the Island of Patmos, 29 October 2023

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Father Ariel's new book has been released and is being distributed, you can buy it by clicking directly on the cover image or by entering our bookshop WHO

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THE ARCHABOT EMERITUS OF MONTECASSINO PIETRO VITTORELLI HAS DEAD: CHRISTIAN PIETY CAN ERASE THE SAD TRUTH?

Christian piety cannot omit the truth. Therefore, the site manager I cannot be silent what is is confirmed: one that «He spoke badly of everyone, except Christ, apologizing to the dir: “I do not know him”!» (Epigraph by Paolo Giovio on Pietro l'Aretino).

— News in brief —

Author
Editors of The Island of Patmos

Among the various sites that are said “Catholics” there is one called I cannot be silent. A young man is responsible for this, who we understand has been kindly accompanied in the past to the exit doors of seminaries and religious institutions. It is perhaps for this reason that he feels legitimated to write pearls of wisdom on the problems of the Catholic Church, but above all on the training of priests - which is the most complex and delicate thing that can exist -, presenting himself as an expert in this regard?

His articles are numerous in which he repeatedly attacks people and ecclesiastical institutions with an acidic style. No one was saved from his stabs: by the Supreme Pontiff - who can be respectfully criticized, not, however, contested and mocked -, to follow with high prelates of the Roman Curia and prefects of the various dicasteries of the Holy See, which can also be criticized, but I didn't laugh in a mocking and arrogant way. He showed real ferocity towards the director of the Vatican Media and the head of the Holy See Press Office, to the point of accusing them - at best - of "incompetence" and "illiteracy".. He even took it out on the Vatican Gendarmerie, composed of elements selected for undoubted excellence as well as endowed with rare education and courtesy, to which he dedicated, even though, ironic comments regarding their professionalism.

He likes to present himself as an expert “Vatican things”, as if he were coming and going from the sacred palaces, omitting to say that it does not possess any pass to transit through the territory of the Vatican City State, where we do not know he is a welcome guest.

it does not concern us in any way how this individual - who does not appear to benefit from the support of a wealthy family or the income from a professional job - can camp out in Rome where the costs of living have always been high, today more than ever to the stars, because the subject of the question is completely different.

In today's article (cf.. WHO) this excellent expert on the Roman Curia publishes a comment on the death of the Archabbot emeritus of Montecassino, Dom Pietro Vittorelli, already presented in the past as an innocent victim acquitted of the accusation of having stolen money from the abbey's funds:

«It concludes, today, a long and unjust judicial via crucis that began in 2017" (cf.. WHO).

Considering that they are in fashion i dubia, we intend to submit some of them to the person responsible for this Site with the express invitation to respond strictly on the merits of the seven questions that follow:

 

1. It is true that Pietro Vittorelli did not simply use but rather abuse hard drugs and that he was a cocaine addict who was so severely addicted that he ended up admitted to a discreet Swiss clinic to be detoxified where the cost for three months of treatment amounted to approximately 160.000 Euro?

 

2. It is true that the serious neuro-cardiological problems that severely debilitated Pietro Vittorelli were the consequence of his abuse of a narcotic substance known as crack, which finally caused him a strong thrombosis?

 

3. It is true that when he was hospitalized as an emergency, the specialists who treated him were embarrassed when they learned from the clinical analyzes that Pietro Vittorelli appeared to be making massive habitual use of cocaine and crack and that this was precisely the cause of the serious attack that had struck and severely debilitated him?

 

4. It is true that Pietro Vittorelli was an irrepressible practicing homosexual who led a life in total contrast with Catholic morality, the principles of the priesthood and monastic life and who used to avail himself of the paid services of young people escort homosexuals around Europe, leaving traces of this in his chat private, later acquired by the investigators as documentary evidence, in which he expressed himself with a style and language of unspeakable immorality?

 

5. It is true that Pietro Vittorelli traveled around Europe suffering from compulsive shopping reaching the point of spending up to approximately 50.000 euro in a single month, with transactions documented by his credit card records, paying hotel to 5 luxury category stars, gourmet restaurants, high fashion boutiques and perfumeries?

 

6. It is true that what is contained in the points 1-5 they are all elements meticulously documented in investigative documents then passed by the investigators to the Holy See for information, in consideration of the fact that Pietro Vittorelli was a diocesan ordinary?

 

7. The site director I Can't Be Silent, well-known punisher of the Roman Curia, of the prelates of the Holy See, of the Vatican Media, of the Vatican Press Office, of the Pontifical Gendarmerie and so on (see archive of his articles) perhaps believes that when the serious and immoral exploits of a practicing and unrepentant homosexual are involved, everything should be relegated to the spheres of his private life, without this having any impact on the ecclesial and canonical-juridical level?

 

the tenor of the exchanges that Pietro Vittorelli used to have with escort gay for pay: «I'm going to look for cocks»

 

Christian piety cannot omit the truth. Therefore, the person responsible for this Site, it confirms itself for what it is: one who «He spoke ill of everyone, except Christ, apologizing to the dir: “I do not know him!» (Epigraph by Paolo Giovio on Pietro l'Aretino).

The great expert on Church matters answer these dubia, but strictly on the merits, or shut up, commending with us the soul of this unfortunate deceased to the infinite mercy of God.

 

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.HTTPS://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltEAQNopUYM&t=2s

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INTERNET AND THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF AUTHORITY, A COUP DE GRACE INFERRED BY LEGIONS OF IMBECILIALS IN POWER

The destruction of the principle of authority is that element that fundamentally supports the triumph of the fundamentalist dictatorship of non-knowledge, of that crass ignorance, rude and violent which is something completely different from the "not knowing" of the cultured man. And this crass ignorance, rude and violent, it has long since carried out its great and devastating coup through the internet and i social media.

— Church and current events —

Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo

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I often remember than when we talk, or when explaining a specific thing, when holding a lesson or conference, when preaching or doing catechesis, it is always of fundamental importance to start by underlining the true meaning of the words, indicating and, if necessary, carefully explaining the true etymological meaning of the terms used.

The wrong accent can start a war, I once said to some people who at the time didn't understand why, while I was talking about topics related to dogmatic theology, incidentally I occasionally explained the meaning of words and terminologies. In fact, there are terms that in philosophy or theology have a totally different meaning from that attributed to them by the current language in which they often, certain words, they have been emptied of their original etymology to be filled with something else and take on an opposite meaning. I explained that not just one word, but even a simple accent can change the meaning of a speech. For instance: the word "peach" can indicate both a fruit and a fisherman with a rod in his hand patiently waiting for the fish to bite the hook, depends on oral pronunciation, or where the accent falls from in a written version. Around you, I love her, it may be the small hook into which the fisherman attaches the fish bait, but it can also be the statement with which a lover declares that he loves another person. The word “anchor” can mean either the weight thrown into the seabed to block the boat and prevent it from continuing to float on the sea currents, but it can also mean repeating a given thing. Even in this case it depends on oral pronunciation, or where the accent falls from in a written version.

An audience of listeners who are not particularly cultured, in which however, precisely the most uncultured, they considered themselves true masters of knowledge, little by little they understood my lexical explanations when I illustrated that the word "punishment", in theological and doctrinal language, has a different meaning from that given to it in the current lexicon. First of all, the etymology of punishment derives from Latin chaste (pure) e act (make/give/give back). The true etymological meaning of this word is therefore "to purify", or “to make pure” or “to restore the lost purity”. A completely different meaning from that of current spoken language. Soon said: if a theologian will speak to an audience about God's punishments, listeners may understand the exact opposite of what he is trying to convey, if anything, giving rise to misunderstandings that do not depend on the way in which the scholar expressed himself or even on the listeners, but consequent to the fact that both give this term a dissimilar meaning, thus ending up speaking two different languages ​​using the same words. In theological language, punishment is a purifying action of the grace and mercy of God who "punishes and shows mercy" (Tb 13,2) because «The Lord is merciful and merciful, slow to anger and rich in goodness" (Shall 103). Therefore, divine punishment, in the economy of salvation it is a true act of love by the Creator towards his creatures. And here I point out in passing that the term "economy" just used has, similarly to that of "punishment", a meaning that is also completely different from that of the current spoken lexicon. This Greek-derived lemma ― oἰκονομικά ― appears in a work attributed to Aristotle who uses it to indicate the management of oἰκος, that is, of the family and what belongs to it. For the Greeks the economy was not a factor, as we understand it today, an autonomous reality that operates equally autonomously. And precisely because of this word I used with reference to the "economy of salvation", someone present - obviously the most cultured and refined of all the listeners - started laughing and then showed evidence of crass ignorance by asking me publicly:

"But she, talking about the economy of salvation, he always stuck to the sale of indulgences?».

A very widespread characteristic in today's society non è il sapiente e saggio "I know that I don't know" (xéro óti den xéro, I know I do not know), according to the wise maxim of Socrates reported later by Plato in the Apology of Socrates. Today, the sovereign principle in our increasingly uncultured and arrogant masses is the exact opposite: know what you don't know, then discuss, contest and often even attack through various channels social media those who know and who for this very reason try in vain to provide clarifications, according to the psychopathological style of who, despite not knowing, However, he presumes to know more than ever.

In people of true culture knowledge is founded and moves on the basis of Socratic wisdom "I know that I don't know". Because no matter how much one may have dedicated their entire existence to study and research, all of us, even the most cultured, we remain basically ignorant in the etymological sense of the term ignorant of his predecessors hence the term ignorance, its turn derived from the Greek verb γνωρίζειν (gnorízein), which literally means "lack of knowledge". Or any of us, including long-time scholars, he would perhaps be able to say: “I know everything”? When Rita Levi Montalcini became Senator for life, distinguished neurobiologist scientist, shortly after the Nobel Prize was awarded in 1986, for having discovered the Nerve Growth Factor (the growth element of the nerve fiber), during a public event she was told that she was among the few people in the world who knew the human brain. In response she replied:

«Of the human brain, in my life, I learned something, but just something, because many of its resources remain unknown and today, we scientists, we can say we know about the 5% of its potential".

Let's now try to move from neuroscience to theology and specifically to patristics or patrology. There is a patrologist in the world capable of claiming to know in depth the works of all the great Fathers and doctors of the Church, from major to minor ones, or to have even simply read them all? I know patrologists in their eighties who have dedicated their entire lives to studying the Cappadocian Fathers, also known as the Wise Men of Cappadocia, which are three: the Saints Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus also known as Nazianzen. Of all the others they have a summary knowledge, many others still have never examined and studied them, not even read. The true man of culture is aware, precisely because it is so, of one's ignorance, precisely because true knowledge necessarily comes from the awareness of not knowing: «… of the human brain, in my life, I learned something, but only something".

The destruction of the principle of authority it is that element that fundamentally supports the triumph of the fundamentalist dictatorship of non-knowledge, of that crass ignorance, rude and violent which is something completely different from the "not knowing" of the cultured man. And this crass ignorance, rude and violent, it has long since carried out its great and devastating coup through the internet and i social media. The cancellation of cultural roles, social, political and religious develops at its worst through these channels which constitute the destructive element of every principle of authority. This is a problem that requires us to take a historical-social leap backwards to be understood, to be precise, the inglorious seventies of the twentieth century, with all its devastating and emotional "do not forbid", «imagination in power» and so on. In that season a real process of subversion took place, reversal and finally a real elimination of roles. Today the teacher is no longer someone sitting on a desk in a higher position, which not by chance had a pedagogical and symbolic platform that raised it in height above the desks where the students sat, from which he dispensed his teaching to subjects who had to remain silent, listen and learn, responding only when questioned, or, when granted, ask questions about what the teacher had explained but which had not been well understood. Many lower or high school teachers, or university professors, at the end of their lessons they used to ask: «I was clear... I explained myself well? You have some clarifying questions to ask?». I honestly have no memory of ever hearing any of my schoolmates or university colleagues speak up: «I don't agree with what he said because in my opinion… I think that…». This could have meant finding yourself later in the exam in front of an examiner who could have made you repent of your past sins in an impeccable manner and in full compliance with the law and academic rules., present and even future. And I will tell: it would have done well too, because arrogance must be punished, precisely for the sake of the arrogant, which needs to be corrected, not indulged, less than ever tolerated. Arrogance is in itself intolerable.

The post-1968 teacher he has become the one with whom we dialogue and compare ourselves, no longer in a vertical role position, that is, from above (teacher) downward (students), but in a horizontal relationship. If then, in this kind of sick relationship relationship - which could not and never should be, first of all for the good of those who have to learn - one starts challenging the teacher with "I don't agree", because I think that... because in my opinion...", here is that subject, today, he will even be judged as a particularly brilliant student. Then, if he insults the teacher, at that point he will become the favorite of all his companions and his comrades they will send him little hearts for WhatsApp, or directly their half-naked images on Instagram. Nobody thinks that today's parent, learning of his son's feat, you feel a sense of human shame for having a child who is rude to that level, because the answer will be more or less this: «He insulted him, you can see he deserved it". Or maybe it can, today's parent, feeling ashamed and then admitting that he was a total educational failure? Of course not, therefore it is the insulted teacher who is wrong and the child who is right.

The exams I took at the time first in high school and then at university ― me like everyone else ― were not based on a dialogue between peers, but on a completely unequal relationship where a person is vested with authority, the professor, he asked me questions to which I, student, in a subordinate position I had to answer precisely, especially in the strict merit of what had been requested of me, showing that I had acquired and developed the knowledge that had been transmitted to me. Having done this the authority, that is, the high school teacher or the ordinary university professor, he expressed a judgment on me in the form of a vote, with a rating given in numbers between 0 e 10 or between 18 e 30. I got to have teachers who were talented, knowledgeable people, as well as educational qualities, as I have had others that were mediocre, equipped with little science and, if anything, also lacking in teaching skills. However, it was not our job as students to evaluate teachers, that could be judged, for their merits or demerits, only by their superiors, or at least by their peers, certainly not from the students who were acquiring knowledge and who had not yet acquired and matured. This made them lack the necessary judgment skills - including contestation - to be able to express positive or negative judgments on the qualities and abilities of the teachers..

Cases have been multiplying for years in which the disastrous parents of certain students, worthy children or grandchildren of the less than glorious Sixty-eight and the Seventies that followed, they do not even limit themselves to appealing to the Regional Administrative Courts for a failure they consider unjust, because they clog them up with appeals even for a vote since, in their opinion, it was not adequate. If the parent, more or less the son or grandson of 1968 or the 1970s, he is unable to pass on to his child the healthy and healthy principle of authority and respect that is due to authority, society is inevitably doomed to colossal failure after descending into the absolute worst and most destructive form of anarchy: the anarchy of emotions, or if we prefer "forbidden to forbid" and "imagination in power".

These are the results that are before our eyes today: the parent ceases to be a parent and becomes a friend or a "criminal" accomplice of the child; the teacher is a subject with whom one compares oneself, contesting it and giving vent to one's egocentrism with "I don't agree... because I think that... because in my opinion..."; the doctor is no longer the one who treats you but a person who can be interrupted while he is giving you a diagnosis by expressing the fateful phrase «Ah, I do not agree, because I read on the internet that..."; state offices, from the carabiniere to the policeman up to the Senator for life of the Italian Republic who became such due to special merits, they are figures who are often mocked and debased by people who do not even know the first fundamental article of the Constitution of the Italian Republic and who are completely ignorant of the republican system in which they live; priests and theologians are people now relegated to the most useless and marginal roles of civil society to whom young people suffering from functional or digital illiteracy turn face to face with the "you" telling them how and why the Church makes mistakes, or putting their foot down because they have to act as godparents at baptism, however, they had not been confirmed, here, after having made a profession of not believing the truths announced by the Church, they tell you, if anything even with a bad face "I have the right to do Confirmation because I need it", ignoring that the Sacraments are not a right but an action of divine grace … In short, a society in which, together with the principle of authority, all the rules have disappeared, with a mass of arrogant ignorant people who every half sentence pronounce «I have the right to… I have the right to…» but in an egocentric and anarchic way they don't even accept the vague idea itself that alongside rights there are duties and vice versa, since a society made only of rights cannot exist, just as one made only of duties cannot exist.

I have quoted Umberto Eco several times in various of my writings that touched on the problem of the internet and social media, because with four brushstrokes he depicted, more than a problem, a real social disaster:

«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!» (cf.. WHO).

Before the semiologist Umberto Eco, when still i social media they had not taken the field, a famous Italian mathematician, George Israel, he expressed himself this way about the internet:

«It is true - as someone noted - that I have decided to put an end to this type of “dialogue”. It highlighted two of the worst aspects of the internet, a means which I will not give up anyway, but not to give in to the evil temptations it leads to. I am alluding to the loss of inhibitions whereby one believes one can treat people with whom one would not dare to do so hastily and even rudely. de visu; and the tendency to pass judgment on crucial issues that are perhaps the subject of secular reflection, even calling anyone who doesn't comply an idiot" (cf.. Article from May 2008 taken from Giorgio Israel's website).

Forgive me if I use myself as an example, but I believe that transmitting one's personal experience is important, especially by a presbyter and a theologian who has just reached the threshold of sixty years of age. This means - or at least it is assumed - to have acquired and developed a certain life experience and, through methodical research studies continued over time, a certain knowledge, always and rigorously based on the awareness of "I know that I don't know". As always we exemplify: once, the classic frigid hysteric who was reactively affected by obsessive neuroses of a pseudo-religious nature, after causing problems, friction, arguments and confusion of various kinds in the parish, or perhaps even before it could generate similar things, she was taken aside by some of the parish priests who were, made new from head to toe and then chased away. Today the classic frigid hysteric reactively affected by obsessive neuroses of a pseudo-religious nature dives into the sea of social media, goes hunting for the priests' pages and with a quarrelsome and aggressive spirit begins to challenge them in an insulting and provocative tone, especially if the priest has written a clear and precise post in which he deals in a simple way with serious matters in terms of doctrine and faith, making them understandable to the general public, but to which she responds with absurd nonsense. This is one of the main pitfalls of social media, for us presbyters and theologians as for any scholar or for any person who in society has what he should be, but above all it should be felt and respected as a role of authority.

In internet, but above all in social media, as Giorgio Israel pointed out many years ago, there is a total loss "of inhibitions that allow people to be treated hastily and even rudely with people they wouldn't dare to do so with." de visu». Which adds a worse element: «the tendency to pass judgment on crucial issues that are perhaps the subject of secular reflection, even calling anyone who doesn't comply an idiot". We have had recent experience of this, moreover linked to an affair that brought civil societies to their knees for two years, governments and the economy: the Covid-19 pandemic. Who among us does not remember armies of shampoo girls and bar intellectuals with a lower secondary school diploma from evening schools who, between one ungrammatical message and another, denied the most expert virologists and infectious disease specialists because they had read on blogs managed by equally arrogant ignorant people that …? I tried to respond in this way to many of these people at the time:

«Science is not perfect and has always been fallible and defeasible. Vaccine yes, vaccine no? Personally I have decided to trust science, that he can make mistakes and has often made mistakes. However, I intend to make an act of faith towards science, because if anyone must be wrong about me, I prefer that the mistake is made by a specialist in an attempt to save me rather than by a naturopath-esotericist hunting for idiots who makes people believe he can cure them with homeopathic pills and colored magnetic stones. Also because, while science asks for trust when necessary, these charlatans and those who decide to follow them ask and demand instead real acts of blind faith regarding what is absurd and anti-scientific they say and support".

At that delicate juncture as in other different but similar ones, public and private television stations have burdened themselves with enormous responsibilities that a true civil society and truly enlightened politics should not have hesitated to make pay dearly out of a sense of justice and for the protection of the population. In fact, we remember that while people were locked in their homes at the height of lockdown, for five days a week, three or four hours every evening, in all the most followed talk show quarrels and brawls were encouraged and fomented between clinical specialists and ignorant emeritus people taken from the street who contested and denied them. All passed off as the right to information and the right to freedom of speech. Request: of when, the imbeciles, they have the right to express themselves in prime time on public and private television, even more so to challenge and refute scholars with absurd and irrational theories, even more than anti-scientific? The television networks were really interested in giving everyone a voice? And since when, this passionate love for truth on the part of mass media that they usually hide the truth, manipulate and distort it, when it suits the bosses who keep them tight and tied to their payrolls? No, the truth was completely different: the editorial staff of television programmes, with a cynicism that it would have been good to make him pay dearly for, they had a single purpose, much higher than Covid-19 and the pandemic danger itself: audience ratings. More brawls broke out in the television studios, the more the audience ratings went up. But let's go back to Umberto Eco again:

«Television had promoted the village idiot compared to whom the viewer felt superior. The tragedy of the Internet is that it has promoted the village idiot to the bearer of truth" (cf.. WHO).

Call yourselves an "old-fashioned" priest, if you prefer demodé, but I remain aware that the Church, through the so-called three gifts, he sent me to teach, to sanctify and guide the People of God, this after having trained me, educated and specialized in theological sciences, therefore giving me a mandate. This is my job, both for those who believe in it and for those who, even if you don't believe it, he would still be required to respect it, especially in this world in which respect and maximum political correctness are de rigueur even for the last of the illegal immigrants landed on our shores and for transsexuals balancing on stiletto heels, who certainly do not have a human dignity superior to that of a human being called a priest. As a result, the task of ours believers of Christ it remains today to accept our teaching, allow yourself to be sanctified through the Sacraments of grace administered by us and be guided on the path of Christian life, or if you prefer to be governed by pastors within the Church, where you are free to enter and from which, to be understood, you are free to leave, but no one has the right and the recognized freedom to insolent the shepherds.

Soon said: come minister in sacred I am not a person with whom any person who proclaims himself Catholic or believer can deal face to face, because the relationship is theologically and hierarchically bottom-up (loyal) upward (presbyter). It is not the believer or worse the presumed one who can wag his finger and give me lessons on how a priest should be a priest or on how he should transmit the truths of the faith, or worse, which truths can be good and which "must" be changed instead. All expressed by subjects who have never even looked at the Catechism of the Catholic Church and who therefore ignore that the truths of faith are immutable and certainly not mutable at will, with lots of like on social, because "I think that... in my opinion...".

In front of this kind of people I act and interact in two ways: or I reprimand them with a severe and, if necessary, authoritarian attitude, making it clear to them that I am not their companion, much less a person with whom they can think of confronting one-on-one, or, as in the case of social media in which relationships are perversely horizontal, I react with a sneer, with the colorful word, sometimes even using some completely random trivial phrase, less than ever instinctive or emotional, but precisely scientifically studied and desired in order to shake up certain subjects, whose reaction is as evident as it is obvious: «Shame of a priest... vulgar priest... but you really are a priest?». Yup, I'm a priest, with the aggravating circumstance of also being a theologian to whom you, young girl or do-nothing woman, after having spent the day browsing the internet in search of gossip and titillating news, you thought you could explain what the Catholic faith really is. Because the most disrespectful and most violent of all are de rigueur: give it, how they feel social media. Or it could happen that I don't respond and that I respond to some of these angry comments by posting on my page social the photography of Only Rose in spray version used by women for vaginal itching, if anything accompanying the photo with the phrase: "they say it works...".

Imbeciles always take things seriously and they desperately need to be taken seriously, because the social authorities are felt, scientific, policies, moral and religious which they absolutely are not, this thing that, for a sort of strange and complex unconscious envy, it leads them to insult those who truly and legitimately hold these roles of authority. What is not serious, never be caught and treated as if he were. A quel point, clever mockery is the only antidote. It's about cunning and subtle pedagogy: mocking one happens that he, together with others 100, they post hundreds of insulting comments to you, but it almost always happens that at least two or three, in front of your answers, they understand, giving you and recognizing the social role and authority that you deserve and are owed, because certain relationships are not, nor can they ever be equal, nor based on the principle of «… in my opinion… I think that…».

As a presbyter I can ask my Bishop opinion and advice, expose a problem and ask for suggestions for its solution, I can also raise doubts about certain choices or pastoral directives, with all the deepest courtesy of the case I can also offer some advice, because every priest is a close collaborator of the Bishop. However, I cannot dispute him and reject what he has established, thus placing me above him, because I am the one who depends on his authority, to whom I promised filial respect and devout obedience with a solemn sacramental act. It is the Bishop who granted me the mandate and the related faculty to celebrate the Holy Mass, to preach the Holy Gospel, to absolve from sins and to care for and safeguard the People of God, all in a relationship of subordination, because I am subjected in a subordinate way to the apostolic authority of the Bishop, who has the power, wanting or deeming it appropriate, to revoke this mandate as well, partially or totally, if he deemed me inadequate or unworthy. So, even if I had a hundred reasons in and of itself, if I dared to place myself above his apostolic authority, those reasons would turn into a thousand serious wrongs which would make me a terrible priest and which would cause scandal and disorientation to the believers of Christ. This, it is the principle of authority in the Church, entirely based on the theological virtues of faith, of hope and charity (cf.. The Cor 1.13). And make it clear to the Catholics of «in my opinion … I do not agree ..", it's not easy.

At times, to recover people and bring others to reason, a photo of a pharmacological product against vaginal itching may be more useful rather than a useless dissertation on certain key principles enunciated by the Holy Father and Doctor of the Church Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, who also had good knowledge of vaginas, when he was always Aurelius of Tagaste. And someone, after laughing about Only Rose which relieves vaginal itching, it may be that he understands and then opens up. Only at that point will it be possible to talk about the Gospel and the precious thoughts of Saint Augustine, producing good fruit, all thanks to a teasing joke that started with a product that relieves vaginal itching.

Who is in authority, faced with this total crisis of every principle of authority today there are two solutions: or he starts fighting in vain against windmills by speaking a language that the masses are ignorant of, arrogant and quarrelsome people who swarm the social media I am not even able to understand and understand, or he makes fun of imbeciles while maintaining the respect that is due to him and that is due to him. Recovering some from time to time, which is no small thing these days:

«Who among you has a hundred sheep and loses one, he does not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and goes after the lost one, until he finds her again? Find it again, he puts it on his shoulder all happy, go home, call friends and neighbors saying: “Rejoice with me, because I found my lost sheep". Like this, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven for a converted sinner, that for ninety-nine righteous people who do not need conversion" (LC 15, 4-7).

I social media I am an ocean where sardines think they are sharks and where cod have the killer whale complex, but yet, occasionally, it is possible to recover some sea bass, aware first of all that he is a bass.

the Island of Patmos, 9 October 2023

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Father Ariel's new book has been released and is being distributed, you can buy it by clicking directly on the cover image or by entering our bookshop WHO

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THE EMBARRASSING AND DANGEROUS MANAGEMENT OF THE DEPARTMENT FOR THE CAUSES OF SAINTS AND CRITICISM AS THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLE: FAITH AND REASON

The lower the average IQ in society becomes, the more it is necessary to explain even the obvious things. The mistake that we scholars often make, in the theological field as in the spheres of all the most disparate sciences, from medicine to astrophysics, is to often take for granted things that we consider obvious and which in fact are, being the most rudimentary elements of the various sciences or simple and basic human common sense. Unfortunately it is necessary to take into account that today we are more inclined to follow the influence illiterates and i tiktoker, including priests who unfortunately have thrown themselves into these "crazy games".

- Church news -

Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo

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In an article it is only possible to summarize a problem, but it is already something. Then, to anyone who would like to know more, I suggest reading my latest book Digressions of a liberal priest, where I dedicate a chapter of 138 pages on this topic, accompanied by all the historical implications, theological and juridical (Dal Bello to Moro. Holiness like the deceased Nobel Prize winner? P. 127-265).

I was perplexed when on the various social media I heard myself accused of criticizing the Holy Father Francis. In truth I have always defended his teaching and also his august person, often issuing public reproaches, hard and severe, to those "accidental Catholics" who think they can even declare a Roman Pontiff illegitimate based on their own subjective moods, something truly aberrant.

In my previous book provocatively titled Sadness of Love I do not criticize the post-synodal apostolic exhortation love joy, I highlight the excessive length of the text and its vague and ambiguous language full of useless and misleading sociologisms. Anyone who says otherwise is lying, this is demonstrated by the printed book of which some detractors have only read the title, deducing to follow what it does not contain, giving absurd sentences based on nothing.

I note with concern that an increasingly dense army of "self-styled Catholics" confuse the mystery of faith with an emotional "I like it" or "I don't like it". The whole, be it negative or positive, strictly based on a total lack of reason and critical sense. This is why I often find myself in this paradoxical situation: «Dirty Bergoglian heretic!» shouts the compulsive rosary reciter, considering me guilty of having defended the Holy Father Francis, after following a priest excommunicated for heresy and schism who was dismissed from the clerical state with a sentence given by the Roman Pontiff, capable of making his fragile and problematic followers believe that pink elephants fly in the sky according to the "Gospel" of Maria Valtorta and the "prophecies" of Blessed Katharina Emmerick and those of Saint Faustina Kowalska. On the other hand, here are some others: “How dare you criticize the Holy Father?», this for having simply expressed regret for his inappropriate and in my opinion harmful presence in television programs hosted by individuals who have always fired shots at the Catholic Church, or on its ethical and moral principles (see WHO e WHO).

If within the limits of what is due, bishops and theologians had not exercised in the freedom of the children of God that precious element which is criticism, especially the very decisive and severe one when necessary, starting from the Blessed Apostle Paul who in Antioch made Peter black, as they say (cf.. Gal 2, 11-14), today we would not have had the great dogmatic councils of the Church, we would not have defined the truths of the faith revealed by the First Council of Nicaea to follow and, after the death of Jesus Christ, if anything perceived only as a "failed messiah", at present we would have been nothing more than a small heretical sect of Judaism, all this if the critical sense was lacking, that means: the reason. Faith, explained Saint Anselm of Aosta and reiterated many centuries later the Holy Pontiff John Paul II in his encyclical Faith and Reason, it is based on reason and must necessarily start from reason, which involves first of all the exercise of critical sense. It is through reason that we reach the doors of the great mysteries of faith and only then can we cross that threshold through a free, conscious and rational act of pure faith.

The lower the average IQ in society becomes, the more it is necessary to explain even the obvious things. The mistake that we scholars often make, in the theological field as in the spheres of all the most disparate sciences, from medicine to astrophysics, is to often take for granted things that we consider obvious and which in fact are, being the most rudimentary elements of the various sciences or simple and basic human common sense. Unfortunately it is necessary to take into account that today we are more inclined to follow the influence illiterates and i tiktoker, including priests who unfortunately have launched themselves into these "crazy games".

As always, let's explain with an example: numerous influence convinced that "a dwarf has his heart too close to his asshole" because they didn't understand the ironic hyperbole of the song A judge by Fabrizio de André, they use the word Middle Ages in a derogatory sense, ignoring that art baggage, science and technology that we have today we owe it all to the Middle Ages. Not only, because if today we know the classical authors; be the culture, Greek and Roman literature and philosophy have been handed down to us only thanks to the Middle Ages, including the most lustful poems of Valerius Gaius Catullus, which not only the Church was careful not to censor or destroy, because if we know them today it is thanks to it and to the scribe monks who transcribed them and handed them down over the centuries.

The system of modern law we owe it to the great Bolognese glossators who lived between the 11th and 12th centuries and we owe the fundamental element of legal civilization of the protection and legitimate defense of the accused precisely to that inquisitorial process on which unaware and ignorant people about the fact that being condemned by the Tribunals of the Holy Inquisition was very difficult. And it was precisely the courts of the inquisition that sanctioned another element that today is part of the criminal jurisprudence of all the so-called civilized countries of the world: the punishment aimed at recovery and not punishment, through punishment the condemned person must not be punished but recovered.

The reply of the ignorant is ready: «Death sentences were given!». And here it must be reiterated that death sentences were not rare but very rare, specifying that they must be placed and interpreted in historical contexts to which today's judgment criteria are not applicable, it would be enough to explain that even the death sentence was an extreme act of recovery for the condemned. It is not by chance, the condemned, they were dressed in white, sign of purity, because with death they paid their debt and extinguished their guilt by reacquiring what in Christian language is called "baptismal purity". And their bodies, after death, they had to be treated with respect and buried with consideration.

Replies the ignorant: «Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake, other than killed and buried with respect!». Of course. And according to what was social logic, policy, juridical and also religious of the time were right to burn him at the stake. It was he who made a mistake with rare obstinacy. His trial lasted for approx 15 years and was canceled twice due to laughable defects of form to be started again from scratch. For years and years he was tried in every way to induce him to repent, which he stubbornly refused. It is useless to say and explain to certain people that they feed and drink on black legends that cannot be evaluated and then judged the Giordano Bruno case with the judgment criteria of our social present, politico, legal and also religious. It would be like condemning with cries of scandal and the application of contemporary thought certain practices of prehistoric men considered in our opinion inhuman and criminal.

Elements of this kind can be explained by my eminent medievalist friend Franco Cardini, or even by the historical popularizer Alessandro Barbero, as by me in my capacity as a scholar of legal sciences, of dogmatic theology and history of dogma. Yup, but to how many people and to what audience could we explain them? Our numbers, however differently one may be followed, they will never be comparable to hundreds of thousands, if not to the millions followers which follow the idiocies of certain characters who use the word Middle Ages inappropriately, received and used by as many parrots following them, unaware that the Middle Ages means Albert the Great, Anselm of Canterbury, Bernard of Clairvaux, Ildegarda in Bingen, Domenico di Guzman, Francis of Assisi, Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Catherine of Siena, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus … The Middle Ages is the great circuit of Benedictine abbeys and monasteries which gave life to the social and political concept of Europe even before the year 1000. The Middle Ages are the great Cistercian and Carthusian architects and engineers, who brought running water to many villages, taking care of hygiene and prophylaxis for local populations subject to diseases and often epidemics due to excess dirt. The Middle Ages marked the centuries of reason and the exercise of critical sense by the most brilliant minds in history. The Middle Ages is Frederick II of Swabia with the Sicilian courtly school, Brunetto Latini, Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarca, Giovanni Boccaccio. The Middle Ages came to an end with men like Silvio Enea Piccolomini, ascended to the sacred throne with the name of Pius II, which in its original Pienza created a prototype of a modern urban nucleus of the city of the future.

Some believe that the Medici are the fathers of the Renaissance? Let's be serious. The Renaissance, which has both a theological and social value, it was originated by the Church after the great trauma of the terrible plague of 1346 which exterminated half of the European population, at the end of which they tried to be reborn. It would be enough to go and see who the patrons were who commissioned the greatest Renaissance works, both pictorial and architectural: Supreme Pontiffs, Cardinals, Bishops and entire Dioceses, other than Lorenzo the Magnificent passed off as the creator and father of the Renaissance... let's be serious!

Long-winded premise? Knowledge and the transmission of knowledge are never long-winded, in this poor world in which the conductor of a following talk show you would be able to ask an invited scholar just to fill a space to explain in 30 according to metaphysics, if anything after having done the talking for 45 minutes Mauro Corona in front of a flask of wine. Any reference to Bianca Berlinguer is completely coincidental, obviously. Prolix are the speeches that say nothing, not those where several centuries of history are summarized in an understandable way in a few dozen lines, among other things, dispelling painful and harmful black legends.

If confusion is added to the emotional together with the seasoning of ignorance, if the whole, to our great misfortune, penetrates and is made to penetrate the Church as a Trojan horse, at that point the disaster is done. A disaster that has also affected the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints for some time, ever since the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II began to undermine that wisdom and prudential structure that had characterized the processes to arrive at proclaiming the blessed first and following the saints, through very rigid and rigorous criteria. With all due respect to those who today have changed the word "rigid" and "rigorous" into something negative and despicable. But then again, in the Church today, there are those who even use the words "dogma" and "dogmatic" in a negative sense, as long as no one dares to kick the ass of a gypsy who tries to steal your wallet behind Bernini's colonnade, because in that case you risk excommunication sententiae penalties for having mistreated a "Roma sister" who has the right to live and exercise her own "culture", as theft and pickpocketing are called today: "culture".

The Holy Father Giovanni Paolo II he intervened not only with a reform of the process for the causes of the Saints, because he later intervened with various dispensations, which continued and increased after him. We have thus had saints dispensed from the historical phase, saints dispensed by the miracle, dispensed saints, as someone said ironically but rightly from holiness itself. The trial of John Paul II itself opened with a sensational and dangerous dispensation: dispensation from the historical phase. Among other things for a complex pontificate that lasted 26 years and all to be prudently studied in an international social and geopolitical context which to define as complex is truly pure euphemism. Above all, a pontificate unique in history, because in that period of time the world collapsed and world societies as we knew them on a social level until recently collapsed, scientific, morale, political and religious. Following the previous wisdom and prudential procedure, the beatification process of a Roman Pontiff had not started before 30 years after death. This is demonstrated by the procedural process of the Holy Pontiff Pius 1914, he was beatified in 1951 and canonized in 1954. The canonization ceremony of Pius, it then happened to 40 years after his death. The process of John Paul II was completely different: less than nine years after his death he was beatified and then canonized, complete with dispensation given by Benedict XVI to what was established by his predecessor in 1983 in the apostolic constitution Divine Master of Perfection which provided for the effective date of 5 years after death before the opening of the beatification process.

In the so-called Young Paulist era we have seen Blesseds and Saints raised to the honors of the altars which leave not so much a bitter taste in the mouth, but they really send a shiver down your spine, because in addition to the rules, the very criteria of the reasons that can lead a Servant of God to be first beatified and then canonized as a martyr have been subverted, almost as if the pontiffs of recent decades had felt legitimated in canonizing their own "personal saints" because they were compatible with the trends, the thoughts and fashions of the present. A truly striking recent case was the beatification of Enrique Ángel Angelelli Carletti, Vescovo de la Roja, beatified as a martyr, albeit over time, two different investigations entrusted to independent commissions of experts, one composed of Argentine scholars and one composed of American scholars, reiterated that it was a road accident and not an attack plotted by the dictatorial regime of the time. To this must be added the not insignificant case of a priest, key figure as witness and collaborator of the Blessed martyr bishop, who later left the priesthood, who initially offered a version of the incident, then he denied it and subsequently fell into further contradictions. However, let us note that the bumps and potholes of that road truly had deep and supreme hatred for the Catholic faith and its ministers.

To proceed with beatification a Servant or Servant of God, then canonize a Blessed or a Blessed, what is needed is a proven miracle that constitutes a scientifically inexplicable fact. However, there is an exception to the miracle: the martyrdom, because what is recognized in and of itself as a miracle is martyrdom itself. And here it must be clarified what the Church is, since the apostolic, he understood it as martyrdom: be killed in hatred of faith, that is, in supreme hatred of the Catholic faith. That said, if anyone today, to use inappropriate political language, he thinks and accuses the Church of having moved to the left, know you're wrong, because the facts prove the opposite: it has moved and thrown itself into the best of the worst of the old Christian Democratic mess.

Two concrete cases of clerical-Christian entanglement: Saint Edith Stein and Blessed Pino Puglisi. La Stein, extraordinary woman endowed with brilliant intelligence, philosopher of unparalleled stature, born Jewish to a Jewish family and later converted to Catholicism and became a Carmelite nun, she was taken by the Nazis while she was at her Carmel, taken to the concentration camp and killed. Stein was captured because she was Jewish and because she was Jewish, therefore considered as such by the Nazis, regardless of whether she had converted and then become a Carmelite nun, this was something they were not interested in in any way. So Stein did not die in supreme hatred of the Catholic faith, but killed because she was Jewish, that means: in the supreme hatred nurtured by the Nazis towards Judaism and the Jews. Out of hatred for the Catholic faith, Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe was killed, captured as a Catholic priest of the Order of Friars Minor Conventual and held responsible for propaganda not appreciated by the regime and as such considered a dangerous enemy of Nazism. Instead of waiting for his turn to die, he offered to replace a family man in the "hunger pit"., going to die in his place with an act of heroic charity. But he would have died in any case and in any case he would have been a holy martyr, unless he ran away, or that the concentration camp had been liberated by the Allied armies, which however happened four years later, Father Maximilian Maria Kolbe died on 14 August 1941.

Edith Stein, absolutely extraordinary woman it is an equally extraordinary model of faith, undoubted and precious model of heroic virtues that rightly make her a saint, but not a holy martyr, not having been killed out of hatred for the Catholic faith. Is this, the suo time, was explained in detail to John Paul II by Father Peter Gumpel, who made this known to the request for an opinion no problem about his beatification, but not as a martyr killed in hatred of faith. In response, John Paul II did not want to listen to reason, making a purely political reason prevail, later revealed to be a boomerang, because the international Jewish communities rightly responded that the Church was free to beatify and canonize whoever it wanted and when it wanted, but that Edith Stein had been killed because she was Jewish and certainly not because she was Catholic. And they were damn right.

With the Blessed Pino Puglisi, the presbyter of Panormita, whose sanctity of life is not in dispute, it bordered on farce, in the most delicate sense of the term, proclaiming it - listen, hear! - martyr of organized crime. And here we need to clarify: Father Pino was killed by the Mafia, which has a specific name: Cosa Nostra. I wonder: the heroic Sicilian bishops, if they really wanted the blessed martyr as a medal on their chest, because they didn't present him to be proclaimed a proto-martyr of the Mafia, o di Cosa Nostra? Why use the term organized crime, which ambiguously means everything and nothing, when it is a question of a very specific organisation, i.e. mafia, with a very specific name, or Cosa Nostra? And who would have been the ferocious haters of the Catholic faith, maybe the mafiosi? But the mafiosi - and the Bishops of Sicily should know this very well - are devout people, with the holy cards of Saint Lucia, Saint Agatha and Saint Rosalia inside the wallets, with prayer on their lips and candle in hand in the front rows of the processions. Then when the clan leaders were arrested, they found them with one and only book: the Holy Bible, full of underlines and pizzini, as in the case of the clan leader Bernardo Provenzano. If anything, the question that priests of a certain age who all claim to be students of Father Pino Puglisi should ask themselves today, it should be this one: while he alone, like a loose dog, he opposed the mafia arrogance in his neighborhood, we priests, in our central parishes, ready to throw stabs at us from behind just to snatch a mozzetta from a canon of the Metropolitan Chapter or that of the Palatine Chapel, what we did, as well as proclaiming ourselves post-mortem his students as worthy sons of the Leopard? This is what certain priests from Palermo should ask themselves who today boast of having all been his students and disciples, because that's the problem: the Mafia would never have dared to raise a hand on a Palermo priest if it hadn't considered him just an annoying maverick. Request: given that the mafiosi are anything but naive, who made him feel like a maverick? But if all the priests of Palermo come on 55 years to follow they were his students and disciples, he should have had a compact clergy around him to support his precious work, or not? And if that were the case, Mafia, would ever have dared to kill a priest? I have read the documents of that trial and in conscience I can say - inviting anyone to deny it - that without prejudice to the honor and undoubted sanctity of the blessed, we can laugh about it in the same way that we all had solemn laughs about the Leopard by Don Giuseppe Tomasi, Prince of Lampedusa.

When in a delicate sphere, such is the beatification of the blessed and the canonization of the saints, we get carried away and emotionally affected by the social or political moment, also if desired by the media opportunism dictated by the situation of the moment, enormous damage can be done, wanting irreparable, not so much for the present but for the future to come, when the emotional souls have calmed down and certain emotions have died or been replaced with new ones more suited to those times. It will be at that point that historians will analyze us, in various respects even as freaks, saying bluntly: beautiful superficials that they were, those who preceded us! And everyone will be silent, because it will be true.

Those who emotionally only look at the present, ignores the heavy legacy it will leave for the future. In the world of tomorrow it will no longer be possible to do like the Holy Pontiff Paul VI who made dozens of Saints disappear with the stroke of a pen with the excuse of reforming the Calendar. It is well known that several of those Saints never existed, others were duplicates of other Saints, others were even embarrassing figures and as such to be forgotten.

The world of today and that of tomorrow it will no longer allow the fall into oblivion that was possible in the past. However, emotional people who live in the present without a future perspective unfortunately don't know this, to the great misfortune of our children who will come and who will have to be humiliated and mocked because of the superficiality of their fathers.

the Island of Patmos, 25 September 2023

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Father Ariel's new book has been released and is being distributed, you can buy it by clicking directly on the cover image or by entering our bookshop WHO

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I esteem NIETZSCHE AND SAINT LAURENT, I ATTEND THE UPPER BOURGEOIS AND I DO NOT VISIT ROMA CAMPS, JUST ENOUGH TO NOT BECOME A CARDINAL

The areas of Catholicism so-called traditionalist or conservative, through their army of mystical souls and defenders of the true and authentic faith, they changed the word Modernism into a synonym for absolute evil. This is in the same way that the Soviet communists had transformed it into a synonym for absolute evil words like bourgeoisie or capitalism.

— History and current affairs —

Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo

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A famous stylist he uttered a phrase which in itself contains a profound evangelical essence, rather, eschatological: «Fashion passes, style is eternal". Definitely, il francese Yves Saint Laurent (1936-2008), avowedly atheist, all-round homosexual with an adventurous life behind him in every sense, who arranged for the ashes to be scattered after the cremation of his body, he had neither metaphysical nor eschatological ambitions, perhaps not even evangelical. However, this does not mean that sometimes, the most unthinkable people, even those furthest from Christian living and its moral principles, can express concepts that fit, surprisingly, or even extraordinary, to the Christian feeling and the contents of the Holy Gospels. It would be enough to simply read certain poems by Baudelaire, Verlaine and Rimbaud, called not by chance The cursed poets, the cursed poets.

Thundered Friedrich Nietzsche already at the end of the 19th century: "God is dead, stays dead, we killed him" (cf.. The Gay Science, n. 125). A phrase that in itself could scandalize an army of mystical delicate souls, but which if read in a Christian key sounds instead like a severe warning. Haven't we perhaps evicted the very idea of ​​God from our ancient European continent, after killing him, to the point of making an evident concept such as the undeniable historical Christian roots of Europe unpronounceable? Saying that Europe was born from Christian roots is not an attack on the idolatrous cult of fundamentalist secularism, but a fact that should be accepted by all non-believers with intellectual honesty, who, having taken note of this clear fact, then have every right to remain and profess to be secular and non-believers.

This sharp thinker, brilliant and crazy he had also intuited and prophesied that the decisive attack on Christianity could not be based on the theme of truth but on that of Christian morality. Even in this, Nietzsche was wrong when he titled a work with the provocative name The Antichrist, where he paints Christianity as a disaster and a perversion that needs to be freed from? This too requires a particular capacity for reading and speculative interpretation on a philosophical and socio-ecclesial level: over the centuries the men of the visible Church, perhaps today in a special way, they have not by chance generated disasters and perversions from which it would be good to free ourselves, with the primary and ultimate aim of protecting the Church of Christ, the Mystical Body of which he is the head is us living members? (cf.. With the 1, 8).

Between the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century we Catholics, locked up on the perennial defensive lines, after all the historical events that followed the traumatic and bloody event of the French Revolution and the various liberal governments that were highly anticlerical and repressive towards the Catholic Church, it is not that by chance we have imposed great limits on ourselves and inflicted deep wounds on ourselves?

Areas of Catholicism so-called traditionalist or conservative, through their army of mystical souls and defenders of the true and authentic faith, they changed the word Modernism into a synonym for absolute evil. This is in the same way that the Soviet communists had transformed it into a synonym for absolute evil words like bourgeoisie or capitalism.

To the Committee of our Soviet of the Catholic tradition I throw down a gauntlet: it is true or not true, that the Lutheran scholars - children of a heresy which theologically remains such and which generated the second schism in the Church after the Eastern one of 1054 - they speculated on biblical sciences and new testamentary exegeses, while we Catholics, by virtue of the excellent foresight of the Supreme Pontiff Leo XIII or whoever on his behalf, we were trapped in four rancid formulas of decadent neo-scholasticism? And I say to such a rancid and decadent point that if between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century Sant'Anselmo d'Aosta had awakened from the tombs, Sant'Alberto Magno and San Tommaso d'Aquino, they would have kicked us in the teeth without a moment's hesitation.

After more 116 year old since the publication of the Encyclical Feeding of Dominic's Sheep of the Holy Pontiff Pius X, through which Modernism was condemned with all the harshness of the case, we want to start asking ourselves, we historians of dogma in particular, how much and if, that encyclical, it was truly far-sighted as some still glorify it today? Personally I consider it a historically necessary text in that precise historical and geopolitical context. However, if the speculation is both historical and theological, today she wasn't dead and buried, it would be necessary to start asking ourselves questions that will be the subject of an essay that I intend to publish as soon as possible: Modernism, with all its undoubted problems and errors, perhaps it wasn't in the first place, rightly or wrongly, a reactive movement that developed within a Church whose problems were almost all of a political nature, especially after the fall of the Papal States 20 September 1870?

Intellectual honesty is a rare commodity, especially in mystical souls and defenders of true and authentic doctrine and tradition. If in fact they had even a shred of it, the rigorous question would be the following: How come, after arriving in the middle of the last century in almost disastrous theological situations, at a certain point we realized that, to carry out in-depth studies on biblical sciences we were forced to refer to the publications and scientific texts of Protestant authors? We were already doing it in the first decades of the twentieth century, but secretly, so as not to end up on trial in ecclesiastical courts on charges of modernist heresy.

They should also clarify, always mystical souls and defenders of true and authentic doctrine and tradition, How come, the greatest and unsurpassed commentary on the Letter to the Romans of the Blessed Apostle Paul was written and published in 1918 by the Protestant theologian Carl Barth? And it is a text to which, whether you want it or not, we all have to do it again, precisely because it remains insurmountable for now.

Soon said why this happened: we Catholic theologians were busy scratching each other's head lice, like a tribe of capuchin monkeys, camping out on four rancid formulas of decadent neo-scholasticism, with the sword of the great and far-sighted Feeding of Dominic's Sheep which continued to hang above our heads, until the Supreme Pontiff Pius XII began to loosen the rules, but above all to donate to the Church encyclicals of high theological and spiritual depth, rather than encyclicals dictated by socio-political needs with all the most severe disciplinary implications addressed to the clergy and theologians.

It is known that imbalances always generate imbalances, like this, before and immediately after the Second Vatican Council, but above all with the unfortunate post-conciliar period, carried out by theologians and self-styled people who didn't know the documents of the Council at all, each ended up creating their own Council, the one I renamed into one my work of 2011 «the egomenic council of post-council interpreters».

If Modernism was the reaction to an airtight seal, the fight against this current of thought, ended then defeated, it generated a much worse reaction: the uncontrolled decline of Catholic theological speculation. And today we are forced to listen not only to theologians, but bishops in the chair who casually pronounce embarrassing heresies. Or better understood: the Jesuit Antonio Spadaro, whose theological depth is almost equal to that of a sole, not only embodies the decadence of Company of the Indies which in its time was the great Society of Jesus, because he even became director of the historic magazine La Civiltà Cattolica and can afford it, without any reminder, to publish on The Daily a commentary on the Gospel that would have made the heresiarch Arius pale [see text WHO].

The situation of decadent degradation that we live today in the Church has very ancient roots to be found between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, when a ripple effect was triggered. Until we reach the present day, in which we are suffering and helpless spectators of an agonizing pontificate that has given us politically correct proclamations, uncertainties and ambiguities. All in the name of a true psychopathological obsession: poor and migrants, migrants and the poor...

It is known that today the bishops, but above all those who aspire to become such, they must come from unspecified "existential peripheries" and speak of an "outgoing Church". The Church is not leaving but is now in receivership, with bankruptcy upon us and the bailiffs ready to enter to affix the seizure seals. If the Church is saved - and it will be saved anyway by our certain faith - it will be because it is not a human work but a divine one; because Peter, chosen by Christ as a stone (cf.. Mt 16, 18-19), it rests on the rock of Christ. And of Christ - it is good to remember - Peter is the vicar on earth, he is not the successor, if anything, an even more good and merciful successor than Christ himself.

While elsewhere there was a catwalk of bishops new generation con i clergyman unglued, holding the wooden crosiers made in Master Geppetto's workshop, with pectoral crosses obtained from a piece of a poor migrant boat that sank off the coast of Lampedusa, This Sunday morning I celebrated Holy Mass in the chapel of a five-star clinic, a place where people who can pay very high prices are usually hospitalized. Then I visited all the terminally ill patients hospitalized in the oncology department. And after having already administered the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick and confessions in the days preceding, I continued to administer confessions to several patients again, then bringing them Holy Communion.

While I was kneeling before the Tabernacle, my theological soul was assailed by this atrocious doubt: in the Church today, these upper-class people, these rich people, they truly have a soul? They are also children of God? The church, who always took care of everyone, but which today only talks about the poor and migrants, of migrants and the poor, he has to deal with them too or not? The Holy Father continually tells everyone "Never forget the poor". But, in ten years of pontificate he has never once urged us not to forget even the souls of the rich. They are the rich people who have often donated the most important charitable structures to us, or the funds to build and maintain them, or the money necessary to carry out our apostolic works. I am not aware that the Church has ever built any charitable structure with the money of Roma pickpockets, those who in Rome, to be understood, they visited all the religious houses, there is not a single one who was saved from their thefts. And when the Holy Father received them in audience several times, I am not aware that as a sign of gratitude they returned any stolen goods in exchange for the apostolic blessing. Why steal from Roman religious houses, they are really the Roma - the police reports say so - they are not the Swiss bankers away in Rome, those traffic in another way and at much higher levels.

My doubts dispelled I left the luxurious clinic and did not visit a Roma camp as Augusto Paolo Lojudice did, today metropolitan archbishop of Siena and cardinal, I went as a guest to breakfast with a distinguished clinician and his wife at the exclusive Aniene Rowing Club, frequented by people who definitely don't have, for the Church today, the dignity recognized instead of the Roma.

A dignified priest it is good first of all that he presents himself with a beautiful cassock on and that he looks at the man as such, regardless of his class and social condition, whether poor or rich, because in the eyes of God there are no privileged categories because they belong to the category of the ideological poor. The worst clericalism, the most vulgar and undignified, I willingly leave it to that poor brother who interviewed the Supreme Pontiff several times in jeans and sneakers, while I willingly leave the red hat to Cardinal Augusto Paolo Lojudice, awarded this dignity not for particular science, intelligence and pastoral government skills that led him to stand out among the members of the Episcopal College, but because he brought the seminarians of the Pontifical Roman Major Seminary to visit the Roma camps.

All these are just the end results of a large and complex ripple effect that started long ago, which would be good to study, because only in this way it will be possible to find an adequate cure, certainly not with a new one Feeding of Dominic's Sheep nor with a second one Praised yes, which could also be titled if desired Laudato no, given the consolidated style of the … it could be yes or maybe even no, but maybe who knows, a little yes and a little no, but maybe you know what I'm telling you? Come to an agreement and do it yourself, as long as you never forget the poor...

More than consolation we have a certainty of faith: fashions pass, as Yves Saint Laurent said, but the style, that of Christ who revealed himself and gave himself, that remains forever and never passes away.

the Island of Patmos, 4 September 2023

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Father Ariel's new book has been released and is being distributed, you can buy it by clicking directly on the cover image or by entering our bookshop WHO

.

______________________

Dear Readers,
this magazine requires management costs that we have always faced only with your free offers. Those who wish to support our apostolic work can send us their contribution through the convenient and safe way PayPal by clicking below:

Or if you prefer you can use our
Bank account in the name of:
Editions The island of Patmos

n Agency. 59 From Rome
Iban code:
IT74R0503403259000000301118
For international bank transfers:
Codice SWIFT:
BAPPIT21D21

If you make a bank transfer, send an email to the editorial staff, the bank does not provide your email and we will not be able to send you a thank you message:
isoladipatmos@gmail.com

We thank you for the support you wish to offer to our apostolic service.

The Fathers of the Island of Patmos

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