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THE SYNOD OF YOUTH: ENZO WHITE AND THE ORIGINAL SIN IN THE CONTEXT OF A DISSOLUTION

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Who today wants to speak to young people in a credible way, but especially those who intend to protect them from the work of the devil that in the twentieth century and the new millennium seems to have triggered in all areas and at all levels, It should first invite them to flee the inside of sin, certainly not to insert the acronym LBGT nell’Instrument of Work of the Synod, to see how to fix certain new “edifying” trends.

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Author
Giovanni Cavalcoli, o.p.

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Enzo Bianchi visit by Pope Francis I

He could miss the Bose Prior Emeritus, His Beatitude Enzo Bianchi, the Synod Youth? The time to stop the preaching of the spiritual exercises to the clergy at Ars [cf. item WHO], and here he is coming to give relief precious pearls as a participant in the Synod. And since we are in the era of so-called "epochal revolution", He first explained to reporters that in this Synod "There is a great freedom of action than in previous synods I have experienced" [cf. WHO]. Obviously HB fails to point out that this “freedom” very recalls period of terror Robespierre during the French Revolution, since all those who have raised objections in various capacities free, or they have been dismissed from their offices of the curia, or discharged without cause, or left in place but totally ousted from the exercise of their duties, or died of a broken heart, as the late Cardinal Carlo Caffara [cf. our articles, WHO, WHO].

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Perhaps, His Beatitude, ignores that in the world, the crimes and the worst injustices, paradoxically, they were made in the name of freedom of pretexts. The noblewoman Marie-Jeanne Roland de la Platière remains the emblem, that climbing the stairs to the guillotine said: «Oh Freedom, what crimes are committed in thy name!» [Oh, freedom, how many crimes are committed in thy name!].

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Who today wants to speak to young people in a credible way, but especially those who intend to protect them from the work of the devil that in the twentieth century and the new millennium seems to have triggered in all areas and at all levels, It should first invite them to flee the inside of sin, certainly not to insert the acronym LBGT nell’IThe Labor nstrumentum of the Synod, to see how to fix certain new ones “edifying” trends [cf. our article WHO]. Obviously, none of this can be accomplished, When talking to young people is precisely invited His Beatitude, who is not only qualified to gloss over sin, because going deeper still and starting from the root, Enzo Bianchi ends up denying, through its smoky interpretations, the same original sin. A quel point, everything becomes more or less lawful beyond good and evil. And then he asks to speak to young people? Why the young should not be offered nor washy Gospel, nor an easy way, at least according to what he said Jesus Christ:

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"Enter through the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad the way that leads to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:; how narrow is the door and how narrow is the way that leads to life, and few there be that find!» [Mt 7, 13-14].

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Let's see what is the concept of original sin This person invited to the Synod after having just finished preaching to priests …

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The whole meaning of Christianity It rests on the doctrine of original sin. If this doctrine is distorted, the whole of Christianity crumbles. Indeed, Christianity, It is the original sin divine power of salvation and its consequences and return humanity to the happy condition precedent to sin, with the addition of a superior condition, that of the "children of God", "Spiritual men", the image of the Son Jesus Christ.

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The redemptive work of Christ It is essentially to free mankind from original sin and its consequences: in healing the wounds, remove the condemnation of sin, covetousness, the suffering, death and bondage to Satan, giving satisfaction with the sacrifice of the cross to the Father for our sins, reconciling with each other and with the Father and by obtaining for his mercy and his forgiveness, and giving the law and the grace of the Holy Spirit, that makes us children of God, heirs of eternal life.

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It is clear then that is impossible understand and appreciate the greatness of the Father's mercy, for mercy sends us his innocent Son to die on the cross For us and for our health, for us sinners, insolvent debtors, If you do not understand the immense gravity and pervasiveness of original sin, origin of all our sins and misery, in which, for righteous judgment of the Father, it threw the whole of humanity.

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Christ is the divine Physician, who knows our ills, can interpret our disorders, shows us the causes and consequences and teaches us how guardarcene, as well as the way and the means to reach the healing. Jesus came on purpose to teach us and show us, through the Church, better and beyond any philosophy, what is the source of evil that afflicts all humanity from time immemorial, evil which alone not only can not free, but which can not even fully understand the nature and to make the diagnosis.

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It is thus quite false what he says Bianchi, that the Church does not know what is the origin of evil and why, Why, if so, It would not have a way to eliminate it, which is absolutely false, it would be to frustrate the work of redemption and would make the whole Christian zero, or at most would make a philanthropism at the level of the masonry or of Gnosticism, where Jesus Christ is nothing more than a prophet or a great benefactor of humanity, a Nobel Prize, that, to support the cause of justice and the oppressed, It stands firm against opponents to death.

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The greatest manifestation of divine mercy It is certainly the free forgiveness of sins, ma, according to the Father's plan, explained by the dogma of the Church [1], This plan provides that we collaborate with our suffering, penance and good works in grace, priestly work [2] and cultic repairing and atoning work of Jesus Christ crucified, gift precisely the Father's mercy through which espiamo our sins, and bringing satisfaction to the Father, offended by sin, reconciling us with God in Christ and the Church through the sacraments. So salvation is not only a gift of grace, but also our conquest and reward thanks to merit [3] supernatural good works. By denying the value of the merits, White falls into the same heresy of Luther.

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White does not understand that the doctrine, taught by the Council of Trent [Denz. 1511, 1522, 1529], for which the Father, outraged and offended by the sin of man, requires reparation, and to that end sends the Son to offer himself in sacrifice on the cross to redeem us from our sins, it is far from a false interpretation, now outdated, the work of the Father and of the Son, as if it were a cruel Father and Son from under the thumb of a domineering father, but it is an immutable dogma of faith [4]. Instead it is biblical and dogmatic doctrine, that makes us understand the immense mercy and admirable justice of the Father, who gives us his Son for the salvation of us sinners, glorifying the Son with us, which in turn, in the Holy Spirit, We glorify the Father in Christ [GV 17]. And in this sacred and divine circularity of mutual glorification it is recapitulated the whole mystery of the Christian liturgy, source and summit of the Christian life, mystery dissolves into the design of Bianchi.

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The doctrine of original sin, like all the truths revealed, it is not easy to understand and offers great difficulties to our reason. It also emerges only by a skilful connection of passages of Scripture, ranging from the famous story of Genesis, the Book of Job, a San Paolo, to the Apocalypse, between them very distant, whose link is not immediately visible. Moreover, this doctrine, because fundamental, stand and fall of Christianity, branches and has connections with all the other moral truths of divine revelation, Financo with those theoretical, so that one who wanted to expose this doctrine in all its relations with the other truths of faith, should consider the whole set of I believe cristiano. Indeed, the perception and contemplation of a truth so purely speculative as is the dogma of the Trinity, It is made possible, after all, by the fact that we are there freed from original sin, welcoming the grace of redemption offered to us by Christ.

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This doctrine is not a simple biblical exegesis, but it has slowly gained in history and has been clarified and specified over the centuries with the help of the Fathers, the Doctors and the Saints, under the guidance of the Magisterium of the Church, especially in the Council of Orange 529 [Denz. 371-372], and the great Councils Fourth Lateran and Trent, where he assumed a form definitive dogmatic, which since then has not been further investigated, even by Vatican II, which is limited to assume the traditional doctrine. This doctrine is now entrusted to Catechism of the Catholic Church [NN. 396-406]. At the same time the data revealed that it expresses urges theologians to always new explanations and information and urges them to ask new questions, leading to an ever increasing knowledge of God's Word.

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Progress historical-critical exegesis, especially since the nineteenth century, They have been of great help to the Church to correct certain popular naivete, clarify the literary genre of the Genesis story, the history of its drafting, the dell'agiografo relationships with extra-biblical contemporary cultures, per separate the historical and theological core by coating symbolic and mythological, to overcome a cosmological vision evidently overtaken by modern scientific progress, especially in relation to the data of the theory of evolution. They helped the understanding of the dogma of original sin even the philosophical and theological progress made since the nineteenth century, especially with the Thomistic revival promoted by Pope Leo XIII, the progress of metaphysics concerning the nature of good and evil, of natural theology regarding the creation of the world, the progress of anthropology about the nature of man and woman, the progress of psychology and moral theology on the nature of free will, accountability, of consciousness, of sin, of guilt and grace.

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The darkness of the biblical data, the apparent naivete of the Genesis story - a pair placed in a garden of delights tempted by a snake eating a forbidden fruit - , its apparent contrast with the data of science on the origin of man [5] and its apparent absurdity, a sin that is transmitted by biological or generation of a good God, but it allows evil, all these difficulties were always opportunity for the doctrine of original sin has been misunderstood, until, Oh, in many different ways falsified rifiutata.

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THE DESIGN OF THE WHITE AND THE THOUGHT OF THE CHURCH

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In this article we look at the position of Enzo Bianchi. He considers himself a "Catholic" and claims to expose the vision that the Church has of original sin, giving to understand that it would not accept more that we find exposed in Catechism of the Catholic Church. We would then ask Enzo Bianchi on which the "Church" speaks, since it is not that of Catechism. Actually Bianchi hardly exposes the doctrine of the true Church, but a false church, which is that of the modernists.

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The original sin Bianchi presents a conception that, as I said, masquerading as a doctrine of the Church, but which in reality, as you can be easily verified by consulting Catechism, It is exactly the opposite of what the Church teaches and is therefore completely false. He begins by mocking the Genesis story like a fairy tale for children:

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"Needless to say, the Bible does not say where he was from evil. I hope none of you remember this little story told we were telling everyone that there would be an angel who has turned to God, God has fallen and this has become the devil, the devil tempts us, the world was beautiful, was gold, he walked from morning to sunset. Indeed the sun never came because there was no darkness. Then those two poor things of Adam and Eve have done that thing and pay us after I do not know how many millions of years "[cf. Enzo Bianchi, WHO].

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It explains:

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"But when you say original sin today the Church, attention to this, It does not mean the sin of the origins and later caused a disaster forever, but sin that is to the origins of each of us, of our existence, our freedom and our right to decide; this is evil "[cf. Enzo Bianchi, WHO].

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"No original sin in the sense of a sin committed at the beginning. That the Catholic Church does not say more. But the original sin that dwells in every man emerges every time we touch, in communication or in connection with the things. In front of a tree symbol of all things, man and woman feel tempted "[cf. Enzo Bianchi, WHO].

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"The Church is no longer on these positions. The Church does not read the original sin in the prehistory of men. This is now nonsense. More no one dares say this. But original sin is read as the sin that is in the fibers of every man who comes into the world "[cf. Enzo Bianchi, WHO].

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On the contrary, the Catechism presents original sin just as sin committed by a human couple really existed, progenitor of the whole human species, created by God in his image and likeness, rebelled against the divine prohibition to take his place in the deciding of good and evil [nn.396-399] [6]. Original sin, so, it is not a sin which is at the origin of our personal lives, as if it were an act our, but it is at the origin of mankind.

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Original sin is not the first sin we make in our personal history, reached the age of reason. The biblical account is not, as also believe Karl Rahner and Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, an 'aetiological myth ", to explain by referring to the past what happens in this. The guilt of original sin, in which we are born, It's not our fault, but a sin that we inherited from our first parents. For how could it be our fault, If at birth we still have not reached the age of reason?

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According to the dogma of the Church, which clarifies the doctrine of St. Paul, the guilt of original sin is not only a personal fault of their ancestors, but it is collective guilt of all humanity, guilt that, when committed by ancestors, It is transmitted to all humanity generation born from Adam, so everyone, except the Blessed Virgin Mary, free of original sin, It is conceived by the mother affection and stained by this original and hereditary guilt, independently of the will of the individual, still incapable of discernment, guilt from which it free Baptism.

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And if it is true that Christ never speaks precisely of the order, and the effect of Baptism reason, except to say that cleanses from sin and grants salvation, and never mentions the original sin, the very fact that orders to baptize every person, It is the implicit admission of the existence in each of us of original sin, guilt that precisely is removed from Baptism.

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The transmission of original sin, involving and infects the whole of humanity, It supposes a corporate conception of human nature, if it were not just a collection of people, but a single person or a single person [7], a “super-person” composed of people, without excluding all the singularity, the autonomy and the responsibility of individuals in.

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This conception of humanity appears clearly in its Pauline thought is sinful humanity as a result of original sin ["In Adam all have sinned"], [RM 5,12] [8] and both in its conception of humanity santa, that the Church as a "mystical body" of the Lord, "Bride of Christ". That is why St. Thomas Aquinas explains that original sin is not so much the sin of that individual, but rather it is a sin of human nature, sin nature, like saying that if a man sin by hand, it is he himself who sins [9]. Like this, with regard to original sin in so and so is the same humanity to sin in them. Or - Thomas makes another comparison - we say that a watercourse is polluted because it is polluted at the source. Of course, it's simple comparisons, that, as do light, They can not remove the darkness of the mystery. The historical fact of original sin is a pure datum of divine Revelation. The reason comes to understand the essence of the evil of guilt and punishment, He understands that this is a consequence of that; He understands that the existence of evil is not necessary, but it is something accidental and contingent.

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Starting from his false assumption, then you understand as Bianchi fails to explain why all of us, though born good, as created by God, and given the power to choose between good and evil, inevitably become bad; and not finding a solution, complains that the Bible a mistake that is his alone.

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Bianchi So here evidently confuses two things. An account is the original sin, parents' sin, that touches our origins and whose fault is spreading throughout humanity. It is one thing to our innate inclination to sin, - lust - which is a consequence of original sin. Bianchi says so that the church would have dropped like a "stupid" and a "lack of intelligence unpardonable", the story of the creation of Adam in paradise, with preternatural gifts, happy, immortal and innocent, in communion with God. Dice:

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"The Church does not read the original sin in the prehistory of men. This is now nonsense. More no one dares say this. But original sin is read as the sin that is in the fibers of every man who comes into the world. If you want quell'incapacità is always doing good. At a certain point, evil enters us " [cf. Enzo Bianchi, WHO].

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But just see what the Catechism He teaches to make sure of the words of falsehood Bianchi. He says the Catechism referring to the sin of our first parents:

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"The man, tempted by the devil, he left off in his heart the trust towards his Creator and, abusing his freedom, He disobeyed God's command. In what was to man's first sin [cf. Rom 5,19]. Afterwards, every sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness " [n. 397].

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Moreover, because of its denial of the historicity of original sin, Bianchi ends up conceiving the human tendency to evil not as a result of the original Fall, but as intrinsic to human nature itself, with dire consequences for the evil man and man, Why, While this is natural, become well, because good is what is second nature. It follows then a horrible consequence: that the sin becomes good action and good deed becomes sin. No longer it distinguished what is second nature from that which is against nature:. From here probably overindulgence Bianchi against the sodomy.

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He says Bianchi:

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"The tale we all know and that the man and the woman. Humanity in its duality in to relate with things, in living existence. Show to choose evil and do not choose the good. Do not read that story as if it were the origin of our history. It would indeed be an unforgivable lack intelligence. The story of Genesis wants to tell the reality of man, of every man who comes into the world, of every woman who comes into the world. It is located in a world where there is already evil. There is already the snake, before the man. It was already there. There was already bad. And the man in her life and lets you choose evil " [cf. Enzo Bianchi, WHO].

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For Bianchi, as we have already seen, the tendency to sin is not proper to fallen human nature from a primitive state of innocence, but it is inherent in human nature itself. But if evil is naturally in humans, then evil is natural and it is not bad. So, thinking that Christ deliver us from evil is an illusion or a flaw. Bianchi takes the presence of death and hostilities of nature are no consequences or punishment of a sin we have committed to basics, because evil was already there before sin. Dice:

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"With the knowledge of the sciences that we, we know that the first man's evil reign in nature even before: the wolf ate the lamb. Even before, the chain of life went on through the death of some for others to live. There was no harm our introduction. The evil was. And certainly evil preceded us: the snake, Satan, the devil and then the names are many. But evil was " [cf. Enzo Bianchi, WHO].

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We respond by saying that it is true that evil there was already a result of the angel's sin and it is true that the death of the living infra-humans has historically preceded the appearance of man on earth. This second figure is the science, while the first is a matter of Revelation. From Scripture we know that evil originated from the rebellion of some angels to God [AP 12, 7-9]. But what about the death of the living infra-humans, it is natural; in fact it is already present in Eden. It is a consequence of human sin. The infra-human living to serve humanity as nourishment.

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Inalready, regarding our death, Revelation teaches that it is a consequence of original sin, although it too would be natural in itself [10]. Ma, as taught by the Council of Trent [Denz, 1511], Eden possessed a grace of immortality, we have lost through sin. Indeed, the first parents in Eden were immortal. And also, according to Revelation, the death, from which Christ saves us, It draws its origin from the first angel's sin [Sap 2,24] [11] beginning of creation.

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Also of note that Pius XII in the encyclical The human race the 1950 [Denz. 3897] It reiterates that it is necessary to admit the existence historical of a couple, from which all humanity originated, otherwise it would have been impossible to transmit the original sin to all mankind, which is part of the dogma of original sin.

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For as the saying Catechism:

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"Adam has transmitted to us a sin, by which all are born contaminated " [n,403]. "All men are implicated in Adam's sin, as well as all are implicated in Christ's justice " [n.404]. St. Paul makes it clear that, if it were not for Adam with his sin, there would be no Christ, because Christ repair Adam's sin [RM 5, 12-20]. "Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature, that they transmit in a fallen condition. It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, with the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice. Because of this, original sin is called "sin" in an analog mode: is a contract not a sin and sin, a state and not an act "⦋ibid.⦌. It is not affected by a conscious act of the subject, as if this was responsible, but simply getting the grace of Baptism, allocable even at a baby ' [ibid.].

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White acknowledges that God can not will sin, ie the evil of guilt; it is deficient when it comes to punishment or divine punishment, in which God inflicts a just penalty. In the name of mercy, Bianchi does not want to admit the punitive justice, that seems unworthy cruelty of God's Love. Undoubtedly the punishment of sin is precisely the evil that the sinful pulls him with his sin.

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However, we know as the Bible speaks frankly "God's punishment, without any need to judge the sign of an archaic theology or exceeded, because the severity is also God in Christ. So this can only refer to the logical and necessary consequence of sin, that disturbs the order established by God himself in things, though God, in his goodness has in some cases the possibility to suspend or cancel it.

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THE PROBLEM OF EVIL [12]

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The question of original sin is certainly linked the problem of the nature and origin of evil, because sin is to do evil. And the evil of punishment is the consequence of sin. Bianchi stands several times to the second question, moreover falsely declaring, as we have seen, that the Bible does not give an answer, when in fact there is already an answer, however imperfect, supplied by philosophy, although obviously not up to the answer which comes from Scripture.

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But the major shortcoming of Bianchi is not tell us what is evil, evil of punishment and guilt evil. Indeed we see that he has a wrong notion of evil, when he says that the serpent of Genesis is the "evil". Not at all. The snake, as he should know, It is the symbol of an evil spirit creature, created before man, ie the devil, as clearly he taught the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 ⦋Denz. 800⦌.

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Bianchi, with this serious misunderstanding, thus it proves to hypostatize O substantiate Evil, falling exactly that Manichaeism, he says it will avoid. Thus jointly and it denies that the sin of man draws his chance from the angel's sin, refusing, we saw it, as silly fairy tale this truth of faith, which is also taught by that Council [ibid.], Truth extremely enlightening and useful for our way of salvation, because it teaches our duty to be vigilant and beware of pitfalls, illusions, by attacks, deceptions and temptations from the Devil, without fearing his threats, or leave us confused by his accusations and his reproaches, there insinuate false guilt, and without succumbing to its allurements and seductions, They harden in sin, blind us to arrogance and pride, and without being disturbed by his scare, they want to throw us into despair.

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The most serious question of evil, in order to be taken seriously, with hope of success, without being in the dark, It requires, as already Aristotle teaches us, recourse to metaphysics, because it touches the question of 'being and non-being, of the position and of the negation-deprivation, Specific themes of metaphysics. Now Bianchi unfortunately proves to be made of completely ignorant metaphysical. And therein lies the cause of his serious mistakes on the question of evil.

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Thus the above-mentioned clumsy substantialization or reification evil wrought by Enzo Bianchi, throws it into a very serious difficulties, which it seems not to notice, the same difficulty to say the absurdity of Manichaeism, and that is that, if evil is a substance, there is no remedy to it. In fact it is possible to remedy the evil, precisely because it is not a substance, and there is not necessarily, but it is accidental and precisely a deprivation [13], a lack of good or entities, which can be remedied by affixing the missing well. Of course, a subject or a harmful substance may be destroyed or prevented from harming. The murderess can be executed. But evil, from which then we are freed, It is not the subject as such, ontologically, my he damage made by the subject.

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The bad part of the not be, although it is designed as if it were to be, ad figure being [being of reason]. Which obviously does not mean that evil is nothing or that it does not exist or is only apparent or a subjective fact and has no influence on reality. [14]. Far from it. Tremendous is the deadly and destructive power of evil. But it is precisely the negation, and more precisely as deprivation of being. But if evil, as it seems to believe Bianchi, It is a substance, if it exists or subsists in itself and not in a subject, It is not bad, but good. It must be remembered that the substance itself, ontologicamente, it's good. There are bad substances by essence. As a villain in it can not be that its action, but not its being. A substance may be harmful, but in itself, as body, it's good. And being a good turn, according to the known principle transcendental.

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Already philosophy, physically and morally, confirmed by the Christian Revelation, although much less perfectly of Revelation, He tells you what is evil, which it is the cause and what are the effects. It also tells how to remove it. Christ, on the supernatural level of faith and life of grace, It is the Divine Physician, that, through his Church, We tell us what disease we, how we've taken and what we must do to heal.

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If God had willed, He could create a world free from evil. He could prevent the angel to sin. He could prevent Adam and Eve to sin. If they had sinned, He could forgive quickly, without that evil is extended to all mankind. Why it didn't?

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This is the impenetrable mystery, hidden away infinity of wisdom, of goodness and divine freedom, no mystery “detectable” to us for its transcendence. There is a reason why God wanted to allow the existence of evil, though he is innocent, because He does nothing without reason. But only he knows. Trust us [15]. The great and incomprehensible mystery, therefore, It is not exactly what is evil, Where is he from, it produces and how it takes off - on these points Bianchi shows a deplorable ignorance and contempt for the Divine Revelation -, but it's why God allows evil, When, If she wanted to, He could have created a world without evil. However, evil does not necessarily exist with creation, but there is only the possibility of the existence of evil conditions, which are given by the existence of the creature free will.

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Evil could not possibly exist if there was only God, because evil is related to the existence of creation. In fact, God is absolutely good and therefore can neither effect, nor suffer evil, which supposes instead an agent or patient finished, ie the creature. The finiteness but not bad; only ownership of a property over. However, the finiteness is the condition of the possibility that a spiritual subject does or suffers evil. Indeed evil is the lack of an asset due to a person liable, that, as such, that can not be finished, because only the finite can be deprived of his good or actively, why does evil or passively, because it suffers evil.

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For who suffers evil must be finished, because only the finite can be deprived of his right. But the actor of evil must be finished, because only a finite agent can be bad acting, that is, deprive the patient's own good. Evil can be made or – harm – or suffered - pain.

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The harmful act, that provides the patient bad penalty, It may be voluntary, and then we have sin, evil of guilt; for example a Adultery or a theft; or it can be involuntary - human or animal - and then we have the simple harm; for example the lion that kills the gazelle. However, if the man who does evil, flaw, ie disobeys the moral law, the lion kills the gazelle obeys the law of nature.

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As for the man's death consequence and punishment of his sin, for the lion's death is a consequence of his nature. Evil can only have originated from a creature capable of disobeying God supreme Good, therefore endowed with free. Indeed, all the sub-human creatures do nothing but obey the laws of God, which they are always good.

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If a mosquito bites you, do not complain, because it does nothing but his duty, although no one forbids to kill her. If anything can be said that Eden mosquitoes had respect for man. The hostility of nature against man is indeed not intrinsic to nature itself, as it seems to assume Bianchi, but it is a consequence of original sin [Gen 3,17-18]. God did not create an evil nature, but she has become a mother, "stepmother" in punishment of original sin.

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Evil, then, is not a substance, it is not an absolute, the less a deity, but it is a simple accidental lack of good, which you could be remedied with the contribution of the missing well. Evil exists because there is good, that is made worse by bad. Instead, the good in itself could exist even without the bad. Evil exists because there is a subject in which there is. If the subject is corrupt, even evil disappears. If this one dies of cancer, the cancer disappears, but only because that person is dead. Already philosophical reason then knows that in principle the evil may be taken away and won. Evil is a result of a lawsuit, whereby, removed the cause, you could eliminate evil.

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The reason also knows that God, in his infinite goodness, he cannot have wanted evil and therefore it must have been caused by an original fault of the creature, perhaps man. Plato thought that we are now in darkness and injustice because of a fall occurred in the past as a happy state, in which we contemplated the truth and the good. Of this ancestral guilt we smell, according to Plato, for the fact that now we are born with an inclination to sin irresistible, be subject to suffering. Such a thing is not normal: You should be born good and happy. It must therefore - suggests Plato - have happened, the origin of mankind, a tragedy, for which it has plunged in the current state of blindness, of misery and mischief.

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Divine Revelation takes, It clarifies and corrects the ancient pagan view, showing better the nature and severity of this early fall, and its consequences. But above all - and here lies the most revealing element - Scripture, the interpretation of the Church, gives to humanity in Christ the means and ways to break free from his ancestral misery and tendency to evil, to rediscover the original plan of creation, high from the Christian prospect of divine filiation.

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The suffering, as a consequence of original sin It is transformed by Christ into an instrument of atonement and way of salvation. From repugnant becomes lovable. Not sure lovable itself, but for Christ's sake. From condemnation it becomes a response of love to the love of the One who gave Himself to deliver us from suffering and sin. It is always an evil that must be fought. And yet it should not be rejected by any means, ma, the occasion should be welcomed for the sake of Christ as the way to make us saints. Only sin must be rejected absolutely, since, says a liturgical hymn, "Nails of the Cross, although hard, They are sweet".

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This is what he thinks and announcing His Beatitude Emeritus Prior of Bose Enzo Bianchi, who just finished his preaching to the world the clergy at Ars, He rushed to Rome, to talk to young people, then to attend the first “Synod of freedom”, if it considers that, as he himself says: "There is a great freedom of intervention that I have not experienced in previous synods" [cf. WHO]. But, in this climate of “freedom” why s ’ was seen before, He tells us that they did not order, those who think differently …

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… «Oh Freedom, what crimes are committed in thy name!». Oh, freedom, how many crimes are committed in thy name! [Marie-Jeanne Roland de la Platiere: 1734-1793].

This, It is the end that made!

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Varazze, 19 October 2018

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NOTE

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[1] I illustrate in my book The mystery of the Redemption, Editions ESD, Bologna 2004.

[2] CF. C.V.Heris, The mystery of Christ, Publishing Morcelliana, Brescia 1938.

[3]The doctrine of merit, denied by Bianchi in the wake of Luther, It is dogmatically taught by the Council of Trent [Denz.1545-1550].

[4] CF. Catechism of the Catholic Church [nn.166-172].

[5] M.-J. Nicolas, Evolutionism and Christianity. Of Teilhard de Chardin to S.Tommaso d'Aquino, Publishing Massimo, Milan 1978.

[6] CF. Erlangen Paul II, I believe. Wednesday catechesis by Sandro Beetles, Piemme editions, 1988, vol.IV, nn.4-5.

[7] CF. Heribert Muehlen, A person Mystica, Publishing New Town, Rome 1968.

[8] CF. my book The mystery of redemption, Editions ESD, Bologna 2004, pp.29-56.

[9] Of bad, q.4,a.6; In II Sent., Dist.31, q.1,a,1.

[10] S. Pius V in 1567 condemned Michele Baio, who argued that immortality was due to the state of innocence [Denz. 1921,1926, 1978].

[11] CF. (C). Journet-J,Maritain, Philippe of the Trinity, The angel's sin. Peccabilitas, nature and supernatural, Beauchesne, Paris 1961.

[12] CF. St. Thomas, Evil. disputed Questions, edited by G.Cavalcoli and R.Coggi, vol.VI, Editions ESD, Bologna 2002; C.Journet, Evil. theological Essay, Borla Publisher, Torino 1963.

[13] The steresis, of which Aristotle spoke.

[14] Luigi Pareyson, rightly affirming cha evil exists, It remains trapped in an inadequate conception of existence, it ends by arguing that evil is a reality, he fell in Manichaeism or at least in the Hegelian dialectic of this bad even in God, although Pareyson then try to make up by saying that God has "overcome evil in Himself". However Pareyson least has the merit that he understood that the question of evil is above all a metaphysical question, while the mature catholic '' Bultmannian Enzo Bianchi still alive in the world of fairy tales. Cf book Pareyson, however, nice and deep, Ontology of Freedom. The evil and suffering, Publishing house Einaudi, Torino 2000.

[15] CF. J.Maritain, God and the permission of evil, Paris 1963.

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- Church in the world: short essay by a priest who loves China and its people -

I UNDERSTAND THE COMMUNIST CHINA AND HIS FEAR TO CATHOLICISM, RATHER NOT UNDERSTAND THE REASONS OF THE PHANTOM OF THE HOLY SEE WITH THE GOVERNMENT OF BEIJING

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Christianity has become an element of aggregation and unity, but did not prevent, as perhaps he thought the Emperor Constantine, the disintegration of the Empire, indeed in some respects favoring. So that, the political power that tried to strengthen itself using Christianity as an element of unity and unification, believing that they can in this respect and to this end absorb Christianity, It has instead been absorbed by Christianity, who survived Empire Roman keeping inside traditions, uses and totally Christianized Roman costumes. This is what frightens the Communist government of China, and they are right, on the political level, to be scared, then to act accordingly. It is the Holy See that maybe did not understand the reason for these fears..

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Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo

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Rome 2010 – Father Ariel S. Levi to Gualdo Way of the cross the Colosseum in memory of the Blessed Christian Martyrs, along with one of several Chinese confreres with whom he lived in contact in the Capital

I have long wanted spender two words on the Chinese question, but I refrained from doing so because many experts are now self-elected than on the Catholic press, to follow along with the plethora of websites and blogs Catholics, give us valuable pearls of wisdom. Most commentators accredited they just published showgirls to their past by some officer of the Secretariat of State, thus giving continuity within the Catholic Church in what was the relationship between the official organ of the Communist Party, the newspaper Truth [in Italian Truth], and the Moscow Soviet. Moreover, in the Russian language, Truth It means Truth. And what makes you smile, like today makes you smile the name of the newspaper of the Italian bishops: Future. Because at this rate, the future of the pilgrim Church on earth, short unfortunately will not be among the most edifying.

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I have known over the years leading scholars, including several missionaries, who despite having studied the Chinese phenomenon for decades and having lived in that great country, when they named China were imbued with a kind of awe, as aware of its historical and social complexity and its ancient and glorious culture. Above all, since my formation for the priesthood, I have known and lived closely in Rome with several Chinese; and I can assure our readers that the "little" that lived by their lives I may have learned, I may have learned something more than velinari from the true Pontificia, to which some monsignorino of the Secretariat of State, who he has never set foot in China, passed some tissue papers to write that the Venerable Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-Kiun, chinese ancient lineage, eighty-six years old and already the Hong Kong Archbishop, he is just an angry old man prejudiced against the atheist-communist government of that country. Word of velinari, all at the instigation of some curial, that perhaps has got to much better known both far deeper China, if anything, the sifting of the Secretariat of State of His Holiness cards.

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If a venerable man like Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-Kiun, Instead of always all kinds of failure on the part of the Holy See to the Government of China, He says "They're giving the sheep to the wolves," and that this is an incredible betrayal ", and finally adding: "The signing of an agreement with the Beijing atheist regime undermines the credibility of the Pope» [Reuters, service WHO], someone, He wants to ask for the case at least of the questions? The problem is that the Church of the surface, dell'approssimativo, but most of the emotional, dialogue over everything cost even destroy everything, He has long ceased to listen to the experts; and after having been more or less settled amicably, decided to go ... Follow your little heart Subjective beating.

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We smile so tenderly both on velinari from sacred palace is on those who improvise experts of this ancient and giant complex, This is China, speaking of which humility has always been the prince instrument used by his real and great scholars, that if anything, at the tender age of eighty, after half a century of studies dedicated to it, with typical candor of connoisseurs tell you: "After half a century of in-depth studies, I learned something China, its history and its ancient culture but ..., of course: just something!».

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A LITTLE COFFEE HISTORY THE GREAT CHINA

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Rome, 2010 – Father Ariel S. Levi Gualdo with a Chinese confrere

The first written historical records of China have ancient roots in the Shang Dynasty dating back to the years 1.800-1100 a.C. While the Zhou Dynasty, which will occupy the scene for more than twelve centuries of history, between the year 1.500 and year 250 circa a.C. date back to the first writing characters imprinted on oracle bone, pieces of bone or shells of animals on which were engraved the paintings and inscriptions in its present form evolved match Chinese writing characters in use today. To this we might add that, a technical and architectural level, in greater China were the works that is accurate in both size, but in many ways even in perfection and beauty, outweigh the great works of the Egyptians, the Greeks and Romans. Just think of the Great Wall of China, whose construction begins in the fifth century B.C.. Moreover, In the 2009 the archeology department of the Chinese government made it known that the Great Wall was not long, as believed, 8.800 kilometres, ma 21.196,18 kilometres. In any case always known that China has built the largest architectural and engineering feat in the history of all humanity. E, said this, who wants to hear …

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The West today is the product of the little that remains of the greek-Roman culture, to follow with Christian culture. The bases on which will develop over the centuries, the law and politics have their fundamental basis in the philosophy of Plato, Socrates and Aristotle; and as a historical era, We are between the fourth and third centuries B.C.. China begins instead to have a philosophical development from the seventh and sixth centuries B.C.. through Confucianism, Moism and so-called legalism, thoughts from which will come to life and a legal structure entirely different policy, compared to that of the West.

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The right cineif it is old 4.000 year old and since ancient times used to encode its own laws written. For the Chinese culture, the law, It is an absolute rule and a rigid pattern of behavior. As for the law and its application, it should first be given that Chinese law has certainly not assimilated what are the principles of Christianity then transfused in post-Constantinian era in Roman law, where it takes shape the concept of punishment still targeted to the recovery of the convicted offender. As today some things are difficult to understand when analyzed with contemporary analysis criteria, through the same penalty of death was given the opportunity to condemned to expiate the guilt of his crime, then to return to a state of purity through a death penalty that was precisely espiativa, applied not for punitive Revenge, but as an act of mercy aimed at the preservation of the soul's eternal salvation of the condemned.

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In Chinese legal culture, certain concepts are alien: the sentence, whatever it is, action is purely punitive and definitely imposed for a crime committed. Only in Maoist era to life, for purely socio-political reasons, element in itself alien to Chinese culture, for example, the public repudiation of the errors and re-education. But this is items that have nothing in common with the Roman-Christian law, but with Marxism modulated for use by the Chinese regime during the Maoist revolution.

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That alone could be enough to outline two cultures that are born, They take shape and develop through the centuries on the foundations quite different; but above all who speak two completely different languages, thereby generating a different feel and a different experience.

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The western-European, It is a decadent society sick of hatred towards themselves and towards their origins. And those of Europe - with all due respect for the large representation of gays and lesbians who clamoring in the Strasbourg Parliament - are eminently Christian origins, non origins LGBT. It is not by chance, the idea of ​​Europe, and its name, It born within the monastic, from the eighth century, after the fall of Roman Empire.

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If Europe is an old continent less and less identity taken to fight with the very negation of their roots, that Chinese is rather a society that lives an ascent marked by a continuous development, but above all is a company deeply rooted in their ancient and noble origins. After saying this is suddenly the first question: a Catholic church daughter dying of a Europe that denies itself, afflicted internally by a moral crisis without historical precedent, with powerful gay and lesbian lobby through the total subversion of natural law claiming the right "sacred" to the destruction of our civilization; a Europe which for half a century has been weakened by a crisis of the internal principle of authority from which he then came to life the destruction of authority itself ... how can, This kind of Europe, think you can talk to and deal with a culture like China? Or someone can imagine a big Gay Pride in Beijing, with the usual masked pranksters, if anything, from Xi Jinping, severe President of the People's Republic of China, depicted in the form of a pink bunny covered with pajettes? Or need to explain that the case for such a thing, in China, He was sentenced to death within a maximum of forty-eight hours after being beaten up in a public square? In China the government considers homosexuality "a clear sign of “Western bourgeois decadence ". Add to this that the Government of China, requiring parents to be able to adopt a Chinese baby, It imposes to be united in strictly heterosexual marriage and prohibits the granting adoption of children to couples LGBT. The PRC law defines marriage as a union only between a man and a woman and does not recognize any legitimacy to homosexual couples [III Session of the Fifth National People's Congress, 10 September 1980]. Very restrictive even legislation on sex change, which by law can not take place before and after twenty accurate medical reports attesting to the absolute necessity. Very rare in China so are the sex change, by surgical interventions and related hormonal treatment. Said this, someone thinks they can tell the Government of China: … who are you, to judge gay and prevent them from realizing the right to their love, and to crown with the adoption of a child, or with his purchase by a surrogate mother?

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The Orientals in general, Chinese in particular, they do not even conceive that authority and the principle of authority can be separated from the authority of the person who exercises the authority. And here lies the second question: i Merlin of the Secretariat of State of His Holiness, with all due respect to showgirls published by the journalists of true Pontificia, just as the ecclesiastical structure is experiencing its deepest crisis at the global level authority, how they plan to deal with those on the authority principle is based rather any kind of social relationship, political and economic?

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The Chinese system shape and raises its summits of champions almost always trained from childhood in a very meticulous and strict, to be able to play certain roles. And the exercise of certain roles, in Chinese culture not the good-natured principle that applies err it is human, but rather the opposite: in a certain role it is impossible to go wrong, especially when a mistake compromise - even if that happens so mild - the image of the authority and the honor of their country. This is to reiterate that talking about the rising China whose socio-philosophical system is the Confucian roots, so decadent Europe whose socio-philosophical approach, albeit from the same despised and denied, It is greek-Roman and Christian roots, we we compare two worlds and two totally antithetical companies, especially with regard to the concept of man, society, and rights. A single example: in European culture, not only Christian, but also in the lay of which is affected by the Christian root that also denies, pardon and clemency are in fact signs of civil superiority; testing is something that almost all the constitutional and legal systems is expected to act of pardon by the Head of State to also convicted of serious crimes against the state itself. Otherwise, the social culture and Chinese politics, forgiveness and mercy can be a sign of weakness that svigorirebbe unheard of in certain special situations the authority and credibility of the entire social system, political and legal, especially for those who are considered crimes against the People and the State. E, said this, does not lead astray the way between the fifties and the seventies of the twentieth century was modulated by the regime of Mao Zedong's public repudiation of errors against the People and the State, so the re-education of those we call "repent". All this was in fact the sole purpose of converting them into more active propagandists of the Communist Regime, reborn from error and so become witnesses of the truth. A striking example in this regard? That last emperor of China Pu Yi, interned in 1950 in a re-education institute for war criminals, from which he was released from prison in 1959. Once re-educated and become faithful and respectful to the Communist Regime, he worked as an officer in the collection and classification of historical material and as a gardener Beijing botanical garden, until his death in 1967 [cf. Pu Yi, I was Emperor, by Francesco Saba Sardi. Milan, Ed. Italian Bompiani, 1987].

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Let's turn to another example exhaustive: think of what was the 28 august of 2008 the inauguration of the Olympics in Beijing. The whole world was stunned by those sets and the synchronized movements of thousands of extras who gave evidence of what is the kind of perfection that does not admit mistakes. But most of all, behind those unique settings and up to now unique to any other people in the world, It is enclosed in a socio-cultural element that is another foundation of that culture: the concepts of people, state and nation are above the individual. In European society is rather the individual above all, while that of China, above all, there is the concept and identity of the people. And here lies the fourth question: reduced the Catholic Church to an old mare who gives birth to little mice, within which quality and talent are penalized with destructive ferocity, where the mediocre people who have come to power for thirty years now impose categories of authentic under-mediocre as their collaborators and then successors - all on the basis of the principle that chickens scratching around in the hen house certainly cannot surround themselves with golden eagles -, how you can think of to deal with the subjects that have been selected, grew up and trained to be rather true champions of high talent? When the Chinese are put into play, but especially, When any title is at stake is the dignity and honor of their country, only they need to excel and rigor; and they always manage to excel in everything, children how to have a culture that never, and in particular in certain positions and roles, no room for error, and least of all forms of mediocrity.

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An example for even better clarify: Once a Chinese priest of the underground Church come from a few days in Rome, after I had tried to speak to him in English greeting, then in French, while I was wondering inside of me which language he spoke in addition to the Chinese, these turned me so: «Venerabilis Frater, Grace and peace be with you. Ego sum sacèrdos Sìnicus. I do not speak Italian language. Tamen, Senex EPISCOPUS sinicus, He speaks Latin language, He taught me Latin» [Venerable Brother, Grace and peace to you. I am a Chinese priest. I do not speak Italian. But, the elderly Chinese bishops who speak the Latin language, I was taught to speak Latin]. That said I do not want to be disrespectful, but I'd be tempted to invite anyone to enter the classroom of the Italian Episcopal Conference, then to turn in Latin to some’ in the case of bishops, especially those of the last generation who pose as intellectuals sopraffini, and then see what happens, but above all to ascertain what they understand …

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Having clarified the concept of non-wandering which applies to certain social and institutional levels in Chinese culture, Finally we can add one more question, aimed at both Merlin Secretary of State of His Holiness both velinari publishing amenities, namely, the following: the Secretary of State of His Holiness, in which they teem with the foolish people who go unpunished if they make mistakes in their seats, or worse, if they make mistakes never admit their error, especially if their hierarchical level is especially high, it cost well punish the innocent in order to defend the perpetrators of serious damage ... Well, how can they think that we can deal with people in certain public and institutional levels do not admit error, up to consider it an unforgivable damage and a huge disgrace, Chinese place in the socio-political culture does not prevail the defense of the individual, but the maximum protection of honor unitary institutional body?

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In the current historic moment, the Church has neither the strength nor the diplomats appropriate to liaise with the Government of China, to converse with whom it would take to ecclesiastical figures in first able to hit them with their great authority and especially with their great authority. And we today, while we wander from one another grotesque scandal, similar characters, where we plan to take them out?

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PUBLIC IMAGE, CONCEPT OF FORM AND SUBSTANCE IN CHINESE CULTURE

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… this is a government of Cape minister of the Catholic Church – because that on the political level is considered a cardinal by any international governmental authority – committed to illustrate the washing machine and a clothes dryer to the Roman Pontiff, all under the watchful shooting of a cameraman, a clear proof, if anything you need it, this skit knew nothing at all to leave the private sphere, but make their own public …

Since we live in the world of images, then we try to give two completely different images, although today many, too many, do not want to accept the idea that the form, in his own way, contributes to making the substance, or at least put it in the right light. deliberately failing to indicate the person and also the year, so even through the date it goes back to the character, I remember, Years ago, an in-depth documentary in which he was shooting a plenary meeting at the United Nations. With dismay I noticed the representative of the Holy See, that at the UN building has a seat as permanent observer. The representative of the Holy See was dressed with a sloppy clergyman that betrayed the shiny torn by television, with ill-combed hair, Visible white dandruff on the shoulders of the shots in the foreground, and an air somewhat clumsy. Shortly after he was framed - I do not know whether by accident or on purpose - the representative of the People's Republic of China, accompanied by two employees. All three with a bearing authentic princes of their oldest historical dynasties, haute couture clothing, comb your hair, shaved and pulled a shiny better and perhaps more than three actors in Hollywood during the big Oscar night. Before the Chinese, for which the form and substance are inseparable and that not even conceive that in the absence of an appropriate form can be any substance, what impression could do, the sloppy person who represented the Holy See at 'O.N.U? Then, We are having said that we point out that at the material time have just narrated, all in all not do badly spent ancòra like today, I think it said everything, or at least he said he was all you had to say. Species considering today, a Chinese delegation he came with his official style in Vatican City, entering or exiting the Leonine walls could cross the Cardinal barista that comes with terms, a plastic bag, his sleeves pulled above the elbows, to bring the evening coffee to the homeless under Bernini's Colonnade.

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… This is instead a Minister of the Government of the Republic of China, S. AND. Wang Yi, charge of the department of foreign affairs from 2013 al 2018, Today the Council of State, apparently descended from the dynasty of the last Emperor of China. Please note whether in an official public occasion, between “a washing machine and a drying room”, It has a single hair out of place …

Without respect for the figure and age, the journalists of the true Pontificia they instilled poison on Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-Kiun, who in addition to being Chinese, after being Archbishop of Hong Kong, eighty-six years it presumes know China more than certain velinari it's theirs owner-operators. Yet veiled criticism of him we read that they portrayed as a stubborn senile. No one has focused this cardinal who declares himself an enemy of an atheist government, by members of the Communist government is recognized as a genuine authority. Because this is another feature of Chinese social psychology: recognize the profound value of the enemy. And Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-Kiun is a respected and deeply honored enemy of that atheist-communist government with which he, uselessly, It reiterated that the Holy See did not treat, or that at least he shouldn't have negotiated hastily and at all costs, because those of the great China are always very slow tempos praxis.

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THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT HAS ALL THE HISTORICAL REASONS TO FEAR THE CATHOLICISM

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Rome 2009 – Ricordi fraierai …

We come to the heart of the problem: we who presume to trattar with the Chinese and to draw up agreements with them, we know neither the Chinese culture nor China, while the Chinese senior government leaders, selected since childhood, grew up and trained to become the golden eagle, no chickens, instead we know; with us familiar Christianity, more than you can imagine.

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First of all, in Catholicism, unlike various other Christian communities belonging to Protestant Movement, which we know is not a unitary phenomenon, the same goes for Islam, the Chinese Communist government sees a force that is dependent on a foreign power; What this unacceptable for a socio-cultural and political system like China. It is from this fear, Now let's try to analyze and understand the fundamental fear that China's government has Christianity, but especially of Catholicism, because if we want to make a serious and impartial analysis, we must admit that it is a fear completely understandable and above all historically established. In history, Christianity, It has created a unifying effect it has produced but later devastates, in many cases absorbent. most striking case of the story is the fall of the Roman Empire. In the dying empire, since the time of Constantine, Christianity has become an element of aggregation and unity, but did not prevent, as perhaps he thought the Emperor Constantine, the disintegration of the Empire, indeed in some respects favoring. So that, the political power that tried to strengthen itself using Christianity as an element of unity and unification, believing that they can in this respect and to this end absorb Christianity, It has instead been absorbed by Christianity, who survived the empire maintaining in-house traditions, uses and totally Christianized Roman costumes. If we want to go from antiquity to modernity, take for example the case of Poland of years early seventies of the twentieth century, in which the Christianity, at the level of aggregation, It constituted not only a front against the communist regime, but through Domino effect It originated its subsequent crumbling in all countries of the former Soviet bloc.

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When we are speaking of Catholicism in China, They are mentioned immediately, alone and almost always the Jesuits, who came there to the middle of the sixteenth century. Unfortunately, however, a gross historical error, because the first to bring the Gospel in China were around 1246 the Franciscan Friars, two and a half centuries before the birth of the Society of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. So that, when after the 1260 The Polo Brothers came as merchants and were finally received at court by the Great Khan, who was in Beijing today, they heard the sovereign asked for "news of the Roman Pontiff and the conditions of the Roman Church and the customs of the Latins". Figure factor was a few decades after that of the Franciscan Giovanni da Montercorvino, who managed to win the trust of the Great Khan, and to start a genuine evangelization. Thus the Pope Clement V replied to requests for Brother John, who asked to organize the ecclesiastical districts, China sending another group of Franciscan Friars, along with seven bishops. The group of bishops and religious arrived in China around 1310, After several years of traveling. The bishops had received orders from the Pope to proceed to the episcopal ordination of Brother John, who was the first bishop consecrated in China and the first Archbishop of Beijing [cf. AA.VV. The Franciscans in China. 800 years of history. Ed. Porziuncola, 2001, an extract is available WHO]. Well ... with all due respect the blessed memory of the Jesuit Matteo Ricci [Macerata 1552 - Beijing 1610], Jesuits came over two centuries and a half later. And wanting - always to be historically honest - we can say that they came not least also do damage, besides the doubtless well they work. And passing with a jump of centuries to modernity, we can not omit to mention that the main development of Catholicism in China between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, yes it is also due to the Jesuits, but it is noted that the Jesuit missionaries arrived in the wake of the French and all of them, for greater, They were of French nationality. France, in China, She had indeed many consulates for mainly economic reasons; and the communities and activities of the French Jesuits arose around these consulates. Being able to then arrange for its activities of considerable economic resources, In the 1903 They opened the Aurora University, in present-day Shanghai, which he ceased to be a Catholic university in 1953. Later it was opened in 1905 Fudan University and 1926 the prestigious Fu Jen University in Beijing, now based in Taiwan. The purpose of these institutions, especially Peking University, was to train the future ruling classes of China, all in periods in which the Jesuits ancòra did not show any symptoms of wanting "a poor Church for the poor".

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Previously the Jesuits, by Franciscan missionaries and Dominicans they had been accused of laxity, of the power and prestige Search, but above all to encourage idolatry and the so-called Worship of the Ancestors. The Jesuits tried to justify himself by replicating it for them, bids placed before the Tablets Ancestors, they had no religious ritual significance. Not at all persuaded by their justifications, In the 1645 the Pope Innocent X - to say the least unconscious with those who had to do and then what would have produced - these customs condemned as incompatible with Christianity. The Emperor is outraged by such imperious interference in Chinese affairs, as well as to life the "dispute over rites".

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In 1704 the Pope Clement XI he made matters worse by issuing a decree condemning the practice of Confucian rites and the Worship of the Ancestors, sending a legate watched over him so that application. The emperor, already perplexed by the struggles and rivalries between members of various religious orders present on its territory, He felt deeply offended by papal decree and the manner in which the supervision of its implementation had been established, all followed a decade later by the Bull Ex illa The the 1715 in which the missionaries imposed the renunciation oath to the dissemination and practice of certain superstitious rites. The Emperor replied through their ambassadors: "What would the Pope of Rome, if the Emperor of China were allowed to judge and to reform the ceremonies of the Apostolic See?». And in 1717 Empire forbade Christian proselytizing and preaching the Gospel. Simply said,: If on the one hand, among the members of the Society of Jesus missionaries in China, there was a caste of Jesuits who acted like mandarins and also public that covered political and administrative roles, on the other there were the Dominican missionaries, suffering on the other hand by not less severe myopia, indeed perhaps even worse, They thought they could unleash theological disputes and to launch accusations of heresy, just as if they were in some so-called Catholic country of her time. E, very soon, the serious damage was, producing effects not easily repaired until today …

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Having said that we must clarify, always for the historical and political duty, who was following the work of the joints below the French Jesuits, which began to form the idea that Catholicism was the long hand of a foreign power. It must also be remembered that the first to accuse the foreign priests, and in particular precisely the Jesuits, were Chinese priests, not least for the fact that several times, the missionaries of the Society of Jesus who ran numerous apostolic vicariates, They did filibuster in Rome for the appointment of local bishops, then for the canonical erection of dioceses, stating that it was not suitable subjects, while the truth was that they did not want to lose their jurisdiction over these vicariates, as it would have happened if it had been erected a diocese and appointed a bishop, and particularly if the bishop had been a priest of the place. Needless to say, similar situations, in the same years, or a few decades later, always by the Jesuits, They came to life in the territories of evangelization of the Latin American Continent, with as many missionaries Dominicans and Franciscans to an opposite pole of the earth, but at the same identical manner, they accused the Jesuits of mixing the old local rites with Christianity, the so-called religious syncretism.

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When exploded the Great Cultural Revolution which then he brought to power Mao Zedong, the reason to proceed, the best scenarios, the expulsion of all foreign missionaries from China, It was already so beautiful and packed for about two or three centuries: missionaries and foreign priests were the emissaries and servants of bourgeois power, capitalist and imperialist of the West. A quel point, missionaries who had the better, They fled to Hong Kong and the Philippines, others, including especially those who did not intend to abandon the faithful without priests and pastoral and sacramental care, instead they ended up in prisons, where in the space of a few meters they were crammed numerous people, so much so that to be able to get some sleep 'at night it had to take turns and unwind a bit' each. The suffering of these missionaries were terrible, Why, What we know, none of them agreed to be subjected to re-education programs to become faithful devotees of the Maoist Regime. Programs that were accepted instead of several Chinese priests, jailed on charges of having served foreign powers. In this regard it should be noted, however, that the acceptance of rehabilitation programs loyalty towards the regime, Chinese priests were induced not by the desire to save themselves and their lives, but that of their family. Indeed, the members of the secular and regular clergy who were missionaries in China during the upheaval of the Great Cultural Revolution, their families had them in the various countries of the West, while imprisoned Chinese priests, before being killed, they would have had to witness the murder of their parents, siblings, sisters and grandchildren, then would have been finally executed their.

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Under the government of Mao Zedong, It is approved in 1954 the new Constitution of the People's Republic of China where the Communist Party control is established on any kind of organized activity. Anticipating what this would entail, Pope Pius XII issued shortly after the encyclical Nations to China, condemning the creation of a Catholic Church split from Rome. Incidentally: the text of this encyclical, which is an authentic pastoral masterpiece and at the same time of diplomacy, should read, but just read it on your knees, is today velinari from the true Pontificia, both their owner-operators Secretary of State who instruct them in the publication of their pearls of wisdom [see the text of the encyclical, WHO] …

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… the answer was that the following year, one of the largest dioceses in the country, to Shanghai, governed by Archbishop Ignatius Kung Pin-Mei, It was quickly devastated. At the end of 1954 foreign missionaries still in the area, including two bishops, were just sixteen, between them fourteen in prison. In 1957 the last Catholic religious institutions were closed e created by the Communist Regime the church detached from Rome Patriotic totally subservient to the State. Paradigm of this persecution was the tragic fate inflicted on monks of the Carthusian monastery of Our Lady of Consolation, in the district of Beijing, located about 180 kilometers from the capital. The charterhouse was attacked several times by communist gangs in the 1940s and finally set on fire in 1957. The monks were captured, bound hands and feet with wire and forced to make forced marches under winter temperatures. Most of them lost their lives during these forced journeys, while the few survivors, after being subjected to the great farce of so-called Popular Maoists processes, put to death for refusing to recant and be subjected to re-education processes [cf. James T. Myers, Enemies no shotgun – The Catholic Church in the People's Republic of China, cit. pp. 31 e ss. readable text WHO].

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It should also be noted that globally, a Catholic Patriotic Church, He came to life only in China; in various other parts of the world, different regimes, They have attempted to carry out similar operations, but without ever succeeding. Because what were permitted in China? This has been possible because of the strong aversion that the Chinese have a socio-cultural level towards foreigners. This does not mean that China is not hospitable, quite the opposite! The Chinese have a very deep sense of hospitality and the welcome of the stranger, and it is also well disposed and happy, to collaborate with foreigners, provided that deeply respects the ancient and noble Chinese culture and dare not groped to insert elements within his society as completely unrelated. Obviously, this created huge problems at once as for evangelization. But some say, more or less triumphant tones, that "to be successful only were the Jesuits'. Always be honest we must reply that if successful the Jesuits, It means the religious syncretism, or Confucian philosophy mixed with the Christian philosophy and vice versa, then, then we are talking about the biggest failure in which it can fall any missionary work of evangelization, always with due respect of the blessed memory of Matteo Ricci.

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CHINESE COMMUNISM NOT ANALYZE WITH THE WESTERN CRITERIA

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Rome, 2009 – fraierai Ricordi …

Communist China can not be understood if we apply to Chinese Communism Western categories. A fundamental element must therefore be clarified: Communism China has something to himself, Communism Chinesized being a part of a culture that is born of greek-Roman-Christian roots but from Confucian roots. That Soviet and the Chinese have a common basis only red communist flags. An example exhaustive: the Catholic Church was severely persecuted in the Soviet Union, always based on the principle that it was owned by a foreign power. Less he was persecuted the Orthodox Church of Russia, albeit also subjected to persecution and restrictions. That said just remember - always to trace the difference which exists between these two different communism -, that shortly after the fall of the Soviet regime was found that, almost all Communist Party members, from those of higher rank, they were baptized, they had their children baptized and had celebrated the religious wedding in secret. And for the baptism of their children, senior Soviet leaders they had not even settled for a Pope, they had been baptized by some Metropolitan, if not directly, at the very highest levels, personally by His Beatitude the Patriarch of Moscow.

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Said this, I think there is more to with regard to the substantial difference that exists between a Communist regime born of the Great October Revolution in Russia Cristiana, and the Communist regime born of the Great Cultural Revolution in the ancient and noble Confucian China.

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In China Communism, although today completely transformed, It stands firm as a system of government; and paradoxical as it may seem, especially if he said by me, we should also auspicarci that this government can stand the system as long as possible, transforming itself in a very slow and gradual. Simple the reason for this hope: in China there are hundreds of different ethnic groups who harbor ancestral forms of hatred towards each other. The Communist regime is a deterrent and especially brake on the struggles of fierce blast and internal wars. A comparison level we could use the former Yugoslavia, in which were present different ethnicities animated by fierce hatred toward each other, but kept at bay by Josif Broz regime, said Marshal Tito. We then saw what happened in the brutal heart of Europe, at sunset of this regime; the tuna fishing in those years were consumed, They were so violent that the international press reported and described the facts, but he avoided to publish photographs depicting deaths in the most violent. Perhaps someone can imagine, or worse to hope, if anything in the name of Western principles of democracy - as if the fetish of decadent Western democracy were always applicable everywhere and to all cultures -, a Yugoslavia case multiplied to the power of a thousand?

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FROM A “GHOST AGREEMENT” TO THE PROBLEM OF THE MARTYRS AND PERSECUTED

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a painting sent to Rome from Beijing by a Chinese priest Father Ariel S. Levi Gualdo the day of his priestly ordination

Unlike velinari from the Truth pontifical and sapients raging from the printed paper to the telematic network, I have no answers to give, but only to ask questions. We start from the first: at a time when the Communist government of China has tightened restrictions against Catholics, up to prevent access to the churches to underage [cf. service WHO], and in a time when the Catholic Church, a planetary level, pour in a state of decay and profound crisis of credibility, as we have been able to reach an agreement? Also because until now, This "ghost Agreement", apart from comments and subsequent warranty speeches, But they do not know the contents, they just follow the vague news papers. How then to blame Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-Kiun who complains: "The press, long awaited, the Holy See is a creative masterpiece in so many words to say anything "? [cf. service, WHO]. We do not know in fact what do you think the Chinese government of this agreement, nor do we know what do you think the so-called Patriotic Church, let alone what do you think the underground Church has always been loyal to Rome at the price of blood.

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All we know at the moment It is that there was an agreement with the Government of China for which you do not know the contents. In practice, as if in 1929, to end Roman question, They had been signed the Lateran Treaty between the Holy See and the then Kingdom of Italy, no but no one knew the contents of those pacts, the manner of their application and then all the commitments and the possible consequences for the two parties that had signed them. But most of all: how many were the bishops of the Patriotic Church legitimized after this agreement? How many have been excluded from the legitimacy instead, for example, for serious reasons, from those bishops who have lovers and children? Or maybe, not to irritate the Communist Regime, They will also be entitled them, Myer before other? And those who were excluded from the case legitimation, it will be because, but especially for those who desire to? How it will work, after this "ghost Agreement" the mechanism of appointment of bishops? Does anyone really think that the Government of China, after this "ghost Agreement", will grant freedom to bishops for the exercise of their sacred ministry and equal freedom to the faithful? For case, after this "historic agreement" of "epochal", as we have defined certain velinari from the Pradva Pontifical, It was accidentally revoked by the Government denial of access in the churches to underage, complete with a prohibition and conduct any pastoral work with young people? But most of all: It never happened, in the two thousand year history of the Church, somebody to make arrangements with the persecutors and the persecuted were in progress? It is by chance someone that Pope Marcellinus [296-304], when the Emperor Diocletian unleashed the last great persecution of Christians, He ran to agree with him? Things did not go in this direction, according to the chronicles that narrate the martyrdom Marcellino, occurred on 25 October of the year 304, by beheading, executed on the orders of Emperor Diocletian. His successor, The Pope Marcellus I, He had to address the issue of so-called child, those who during the persecution disowned the faith in Christ and asked to be readmitted to the Church. Marcello's claims for their admission of repentance path, But not everyone accepted, to the point that it was he, in the end, to be condemned to exile, as we learn from the inscription written by Pope Damasus I in his tomb:

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"True Shepherd, because he appeared to the child the requirement that they had to expiate their denial with tears of penitence, It was considered by those miserable as a terrible enemy. Hence the fury, hatred, The discord, sedition and death. Because of the murder of one that even during peace denied Christ, He was deported Marcello, victim of the cruelty of a tyrant ".

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I am not a velinaro let alone a spin doctors, so I have no answers to give, because in lavish answers and explanations of what you do not know, may provide only velinari from the Truth pontifical; but responses based on the fact nothing. God forbid that someone, just to ask a tin medal on the chest in the decadent Rome, has played clumsily with the persecuted faithful and with the bishops who have spent a large part of their lives in prison or forced labor; because they are the martyrs to whom you can say four words of circumstance, while they, for a lifetime, they paid their loyalty to Rome and the Papacy.

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However if we see now on the basis of an agreement made ghost that we do not know the contents, We will try to get out of this mess by saying: what matters is only the unity. But without explaining what this unit very subjective and very little corresponding to the principles of unity contained in the Holy Gospel resulted in price to pay, It considered that the goods purchased is not clear, and it is unknown the price paid for it, but above all to be paid in the near future. God forbid that the price paid for a tin medal has been paid on the skin of the martyrs and the persecuted Catholics in China, to which inter alia, if you do not take seriously irritate the susceptibility of the Communist government and an atheist, you can not even turn to them as "martyrs" and "persecuted", precisely because it would be grossly offensive to the persecutors with whom you made an agreement and persecution are increasingly being.

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the modern era, the Holy See has signed more agreements of understanding and mutual recognition with countries of culture not only, not catholic, but their non-Christian culture. Just go and see how many countries with the Holy See has diplomatic relations. From year 2007 the Holy See has diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates. The Holy See has diplomatic relations with Turkey, Country where he was apostolic nuncio to the future John XXIII; with Iran, l’Iraq, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, the Libya, Algeria. The Holy See has diplomatic relations even with Turkmenistan, where they reside just five hundred Catholic. Well, we who are not subtle minds and high diplomacy specialists as it they are the best elements of the Secretary of State of His Holiness, we wonder: place that the Holy See has diplomatic relations even with countries which have imposed as the state law Sharija and where proselytizing by other religions is prohibited and prosecuted by law, how can you talk, but above all to establish agreements of any kind if they are, the first step, is not that of mutual recognition? Because all countries cited earlier, recognize the Holy See as head of the world's Catholic Community, enough to have established diplomatic relations with it.

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In short: I can talk, I did something which has often, with people not only non-Catholic, but with non-Christians, nor related in any way to any Christian cultural roots, as long as, these my interlocutors, first of all recognize the right to my life.

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That being said I wonder and then ask therefore: how can you talk and establish agreements with those upstream does not recognize the right of your existence, or that the limit, acknowledging your existence, It considered a danger to keep the more and how much better under control? Because it is with this kind of people that the Holy See, theme, It has established a "ghost Agreement". But I am sure that velinari from the true Pontificia They will not hesitate to even clarify this no small dilemma, let's give him time only to receive tissue the hallowed halls, and we will have some enlightening pearls of wisdom, it cost well go beyond the boundaries of reality, but especially over the blood shed by the martyrs and persecuted, place in China, the persecution of Catholics faithful to Rome, They are far from finished. And do not even let us ask ourselves the dilemma, entirely rhetorical, rather than, Rome, these persecuted martyrs has proved authentic and faithful mother ...

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In the final footnote I will explain why I cherish deep respect for the Communist government of China, while instead I have no respect for certain Madame populating and devastate the Holy See, those, to be understood, that the velinari from the true Pontificia do not see, as they are insensitive to the persecution of the Church and clergy who really suffer. Well, the Communists of China, not only have an ancient and noble dignity, but they also ennoble the persecuted and the martyrs. So for me it would be a real honor, being persecuted as a priest for the persecutors so highly honorable and noble, end up in their nation's prisons or worse ancòra; and between the two sides, even in ferocity, there would be a mutual respect between persecutor and persecuted. What respect I should rather feed, for those two or three monsignorini fennel protected by some Cardinal sodomite, that feeling before me discovered, They haunt you for life with a real ferocity menstrual hysteria? I hope that some velinaro from the true Pontificia refer all friends of the Secretariat of State - even though I always read carefully - and especially the August of the Tenant Martha House Sancthae, whose sensitivity and high sense of justice, everything seems to run out with the ice creams sent as a gift to the poor and migrants of Rome, including alleged refugees, however, fled on the spot just come to the reception center of the Italian Episcopal Conference in Rocca di Papa [cf. chronicle, WHO, WHO, WHO]. The whole, obviously, complete with ample photographic and journalistic, so that makes a noise charity and news, as well as political provocation against the current Government of the Italian Republic [cf. chronicle, WHO].

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Which holy envy try for the Chinese persecuted because faithful to the Church of Rome, while i, leaving home to go to do shopping, risk of finding myself with a twelve or thirteen brat that seeing a black cassock you go screaming behind two blasphemies against the Virgin Mary! In Beijing provinces do not scream behind you, if anything will stop at two in the morning while sneaking celebrated Mass for a group of faithful. And this is much more dignified, and for those who stop for both arrested. Even so, China is a great power, while Europe, who is now the mother of all is permissible and granted beyond good and evil, it is just a poor continent to total political defeat, social, cultural, moral and religious [cf. WHO, WHO, WHO etc ..].

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God bless Great China and its noble People !

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the Island of Patmos, 29 September 2018

Feast of Saints Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael

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- ecclesial news -

HOW TO REMEDY THE excommunication TO HERESY

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The belong or not to belong to the Church, the stay or leave the Church are not such simple things. Of course, there may be forms of separation and total, such as loss of faith with apostasy. But usually there are different degrees of separation and therefore of excommunication. We must also see that idea one gets of the Church and of belonging to the Church or ecclesial communion. One can be convinced to fully belong to the Church, and instead is yours only partially, as for example the Protestants or modernists.

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Author
Giovanni Cavalcoli, o.p.

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PDF print format article

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Alinari photo 1950 – the Dominican Friars, during the Fiorita Festival in Florence, lay a tribute to the place where he was hanged and burned Girolamo Savonarola

St. Paul the Apostle warns: "If any man preach a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be anathema!» [Gal 1,9].

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In every community the president has the power and duty to protect with appropriate remedial measures or coercive community members that it causes harm or endanger the good order and peace. This principle of justice also applies to the Church, as stated in the Code of Canon Law: "The Church has an innate and proper right to coerce criminal penalties the faithful who have committed crimes" [can. 1311].

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From the earliest days of the Church the apostles, taking up the tradition of the synagogue, expelling unruly, troublemakers and apostates, exercised judicial power against serious crimes, as evidenced by the story of Ananias and Sapphira [cf. At 5, 1-11]. So St. Paul expels from the incestuous community [cf. The Cor 5,8]. To condemn the erring, he uses a greek word: anàthema, corresponding to Hebrew dear, which means "cursed" and therefore "excommunicated". So he warns: "If any man love not the Lord, is anàthema!» [The Cor 16,22]. E: "If anyone preaches any other gospel, is anàthema» [Gal 1.8]. Jesus himself repeatedly launches curses. And indeed, since the first centuries the Councils declare anàthema, ie excommunicated those who support the errors condemned.

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St. Thomas Aquinas explains l'Origin of the concept of anàthema and then of excommunication. L'says Aquinas: « anàthema It is a Greek word composed of he went, which means 'above' and thesis, which means 'position', so to call 'anatema'' What-you-place-in-high ', because when it was captured prey like something you did not want to use by men, it was suspended in the temple, so far it has become a habit that those things which are separated from common men, They were "anathema" calls, as we see in the Book of Genesis: "Whether this city accursed [1] and is devoted to the Lord all that is in it " [GS 6,17]» [2].

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From here, in Ecumenical Councils, the much used formula let him be, that will appear for the last time in the First Vatican Council, while it is absent in the Second Vatican Council, This clearly does not mean that the Council did not condemn the errors, claiming which it incurs excommunication. Today's excommunication is what the Church once called anatema, that curse: a verdict of an error or an errant, pronounced authority with the imposition of a penalty and the expulsion or removal of the dissident or criminal from the community.

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"Curse" in this biblical context means "to say the least-bad", but not in the sense of slander, but in the sense of declaring in court that someone has spoken ill or hurt and therefore it deserves to be punished, It deserves a bad penalty. In this regard the Bible says that God curses the wicked and Christ at the Last Judgment when away from the reprobate [cf. Mt 25,41]. The curse can strike the evil deed, but it can also affect the person who has done this deed. It is true that both the Gospel [cf. LC 6,28], As St. Paul advised not to curse [cf. RM 12,14]. But these prohibitions affect those who curse the innocent, as it is forbidden to kill the innocent, but not criminal. Otherwise, the Church would not anathematized for centuries and millennia heretics and schismatics. And if today we hear or read the Popes curse the heretics, we can not ignore that only recently the Church has abandoned this language, that the Commission used safely for a long time, but that today, the current climate of ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue, indeed there embarrass. Today it seems to us that the curse has aroused hatred. But it is not necessarily so. Understood in the legal sense, it is an act of justice. And if the word has been abandoned by the Magisterium of the Church, It remains the equivalent term of "excommunication". Now, communion, the unit, the pace, mutual love and harmony in the Church born from the common acceptance by all the faithful of the same truths of faith and the same discipline taught by the Magisterium of the Church under the guidance of the Supreme Pontiff. So we understand that the heretic deserves to be excommunicated. The Church is a community united, coordinated and concordant in mutual by the Holy Spirit, who argues the Pope in the task to found the fellowship with God and the truth of God's word all acceptation. However, with God's permission, within the Church on earth, He works the Devil, with his retinue of "children of the devil" [The Gv 3, 10]. This means that the Church arise and spread heresies, that the ecclesiastical authority is obliged to intervene to warn the faithful and stop the error diffusion. So it happened, for instance, with the phenomenon of modernism at the time of St. Pius X and some theologians, as for example Ernesto Buonaiuti, Alfred Loisy, George Tyrrell, Romolo Murri and other.

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Fact, it happens occasionally that the devil persuades and push cunningly and wickedly some brothers imprudent, ambitious and unwary, which can also be shepherds, to distort the concept of the Church and to work to divide, desecrate and destroy, acting so insidious and covered, with vain and specious pretexts of reform or conservation, to avoid being discovered and seduced more easily.

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These false Catholics, seduced by Satan, openly reveal their perverse and subversive plans, for example masonic or atheists, only to those tawny or unfortunate that, after they were told they thoroughly, perhaps with petty man or glittering promises, They know they have become allies or punch in the work undertaken satanic, while they are keeping the secret or know well before the true believers masquerade. In this sense, the Canon Law warns against 'associations which plot against the Church " [can. 1374].

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After having spun their plots, heretics and schismatics suddenly emerge from the darkness and strike by surprise, as the Psalm says: "Whet their tongue like a sword, hurled bitter words like arrows to hit the innocent in secret; hit him by surprise and have no fear. They persist in doing evil; agree to laying snares " [Shall 64 3-6]. "The poor succumbs to the pride of the wicked, and falls into the pitfalls tramate" [Shall 9, 23]. This can be for power and pressure groups hidden within the Church and of the same class of bishops or cardinals, which apparently they seem respectful of papal authority. But the expert eye, as to what the good doctor, Take a few signs or symptoms for a glimpse of the rot that lies beneath the beautiful appearance, how those whited sepulchres of which the Lord speaks. It is the "enemy" [Mt 13, 25-36], of which the Gospel speaks, that hidden in the wheat field has sown the tares. To about, Jesus recommends to let it grow with wheat and weeds, lest, removing this, be taken even that. You must wait, He says, the Lord's Day, when He unveiling the secrets of hearts, He shall judge. Now, it is clear that here Jesus refers to God's judgment at the end of the world, final judgment and unappealable, determining the ultimate destiny of all of us. But that does not stop at all to Jesus to entrust a judicial power to the pastors of the Church, in the first place to Peter, when orders him to tend his sheep. It 'also clear that this power, limited and fallible, It refers only to the outer hole and does not purport to scrutinize the intimate of conscience, only God knows. However, this power, functional to the maintenance of good order of peace in the Church, is assigned by Christ the right and duty to fix all the conditions and the degrees of membership in the Church, why he is not prohibited, in appropriate circumstances and for valid reasons, excluded from ecclesial communion - that's excommunication - those jumping off it unworthy or to their false ideas or for their misconduct.

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THE excommunication EXCLUDED FROM CHURCH COMMUNION

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Excommunication is a decree authority, Pope or Bishop, with which the prelate, in order to correct - medicines penis O censure, title IV, Chapter I - or protect the community - expiatory penalties, Chapter II -, impose penalties in various ways that isolate him excommunicated from the community and limit the possibility of having relations with it or influence it, because such activity is considered to be dangerous or otherwise objectionable. Such penalties may be, mo 'example: or transfer to another residence, the exile, or discharge from an office or prohibition to leave the place of residence or prohibition of journalism or the administration or reception of the sacraments, until the reduction to the lay state for clerics or expulsion from the Institute for religious.

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The schism and heresy in itself are mortal sins. They are punished according to canon law. It is possible that these criminals escape justice of the Church, but they do not escape the judgment of God. Every believer should be able to recognize a schismatic and heretical, without waiting for the judgment of the Church, because he has to defend against these evil temptations. For this Scripture gives several warnings.

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In condemnation for heresy the Church is infallible and no exceptions. Instead excommunicate in the Church can make mistakes or may lift the excommunication. This is because the question of heresy there is a game the truth of faith, that does not change in this field, and the Supreme Pontiff has received express promise by Christ not to err. Instead excommunication can be linked to the conduct of the excommunicated, which can correct itself, for which it can be removed. It remains, however, that the effect of the excommunication, which can also be unjust, illegal or invalid, It does not touch at all the state of one of the excommunicated before God, state that may be of mortal sin - and in itself the schism and heresy are mortal sin -, but it could also be a state of grace, because it is excommunicated unfairly blamed. Because of this, ecclesiastical power, as he said proudly Girolamo Savonarola to his executioner going to the gallows, It may exclude from the earthly Church, but not from the heavenly.

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It must be said that membership in the Church and consequently the ecclesial communion and the exclusion from it - namely the excommunication - is not a simple act of will, with which it can accept or refuse in toto a proposal or an injunction that is done, as it would be to stay in one room, or to get out of it.

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The belong or not to belong to the Church, the stay or leave the Church are not such simple things. Of course, there may be forms of separation and total, such as loss of faith with apostasy. But usually there are different degrees of separation and therefore of excommunication. We must also see that idea one gets of the Church and of belonging to the Church or ecclesial communion. One can be convinced to fully belong to the Church, and instead is yours only partially, as for example the Protestants or modernists. Because of this, usually there are degrees of membership and degrees of exclusion or separation. Because of this, excommunications are not all of the same weight or level. The branch can be periclitante at various levels. It can be separated from certain values, but not by others. Conversely, ecclesial communion is the belonging summit that starts from a minimum degree to climb to the maximum. Here we are aided by the Gospel image of the vine and the branches. A branch can be partially detached from the vine, but still he receives its sap. Thus the separated brethren enjoy a certain communion with the Catholic Church, even though this communion is not full.

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Every believer must know how to distinguish the wheat from the chaff, must be able to judge for themselves if another brother, was theologian, bishop or cardinal, It is or is not in communion with the Church, and consequently attend, if it is in communion; stay away, if it is not in communion. Here then are the directives of the New Testament: "Stay away from every brother who is in idleness" [Ii Ts 3,6]. "If anyone does not obey what we say by letter, take note of him and discontinue relations » [v. 14]. "Stay away heretic [airetikòn]» [Tt 3,10]. "If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house nor greet, for he who greets him shares his evil deeds " [II Jn 10-11]. These are obviously cases in which dialogue is impossible or inconvenient or dangerous or useless for the following reasons: or because the heretic does not accept the correction or because he tries to seduce us or because they treat us with contempt.

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In order to preserve and promote the theoretical and moral values on which rests the fabric of the church a, santa, catholic and apostolic, therefore, care must be the sum of all the faithful, but especially pastors and theologians under the supervision and direction of the Pope, take care that the sound doctrine of the Gospel is rightly interpreted by all, accepted, shared, widespread and defense against heresies, which they are precisely the rejection or the deformation of the truth of faith. The prelate, so, in the Church, and first of the Supreme Pontiff, supreme custodian of the unity of the Church and advocate of ecclesial communion, They have the right to expel from the Church, ie scomunicare, those faithful, which, or their attitude schismatic or heretical or scandalous for their ideas, falsify the doctrine, disobey the Supreme Pontiff or create divisions in the Church.

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There are believers who in fact or for their ideas or their conduct, outside the Church and the Church, yet they want to remain there to change it with their errors. It happens in these cases that the naive or complicit prelate excommunicating them, but let them do or even support them, or, Invite them to preach to the faithful in churches. Conversely there are bishops, priests and faithful into full communion with the Church, which may expose evils and scandals, which, however, the fact of opposing pastors or theologians heretics or schismatics, They are treated by them as if they were excommunicated. There is therefore a difference between the official excommunication and be made out of the ecclesiastical apparatus.

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Whatever Christian can be a heretic, schismatic and excommunicated, besides the Pope, who by divine assistance it is the supreme guardian of the truth of the Gospel and ecclesial communion. In fact, it is excommunicated involves breaking with a higher ecclesiastical or with the Pope. But the Pope evidently has no top soil to which he may rebel, except Jesus Christ. And also it should be noted that a Pope can be a bad pastor of the Church, but you can not teach heresy. Because of this, Code has among "crimes against religion and the unity of the Church" [part II, title I], «L'apostasia, heresy and schism " [can. 1364], and the publication and dissemination of "blasphemy, offense to good morals, of insults, excitement hatred or contempt against religion or the Church [can. 1369] and teachings or doctrines condemned by the Roman Pontiff or an ecumenical council " [can. 1371], which is equivalent to the refusal or misrepresentation or falsification of the teachings of the Pope and councils. This is why the offense of heresy deserves excommunication [cann. 1364, 1331].

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The excommunication can be automatic O sententiae penalties. The first is triggered automatically upon the completion by the crime, for example strike the person of the Pope or embrace heresy to what is already provided for excommunication. automatic it means that the judgment has already ruled. sentence rather it means that we need a process, after which the court renders its judgment, for example to determine whether a person is or is not heretical.

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EXAMPLES OF SIGNIFICANT excommunication

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A recent example, It is one of the four bishops Lefebvre, which, At first excommunicated, They were then subsequently released by Benedict XVI. But those who support the Mass the old order - which also it is in itself lawful - but refuses, as did Lefebvre, the Mass new world order charges of pro-Lutheranism, it is excommunicated. The Mass new world order It is in fact the greatest moment of ecclesial communion. Rejecting the Mass means so separate from ecclesial communion, and for this we are struck by excommunication.

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It was the famous mutual lifting of the excommunication of the Blessed Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras. There is, however, question what sense he had the excommunication of the Pope by the Patriarch Michael Cerularius in 1054. The Pope can excommunicate, but it can not be excommunicated, because it has no land no top from which it can be separated. The Pope is in fact the principle of ecclesiastical communion, while the faithful is what comes from this principle. Now the principiato may separate from the principle, but the principle can not separate himself from himself. So the Patriarch of Constantinople, excommunicating the Pope, He has done nothing but separate from the Church. Paul VI made a magnanimous gesture by revoking the excommunication to Athenagoras, but the Patriarch, beyond his friendship with Paul VI, He made a gesture objectively and legally null and void, as nothing had been his excommunication. It should also be noted that the Church can remove the excommunication of heretics who are heretics, as are our Orthodox brothers, because with them it was not yet resolved their dispute over And the son. It is clear then that this reintegration involves a very imperfect communion, given the permanence of doctrinal deficiencies.

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Throughout history there have been excommunications who not only they have not had the desired effect of inducing or stimulating the excommunicated to repentance, but which have had the effect of provoking even more hatred against the Pope and the Church, as happened to Luther with excommunication by Pope Leo X and Pius V against Queen Elizabeth of England. If the excommunicated already he has a big following, he is proud of what he does and strong, that the excommunication it rears up and tightens more. They are the saints, for example, a St. Pio of Pietrelcina, who obey even unjust censure. But heretics, powerful and troublemakers who are excommunicated, easily do worse. Because of this, especially now that the modernists are very powerful, Popes renounce excommunicate.

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In respect of the excommunication to those who profess the doctrine of communism Marxist atheist, imposed by Pius XII, it has never been abolished, although the Church since then she has done more nod. However, such excommunication keeps in fact its value, since it is obviously impossible that an atheist sharers in ecclesial communion.

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How Much to membership freemasonry, a decree of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith 1984 It warns that those who are affiliated with Freemasonry is in mortal sin and may not receive Communion. Also in this case the reason for the excommunication is evident: Freemasonry does not recognize the dogma of the Communion of Saints.

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As for the excommunication associated with the mafia, it is motivated by the fact that it is conspiracy to theft and extortion to murder with the application and the private vengeance, It is evident that a member of this association may not qualify for the ecclesial communion. The same is true for the modernists, which, They have a concept of the Church incompatible with the right of the Catholic Church.

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THE REASONS AND PURPOSES OF excommunication

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It deserves to be excommunicated those who shed the heresies, turbo, injures, offends or disorganize the community, creates scandal and divisions among the faithful, disobey authority. Unfortunately, however, today macroscopically - except not to see it blocked by fear or human respect or because the chariot of the modernists or because a party or closed because in their own narrow interests or because suffering allocchismo doctrinal [3] - these characters are multiplying, They are honored and go up to high places, while those who are truly in communion with the Church are beaten, humiliated or marginalized. So scomunicabili are not excommunicated, and it happens that those who are in communion is excommunicated or at least is treated as if it were one excommunicated. A beautiful mess and Injustice, where someone who enjoys it is the devil, obscurantism master that leads to destruction.

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On the question of excommunication species, to ask three basic questions: a first question is to distinguish the right from unjust excommunication or lawful or unlawful; a second is to distinguish the valid excommunication from that invalidates or nothing; and third is to distinguish him excommunicated stated or official from the actual or de facto.

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Excommunication is right, when the prelate spoke out of a concern to safeguard the truth of the faith, ecclesial communion and call of the rebel obedience. About the unjust excommunication, instead, St. Thomas Aquinas says that the excommunication can be unjust or by the scomunicante or by the excommunicated. In the first case it has effect, that is, the subject is officially excommunicated by public decree, even though you do not deserve this measure and, if anything, he would have deserved a decree of praise. So the excommunication can be unjust, as motivated not by respect for higher authority, as would be the Magisterium of the Church, or the fear of God or love for the truth or for the Church, but ignorance, hatred or envy for the excommunicated; or it can be unfair because no foundation or legal or doctrinal reason, and indeed it based on false accusations and reasons or pretexts heretical [4]. The first is valid but illicit; the second is null and void.

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The prelate should be very careful to understand and evaluate the reasons that guide the thinking and actions of the supposed dissident or heretic, especially if it has a large following, not to confuse a prophet with a rebel, as happened with Savonarola or vice versa as not to confuse a rebel with a reformer, as happened to some German bishops against Luther, which, instead of condemning the so-called "Reformer", They went over to Luther. The prelate is not hasty in judging, do not let yourself influenced by the passionate and partisan climate that usually creates around these events, be cautious assess allegations from the environment to the supposed guilty and prefers to listen and consult directly. If it is the case, establishing a process, to avoid the risk of condemning an innocent or acquit a guilty.

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It can also happen that an unjust excommunication It is imposed by a heretic priest, which can not be officially excommunicated, so it is not substantially and actually in communion with the Church, while the subject officially excommunicated, as Orthodox, in fact it remains in communion with the Church.

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It is clear that a prelate who excommunicate based on a false concept of the Church or of obedience or without him first to be subjected to the major superior or to the Roman Pontiff or the Word of God, excommunication invalidly, for which per se, this excommunication, It is null and should not have effect. However, de facto, the action of an authoritarian prelate, influences, bossy, supported by his peers or by the worldly powers to an honest person but helpless can still produce a damaging social effect, exercising violence on excommunicated and his disciples, defames him in the community and harms the community itself so deceived by the false excommunication.

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St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that in these cases the excommunicated may have recourse to the major superiors. Of course, if it is the Pope who excommunicated unjustly, You must have patience, avoiding taking vengeful or resentful attitudes, that certainly would put him excommunicated, if he was right, the wrong. If then, as was the case with Luther, the rebel is rightly excommunicated, it is clear that any objection by the excommunicated, further aggravate his guilt.

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The fact that an excommunication has no vices form - for example, it is issued by legitimate authority or explicit about - does not necessarily mean that it is right, appropriate, beneficial, lawful. It may be originated by arrogance or gross negligence in the scomunicante, as was the excommunication of Savonarola by Alexander VI. And if the excommunication is also infected by formal defects, for example, be the result of an abuse of authority or, as observed by St. Thomas Aquinas, be "not due or because the sentence is contrary to law" [5], besides being unjust in the content and grounds, it is absolutely nothing.

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Such cases are common today the fact that modernism has spread among the bishops, so not only is it rare that a bishop excommunicating a heretic, it even happens that Orthodox believers are excommunicated by heretical bishops. It is clear that an excommunication motivated by a cause heretical, It is contrary to the rules of faith and law, It is nothing, for which the excommunicated in principle may not be taken into account. However, But, it is possible that in this case the prelate inflicts even more, why the excommunicated should resign. Under this St. Thomas Aquinas point of view it observes that an excommunication can be unjust and yet Sorting the punitive effect [6], to which the excommunicated, in the hypothesis, It has no means of escape or get rid, as he had the good fortune to be able to do St. John of the Cross, fleeing from the monastery prison.

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Excommunication is twofold: first, to be an exemplary punishment and healthy; exemplary, to discourage others to imitate him excommunicated; to greet, ie such as to induce him to excommunicated resipiscence, to repentance and penance, that it may correct itself and to be reintegrated into the ecclesial communion. Because of this, must be neither excessive, nor too mild, but with the size of the damage caused to himself and to the Church from the schismatic or heretic, and the quality and quantity of its moral strength and reputation in the Church, as well as of the Ascendant, of fame and following that he has in it. Not too must isolate it from the community, so it does not worsen his hostility to it and does not have the temptation to leave it entirely, but it is maintained in a certain degree of esteem and consideration. It happens indeed that the dissident is subject to unfair and exaggerated hostility by certain overzealous believers or enemies, malignant or short intellect, that the prelate has to defend and protect the dissident also they.

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Excommunication does not even have to leave the excommunicated too much freedom of action and movement, nor should leave too much part of the community, because that would enable him to continue to spread his heresies and to foment rebellion against the Church. The excommunications too lenient, and purely formal, that does not bother him that much excommunicated, lose their deterrent effect and educational, He is derided by him and his followers and are slow to no effect, if not to create a martyr in the eyes of the followers. This will probably be the excommunication of mobsters and such, Unfortunately, It was the excommunication of the Communists.

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According to the excommunication order It is to shed light in the sense of helping to discern who belongs to the Church and who's out, It is thus to free the Church from a dangerous agent discouraging the faithful from wanting to follow. It may happen that the Church in these interventions is too severe, as it seems to have happened in the cases of Peter Waldo in the twelfth century, Albigensian in the thirteenth century, of Jan Hus in the fifteenth century and Luther. They did not lack any good ideas to propose a reform of the Church, though certainly their heresies were condemned. However, they counted among their ranks also people in good faith, whereby, if he had had more confidence in the dialogue, perhaps it would be avoided painful division that continues after centuries.

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RECONSTRUCTION OF COMMUNION

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Paradigmatic is the parable of the prodigal son [LC 15, 11-32]. The excommunicated is not so much one that is driven, but it is one that goes away. The decree of excommunication is very often nothing more than the taking of sorrowful act and the public sad news that his brother has left us, and we became the enemy. In the excommunication there is so much outrage, but rather the pain and the hope that the lost child is found. It's him that if he wanted to go. And if a brother is hunted, because it is already practically was not in communion and communion disturbed. So what is expected excommunication? The return of his brother, his repentance, his repentance. Why are so rare phenomena of conversion? Perhaps the Church has so far not done enough to recover these brothers, these lost sheep. It is used too severely and too little mercy. So at least he thought St. John XXIII in will and in proclaiming the Second Vatican Council. It wanted to retain the prodigal son with the force, without groped to convince him of what would face leaving the parental home. But, we must also recognize that in many cases frankly honesty and humility of which the prodigal son gives evidence in Luke's parable, noticing the bad business that made leaving the parental home, They have always been rare virtue. Almost always heretics seem to do well in eating the husks the swine, and they have, indorandole of specious tinsel, as if they were a sign of freedom and wisdom, and even invite others to follow and others follow.

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What the Church can do in these cases? With the Second Vatican Council it decided to take a new path, that minimizes the use of severity, and then the excommunication and feared let him be. Some theologians have interpreted the choice to reconcile in the sense that the Council would assume that all men, at least subconsciously, They seek God and have grace; that the proclamation of the Gospel should not be proposed in categorical terms and threatening a aut-aut: as the only way of salvation, refusing which opens the hell chasm: or do you believe or you do not save; but simply as a proclamation of mercy, which already all people of good will are being, perhaps unconsciously, whatever the religion to which they belong. In this visual optimistic, because everyone is saved, everyone is free to follow their religion. The doctrinal differences would not matter. The determining factor would be that all of them are the subject of the divine will of salvation. All so, perhaps unconsciously, belong to the Church, which embraces all religions, no one excluded.

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For the modernists we can not say, so, the Lutheran, Jew or Muslim: you are wrong. In fact, he can always tell us: wrong they are to you, but not in my religion. It can therefore understand how in this relativistic loses visual sense or the excommunication interest. It is clear that a church that does not believe in possession of absolute truth, how to conceive the modernists, It does not distinguish more clearly and definitely the dogma heresy, so the idea of ​​excommunication not for her has no meaning. It is therefore opposed to the Church of the past, said by them pre-conciliar, it now appears taxation and illiberal, disrespectful of pluralism, and freedom of conscience.

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others say: the severity and threat of Hell is not served. But then it will not be that in the end God's mercy reaches all accounts, and all are saved? We respect diversity, we focus on dialogue and on what unites us: the common interests of peace and justice. All right. However, There are some truths that touch God or salvation, They do not like the separated brethren. So we do? Some, my idea is that it is good tacerle and only admit those truths in which we all agree. The other let them optional for individual confessions. But this is not the command of Christ. And in fact, the Council proposes the Gospel to all mankind.

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The Council, But, unlike previous, aware with the irreversible human tendency to sin, proper to fallen nature, therefore mainly dedicated to the fight against the world and the condemnation of errors and vices, with its punishments sentenced to disobedient, It seems animated by the confidence that we can build on this earth the general harmony of mankind around Christ [cf. Pacem in Terris], the confidence to make the cooperation of the Church with the world, We can build a humanity right, united and peaceful, in which the Church and the world get along. The world is seen as essentially available for the Gospel, and the Church seems confident of being able to conquer the world, because the whole world waiting for Christ. So the Council seems to minimize the tendency of men to wickedness and sin - hence the need for coercion and discipline -, following on original sin and believe that education, the testimony and preaching of the Gospel are sufficient to create a humanity finally right down here, happy and harmonious.

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but yet, the Apocalypse, provides that the clash of the Church with the world - the Woman and the Dragon - will last until the Parousia, so the end of the story will not be the symbiosis of the Church with the world and the general unification of humanity in harmony and peace, but rather the victory of Christ over the powers of evil and the final separation of the wheat from the chaff, with the salvation of the elect and the damnation of the reprobate.

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Another thing to note: until Vatican II the Church has always held to clarify its identity and oppose the world. Hence the ease with which it contended with the world, He is condemning the errors of the world, and excommunicated those who yielded to the seductions of the world, especially in the modern world. It had great care for her children, There he was kept protected from the snares of the world and from the mistakes of other religions, including non-Catholic Christians, while it was severe towards the world, in whom he saw almost only dangers and corruption. If it contacted the world, The purpose was to convert to the Gospel, according to the command of Christ.

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The Vatican II addressed the Church greater openness to the world and values ​​of other religions. This led to an enrichment and a costume improved, of theology and Catholic culture, but at the same time it decreased the care to preserve the Church from penetration into it of erroneous or dangerous doctrines. So it happened that, if on the one hand, the Church has taken a more conciliatory attitude toward the world, other conflicts have arisen and corruption inside because of the penetration of errors and bad customs of the world, penetration is not sufficiently prevented by the shepherds, which they have greatly diminished the use of excommunication.

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What now has to be is a greater care in pastors, starting with the Pope, the good education of the faithful and of the pastors themselves, in pacifying the minds bitterly divided by a wretched and embittered opposition between Lefebvre and modernists, you drag from fifty, in defending the Church against the penetration of false ideas or heterodox and then in the moderate recovery of a wise and prudent use of the institute's excommunication, not at all giving up on what the Council has produced in the relationship of the Church with the modern world. It is clear that we need to continue the work of evangelization; but do not be under the illusion that in the distant future or close mankind will gather around the church. Nor it is there to hope for a worldwide peaceful coexistence between religions, as some believe, or hope.

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On Christianity, at the behest of Christ, it world domination. Religions must be submitted to the Catholic Christian religion. Christianity does not fit, by its nature, to be a religion on a par with other, as if it were a political party in a world parliament. We do not confuse civil relations among religions with the United Nations. Are not these things planned apocalyptic eschatology. Christianity will continue to expand, but always fighting against the forces of Satan. Always, in the Church, They will mix the wheat and the tares, always it must be purified from sin and expel from its midst the unworthy, always it will be opposed by enemies and always will be persecuted. Always advance and will be renewed in history, and convert the hearts to Christ, always welcome new children, and generate new saints, until, in a known now only to God, the Church will appear and defeat the great apostasy, expected from Sao Paulo, but it will precede the triumphant return of Christ in glory.

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Varazze 24 September 2018

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NOTE

[1] "Utterly destroyed" (eb. cherem), Inviting. of the CEI.

[2] Commentary on the Letters of St. Paul, c.9, 3, lect.I, n.739, Marietti editions,Turin-Roma 1953, p.134.

[3] spiritual defect attributable to opportunism, the flattery and cowardice, now spread among bishops, for which they, for crass ignorance or human respect or attachment to the bishop's throne, They do not even notice to be led by the nose by heretics. Not only they flee before the wolf came into the fold, but they do not even notice its presence by entrusting important ecclesiastical offices to people who should be excommunicated.

[4] QUESTION, Suppl., q. 21, a. 4.

[5] Ibid.

[6] QUESTION, Suppl., q. 21, a. 4.

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- ecclesial news -

STORAGE AND PROGRESS

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To resolve the current intra-ecclesial conflict between modernists and Lefebvre have to give each other these two essential factors of the ecclesial dynamism: preservation and progress.

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Author
Giovanni Cavalcoli, o.p.

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PDF print format article

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Rereading some texts of the morning meditations the Holy Father in the chapel of Domus Sanctae Martha, the 31 October 2017 - as reported the columnist de The Osservatore Romano the 1 next November -, Pope asks, against the other: The Christians' really believe in the Holy Spirit "that is in them? And have the courage to "sow the seeds", to get involved, or take refuge in a "pastoral conservation ', that does not leave that "the Kingdom of God will grow"? And he answers: "So many times we see that you prefer a pastoral preservation" rather than "let the United grow".

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We would like some comments. It must be distinguished from conservation conservatism. Keep diligently and, jealously and the sacred deposit of divine Revelation, no compromises, without adding and without taking [cf Gal 3,15; AP 22,19] and be faithful to the cost of living is the absolute duty of every Catholic, in the first place the bishops and the Pope.

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conservatism, instead, which probably alludes to the Pope, It is a foolish and useless conservation. It is the store that is no longer needed, It is the cling or nearsightedness or laziness or fear or interest in ideas, costumes, mores, habits, traditions outdated or abandoned by the Church, is the exchange just progress for modernism, get stuck on a historic day phase of the Church's journey towards the Kingdom, is close the eye of the fields are already white for harvest " [GV 4,35]; is close ear to the voice of the Spirit, who "renews the face of the earth", that "renew our minds" [RM 12,2] and day by day renews our inner man [cf. II Cor 4,16]. The Holy Spirit urges the Church to ensure progress, but in the sense indicated by these words of the Lord, He serves to remind us [GV 14,26]and then encourage us to make money.

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Granted - I want to believe - the Pope to speak of conservatism and not of legitimate conservation, does not seem to correspond to truth, It seems like Pope Francis wants to insinuate, that there is a wide spread of conservatism, that nevertheless exists in Lefebvrians; but what now afflicts more and disturbs the Church have a much wider spread of modernism or a false progress and or a false interpretation of the renewal promoted by the Council. And these evils the Pope never speaks, all it is taken from exaggerated and biased polemic against traditionalism, which he is likely to make a bundle of all herbs, Also blaming that healthy conservatism that, along with a healthy conservation, are essential factors of the structure and progress of the Church.

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If Francis wants to be a reformer of the Holy See So begin with the ward or false stop those employees who are infected with Modernism and rahnerismo, and take very loyal employees and loyal to the papal Magisterium and enemies not only of lefebvrismo, but also of modernism, both open while the good sides of one and the other.

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However, there is a certain stubborn, short-sighted and presumptuous conservatism that, under the pretext of fidelity to Sacred Tradition, accused the Popes after the Council to disown, and he would like to return to the doctrinal climate and pre-conciliar pastoral, as if Vatican II did not take place, forgetting that, When a council makes a doctrinal progress, as is almost always the case, the church, more enlightened by the Gospel and overcome certain mistakes, On the infallibility of his doctrine, never comes back, while it may happen that a new Council corrects a defective pastoral practice initiated by a preceding Council, or restore or recover certain pastoral practices abandoned by that Council, because of this plan, for the changing historical contingencies or the fallibility of the churchmen themselves, it may mutate or wrong and therefore can be corrected, after experiencing the adverse effects caused by the error.

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Thus the Council, going to meet a need of the time in which it was celebrated, He insists on the pastoral renewal and gives about many directives, that touch all aspects of church life. But after fifty years of application of these directives, many observers and impartial pastors and lovers of the Church we have conducted for years now to make clear the fact that the pastoral reconcile, for some aspects, It needs a course correction, that perhaps only a new council or a great reformer Pope will implement.

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This in no way means that we should go back in toto to the pre-council pastoral, it means keeping the pastoral achievements of the post-council - for example a healthy ecumenism and interreligious dialogue -, purifying them from certain buonistici excesses and too optimistic towards the modern world, so that today, for lack of vigilance of the bishops, we see an impressive return of modernism, much worse and more insidious than that of St. Pius X times, even because, while this had taken root only in the lower clergy and among theologians and exegetes, that infects the same body Bishops especially in Smart thin to form the rahnerismo.

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All good Catholics, faithful and shepherds, You have now realized this enormous scam, except, I wonder why, the same modernist, which either fall from the clouds, or pretend they do not know or are deaf to appeals and warnings or contemptuously ignore the charges against them or reject them or disdained, poor slandered victims, from superfine hypocrites, persecute the courageous few who discover their plots.

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The great pastoral problem today, It is no longer what it was imposed fifty years ago, as he commanded the Council, to abandon a pastoral too conservative, anachronistic, static, repetitive, too defensive, suspicious, fearful, suspicious and aggressive towards the modern world, indeed poorly known and sometimes misunderstood, for a renewed approach to benign modernity, open, fair, healthily critical, certainly prudent as the serpent, but also simple as the dove, knowing that the world reserves pitfalls, but also that the world created by God offers several values ​​to be recognized, to save, and to lead to Christ.

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On the path of renewal, of becoming, of change, the rejuvenation, development and progress has insisted, and it has gone very far in the past fifty years, and certainly true progress never end; but it has not always advanced in the right way, and more than advance, in many cases, You are deflected or one has strayed from the right path and fidelity to the real teachings of the Council; There is not always a moved with the necessary resourcefulness, moderation, caution and wisdom, in obedience to the guide of the Pontiffs or the doctrine of Catechism of the Catholic Church, indeed often falling into modernism Network, which it is a misleading approach to modernity, in which it is necessary to distinguish the wheat from the chaff, and instead the modernists have confused with one another.

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What then today we must above all do to promote healthy, effective and balanced ministry, It suits this need of the hour, different and in some respects opposed to the historical situation, he had to face and solve the council, It is not so reproach conservatism, although then it may still exist, but it is that the Pope decides, finally, with boldness and courage, heedless of any quacking of modernists, to denounce the rampant modernism, far more dangerous and harmful than lefebvrismo or conservatism, considering the extensive damage that modernism has done in recent 50 year old. and he is making, under the pretext of conciliar renewal, in the Church and in society. And here I note that since 1966 Maritain denounced the danger of modernism. It is not that Maritain was precisely a conservative. We should not insist unilaterally on developing leaving quietly preserving the deposit of faith. It is the opposite that needs to be done, after fifty years of progressive rhetoric, who ended up degenerating into partisan polemics against modernism and preservation.

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The real future of the Church and of humanity

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It must plant it once and for all with a relativism and historicism of Hegel's origin, reported several times by Pope Benedict XVI in the wake of the conviction modernist evolutionism made by St. Pius X. Becoming supposed to be. Its only makes sense in relation to the Absolute, and the story has an end only in the Lord report. Instead, we must find the principles and the absolute values ​​of reason and faith, now largely forgotten, neglected, misunderstood, incompression, e skin disprezzat, among the very people who should keep them and insegnarceli, including bishops. Values ​​that instead have always been taught and always will be taught for the salvation of mankind, by sound philosophy, as rational, and from the Church, as values ​​of faith. We must know for sure what these values ​​of reason and of faith, We need to know why are these and not others, It is necessary to distinguish them from the subjective views and deciduous. We must distinguish dogmatism and fundamentalism by the certainty of faith and rational certainty.

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We should be able to distinguish the immutable values, immortal and incorruptible from those that mutate and become corrupt. Necessary to distinguish the immutable truth and supra-temporal and temporal those mutable, what is true today, it is true always and will always be true - philosophical truths, moral theological - what is true today and will be tomorrow under certain conditions or historical or legal institutions or political or ecclesial realities.

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It is with reason and faith that we know what is right and what is faith. At this point we do not underfoot quicksand, but the rock on which to build the house, the firm ground on which to rest and walk. We know what are the values ​​that will never fail. We know what is the meaning of existence and of life. We know who we are, where we come from and where we can, we want and need to go. We know that God exists. We know who to trust. We know why the good and evil. We know that there is no middle way between yes and no. We know our vocation and our duty. We see our eternal destiny and we can pursue it with hope, perseverance and courage, knowing they will not be disappointed. We know that we can do it. We know what are the values ​​and goods, for which it is worth sacrificing our lives, we know what are the values ​​on which we can not give in, even at the cost of living. We know what is martyrdom. We know we can sell everything, negotiate on everything, fiddling around, outside of our soul. So we buy all. We know it is impossible to salvation without these values, so these are the values ​​that guarantee the salvation. If we abandon delivery that was given to us by Christ, considering it outdated or aged or no longer valid or no longer relevant, for future invented by us in the idea that it is the Holy Spirit, we are not innovators, we make no real progress, but we are traitors, deserters and faithless; we are no longer under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, Demon ma.

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Instead it is necessary that we always keep before the eyes del'intelletto and heart the values ​​and the absolute property, perennial and unchanging, God's Word does not pass - The word of God remains forever - that illuminates our path, It shows us our duties, us to experience the divine law, inflames the heart, It pushes us to holiness - the love of Christ compels us —, correcting our mistakes, forgives our sins, It leads to real progress, founded on divine truth always known better in the same sense and the same meaning.

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The appeal to "tradition" to know what is faith and what is not, in itself is not enough, and it is even illegal and wicked, if you claim to appeal directly and subjectively to Tradition, to contest or contradict or "fix" the doctrinal teaching of a Pope or a Council, as they often are the guardians and interpreters supreme and definitive Tradition.

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The error then worsens, whether between the content of Tradition does not discern which ones are truly permanent, inviolable and insuperable, and which it is old and outdated content. Tradition is not a matter of time duration, but the intrinsic value of truth, over the time, the content of the Tradition. We must be able to distinguish in the Tradition that is related to time and historical contingencies passing, what belongs essentially the Eternal and the Absolute, ie the institutional will of Christ ("Divine right") - for example the sacraments - which can never be, It never will be changed or abandoned by the Church.

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Thus it is not sufficient in every case to say: "gives 2000 years' - provided that you know for certain - "has always been thought or done so", because instead it is said that we should continue to do so forever. There is a past that is now past dead and buried. It would make sense to remove a corpse from the grave like the restoration of the values ​​of the past. What is rightly passed, it is good that remains of the past, otherwise it would be like trying to bring back those "things past" [II Cor 5,19], of which St. Paul speaks. Better still an ancient truth that a new error.

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There are indeed compared to Tradition firsts, never before existed. If, however, the Church establishes new things unknown to the previous Tradition, such as women's ministries or The new order of Mass, this is not a break with Tradition, but simply it means that those things were contained implicitly in Tradition.

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These are the lines of true "breakthrough prophetic", the real reform we expect of Pope Francis. Of course he should not listen to extollers time acti, and it does well to arguirli, but above all do not listen to flatterers and false friends, but those who really loves, who urges him to join teaching and pastoral, conservation and development, continuity and progress, loyalty and inventiveness, even if the true friend can have the tone of the warning or reprimand. The "revolution" populist, reckless and low-priced to let dittatorelli ambitious, bellied and demagogues Africa and Latin America, without lowering its sacred dignity of Vicar of Christ.

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If the Pope wants to be father of the poor, as it is clear from its intentions, imitate his Lord Jesus Christ and the countless Holy Fathers of the poor and let stand the Don Lorenzo Milani, i Fidel Castro Helder Câmara gli. The oppressed are not only immigrants. We invite the Holy Father to exercise his mercy with the crushed by the modernists, do not have too much confidence with the modernist oppressors.

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It is true that the lefevriani also speak of "modernists", but they distort the meaning of the concept, when they accuse of "modernism" the Papacy post-conciliar and doctrines of the Council, confuse progress with modernism or Maritain with Rahner or confuse Mass new world order Dinner with Lutheran. Continues below the journalist: "Reality, indeed, It is that "wheat" - words of the Pope - "has the power within, the yeast has the power inside ", and also "the power of the Kingdom of God comes from within; the strength comes from within, the growth comes from within ' ".

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There is no doubt about the truth of what the Pope says here. Only the Gospel image of the wheat grain is not the only image that Christ offers to His Word. No doubt it throughout history, always comes better known by the Church in the same sense and the same meaning, as St. Vincent of Lerins, with the development of the Church's dogmatic.

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To clarify the issue of the conservative function of pastoral and avoid the conservatism, necessary to refer to statements or comparisons of Christ, in which emerges the durability, stability, the immutabilità, incorruptibility, eternity of God's Word, like when, for instance, it is compared to a. "treasure" [cf. ], to a "precious pearl" [cf. ], a "drachma" [cf. ] or a "rock" [cf. ]. It is a word that "does not pass" [cf. ]. It is a word of "eternal life" [cf. ]. The precious things are carefully preserved and jealously. It is a principle of good sense, that everyone understands. And how much more so it must be kept intact and undamaged, at any cost, without change, without corrections, without adding and without taking, although with continuous explanations, the divine message of salvation, who assures us and promises us eternal life.

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Of course, the Gospel message is not like a perishable food, which is corrupt, if it is not well guarded and preserved. In fact, it is not afraid of the wear of time or corrosive agents. It is made of corruptible matter, but it is pure immortal spirit. It is a treasure that, though well guarded, "the thief can not steal and moths can not break '. Who can be corrupted is the possessor, who is unfaithful, negligent and neglected in the store and keep it, and then he can lose. Here apostasy. It can conceive evil and can travisarlo. That's heresy. It can hurt administer. Here human respect, sloth and negligence of the pastors.

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He continues the columnist: "Similarly, said Francis, "If we want to preserve for us the grain, It will be only a grain. If we do not mix with life, with flour of life, the yeast, It will remain only the yeast "". Here the Pope touches an aspect of conservatism. He obviously does not deny that needs store grain: otherwise, if you come to donate? We give what we have carefully preserved. Ma, If values ​​are to be donated, and this is precisely the case of God's Word, although it must donate. They are the very words of Jesus: "If the grain of wheat does not die, it remains only; but if it dies, it produces much fruit » [LC 12,24].

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How to tune preservation and progress

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It can advance the living being that has its own stable identity. In fact the real progress is to improve the conditions of the subject. The course assumes that the preservation of the subject. It is true that life is movement, it is becoming, it is changing. But why is life indeed be development or explanation in the right direction of the existing entity. The progress of the movement must be healthy, that is orderly and well-guided and non-pathological, disorganized or incoherent. Even a madman is full of movement, but no one envies his condition.

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The subject that divides or changes by denying their identity namely by ceasing to keep himself, start a movement that does not involve progress, but dissolution or disintegration. It is the process that leads to death. It is true that the dead no longer exercises the vital activities. However, the stiffness of death does not exclude at all in becoming a corpse which is its dissolution. So the sheer becoming, the simple change or mutate is not a good in itself. All becoming has a direction.

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Not to be trusted to a becoming confused and contradictory. To test whether this is progress, not corruption, We have to see where tents. If it tends to better progress; it tends to worse setback. It should be short, it is becoming, the development or enhancement or improvement of a subject who is supposed to be maintained in its own identity. Otherwise, becoming is not life, my dead, it is not progress, but retrogression, not evolution but involution, but no progress relegation, not decay.

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The concern to preserve their healthy alleged identity, It is a very legitimate concern and dutiful, that has nothing to do with conservatism do not know what "closing another". It lacks in masochists subjects and d It corresponds to what in the animal kingdom is self-preservation, without which that animal would soon be destroyed by adverse agents.

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It is necessary that the Pope, which supreme guardian, advocate, guarantor and moderator, concord and peace in the Church, to assume its responsibilities. It must ask yourself in the position it deserves fair trial, centering on the universal principles of the Church, so that both sides conflict - lefevriani and modernists - can recognize themselves as Catholic.

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It should be, secondly, that recognizes the part of truth and justice - mentioned in this article -, present and carried forward by both parties. The two sides, side by side relationship, fit perfectly, as the two halves of a sphere broken, because God created them just because, unite, do one thing, which it is the same reality of the Church.

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The Pope must make every effort so that the two sides meet each other and approached, overcoming old grudges, ODĪ. and mistrust. It must abandon its current propensity for modernists, otherwise it can not be expected to elicit the confidence of Lefebvre and the modernists remain confirmed in their errors and take on an arrogant attitude, which will not lead to any result. The Pope must make sure that Lefebvre feel understood and appreciated in their good reasons, What the Pope has so far not done, indeed falling into contempt and nell'insulto. They, But, from them, They must strive to accommodate confidently all the doctrines of the Council, as he urged them repeatedly Pope Benedict XVI and, consequently, the following papal teaching until Papa Francesco.

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As for the modernists, the Pope must follow the same method applied to Lefebvre: recognize the good sides and correct defects. Good side of the modernists, that has escaped the Lefebvrians, who misunderstood, is the attention to modern thinking and a willingness to modernization and progress of the Church. But if the Church is relatively easy to correct the errors of Lefebvre, after all few in number and fairly compact, a fact of doctrines and morals, gigantic undertaking, and above the forces of the Church it appears the work of correction of errors of the modernists, and because they are scattered throughout the Church, among pastors and the faithful, and because mistakes are very varied and touch on all the dogmas of the faith. Wanting to make a comparison drawn from garbage, cleaning up the Lefebvrian camp is about cleaning up the modernist camp, as well as to clean up in a Swiss city is to treat the Naples garbage.

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However, a point of agreement between the Pope, Lefebvre and the modernists you might find around the problem Rahner. Indeed, while the modernists consider Rahner their greatest theologian, Lefebvre have sharply Rahner identified in the greatest danger for the Church today. At this point the Pope - it's about time - should decide with courage, come what may, to condemn the errors Rahner, giving a just satisfaction to Lefebvre and to all lovers of truth and of the Church. However, things are not so simple, because really Rahner gave a contribution to the doctrines of the Council. It is at this point that Lefebvre pass from the wrong and so must the Pope correct them, because they consider it as a modernist's contribution to the Council rahneriano. From here their rejection of such doctrines regarded as moderniste, which is false, because Lefebvre interpret those doctrines of modernism in the sense rahneriano; and instead there Rahner gave a positive contribution, otherwise it would not have been approved by Council. If the Pope will be able to show to Lefebvre and the modernists the points on which they meet each other and if one more he will accept the papal corrections, Peace will be made.

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The Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary sustain the Pope in its leadership in the Church's mission in the truth, in the unit, in holiness, in a healthy pluralism and harmony, in a renewed evangelization, that enlarges the boundaries of the visible Church, vinca forces hostile to it, religions convert to Christ, reacquaint the separated brethren to the Holy Mother Church, showing the world the face of just God vindicates the humble, merciful comforter of the afflicted, liberator of the oppressed, conqueror of sin and death.

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Varazze, 14 September 2018

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