Dirt in public places between sex and theology of the underwear – Dirty in public places between sex and theology of the underpant – Dirt in public places between sex and the theology of Calaconcillo
(English text after the Italian / Spanish text after English)
DIRT IN PUBLIC PLACES BETWEEN SEX AND UNDERPANT THEOLOGY
We priests must necessarily all be whores who try to give ourselves to everyone, free the amor Dei, without even asking for the Marchetta. This is why I usually say, in a serious and not at all joking way, indeed with a coherent theological spirit, that, if I hadn't been a priest, I definitely would have been a whore. However, I chose to do one or the other: the priest and the whore, for the love of God.
- Church news -
Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo
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PDF Article in print format – Article print format – Printable article
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The State Police responsible for checking the laboratories of public places where food is packaged, a couple of weeks ago it sealed a well-known pastry shop in the heart of the historic center of Catania.
The video documenting the state of the premises is only an archetype necessary to talk about the disastrous psychology of justifiers at all costs and whatever the cost, ready to affirm this:
"… it's true, this video was filmed by the State Police in the center of Catania, in the parlor of the city, but something like this could also happen in the North!».
I open parentheses with an aside: the "could have been" theory reminds me of certain militants of the Left radical chic Italian people who live in the name of politically correct more dreamlike. Those, to be understood, with penthouses in Parioli and villas in Capalbio, that when faced with a girl raped by a gang of illegal North African immigrants they are quick to explain, around the various talk show televisions, that she could also have been raped by a group of Italians. Definitely, to the victim of rape which is almost always destined to leave indelible traumatic marks with all the most complex reactive implications on a psychological and behavioral level, the idea that her rapists could also have been Italians, it will be of great comfort to you, but above all of precious usefulness to overcome a traumatic event that is difficult to overcome. I close the aside and return to the topic in question.
This video portrays the laboratory of a historic bar from the center of Catania and not from the center of Bolzano or Belluno, where hygiene and health standards are much higher and much more respected than in certain areas of Sicily, it is an incontrovertible fact, regardless of the justifying theory “it could have happened elsewhere”.
Let's move from the hygienic-sanitary question to the doctrinal-moral one, because it was we priests who have obsessed teenagers for generations, as if the whole mystery of evil went strictly and exclusively from the waist down. Who has ever bothered to teach that a laboratory like the one represented here is a much more exaltation of mortal sin than the masturbation of an adolescent in the throes of hormonal storms?? And they don't arise, certain secular bigots, as has already happened several times, to teach the undersigned priest that they are two different things, thus demonstrating that he does not know how serious those sins against charity can be, which according to them, however, would be something else, compared to the deadly sin of adolescent autoeroticism and various falls in the sixth commandment, which we remember is preceded by five others and then followed by four others, although they are not of interest to these people who appear to be rigorous only in everything relating to the sphere of sexuality.
That we have exaggerated beyond measure on human sexuality, I already wrote it fifteen years ago (see WHO), the rigorous morality of John Paul II prevails, when the Holy Father Francis was still far from coming. Today, the things I stated almost twenty years ago, the Holy Father tells her, often even in ironic tones, lie to me, at the time, the great youthful Paulist moralophobia is in force, it was sung in clear notes: «Take it easy with this talk, or you risk not becoming a priest". I replied: "Sure, because the theology of the underpants always comes before everything and above everything else, vero?».
Five kilometers away from the Apostolic Palace, the Holy Father “holy immediately!”, had the enormous human and moral disaster of the pastry shop of the Legionaries of Christ, presented well on the outside like the windows of this pastry shop in the historic center of Catania, except to hide inside all the worst rubbish of Marcial Maciel Degollado and his faithful accomplices. Being though, the Holy Father and his followers, too busy with the theology of the underpants, certain laboratories were not inspected, even though everyone knew its existence and internal filth.
When in record time, with an imprudence that we will soon pay in the face of history at a certainly very high price, John Paul II was beatified and then canonized, just as the pastry laboratory of the Legion of Christ and its founder was discovered between beatification and canonization, those who had decided to have the saint at all costs immediately declared: «The Holy Father had not been informed, in fact he was deceived". Regardless of the fact that he was informed several times and even in the most dangerous and scandalous details, as a document in one of my books (see WHO), even assuming he had not been informed and indeed deceived, even more so it remains to be clarified: who did not inform him, but above all who would have deceived him? Why deception - except in cases of self-deception -, necessarily involves the existence of a deceiver. So who, deceived John Paul II? This is a question that no one intends to answer.
These are our ecclesial and ecclesiastical pastry workshops, while, without shame and restraint we had nothing better to do than discuss the theology of underwear, beginning and center of the internal mystery of evil. And today, around the social media, we must read the absurdities of an army of lay Catholics, bigots beyond all limits of human decency, who affirm without penalty of ridicule that the Virgin Mary, a Fatima, to little Giacinta Marto, revealed that many souls were damned for the sins of lust, making her see the damned souls of the lustful in hell.
God deliver us from committed and militant Catholic bigots, because only their perversion and their sexual obsessions can come to believe and then spread as truth and certainty the absurd rumor that the Virgin Mary, mother par excellence, great pedagogue and seat of human delicacy, started talking about lust and lustful people to an illiterate nine-year-old girl born and raised in one of the most isolated provinces, poor and retrograde of Portugal at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Priests have never liked pant theology always lived in contact with human material, aware of being sinners who by an ineffable mystery of grace have received a mandate from Christ God to absolve sinners from sins according to the ministry of the Church:
«Receive the Holy Spirit; to whom you forgive sins they will be forgiven and to whom you will not forgive them, they will not be remitted " (GV 20, 22-23)
The theology of the underpants is terribly liked by certain lay Catholics social media, behind which often hide frustrated and failed mothers and fathers who have multi-divorced and cohabiting sons and daughters, or teenage nieces who travel with the mattress tied firmly to their backs to be ready for use. But on the other hand it is an old, well-known and well-known story: all of them whores, but only and strictly other people's daughters, certainly not their own.
I see and experience certain things differently: we priests must necessarily all be whores who try to give ourselves to everyone, gratis and love Dei, without even asking for the Marchetta. This is why I usually say, in a serious and not at all joking way, indeed with a coherent theological spirit, that, if I hadn't been a priest, I definitely would have been a whore. However, I chose to do one or the other: the priest and the whore.
From the island of Patmos, 4 February 2025
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DIRTY IN PUBLIC PLACES BETWEEN SEX AND THEOLOGY OF THE UNDERPANT
We priests must necessarily all be whores who try to give ourselves to everyone, freely and for the love of God, without even asking for compensation for the service offered. This is why I said, seriously and not at all jokingly, but rather with a coherent theological spirit, that if I hadn’t become a priest, I would have become a whore. But I chose to do both: the priest and the whore, for love of God.
- Church news -
Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo
.
The Italian State Police in charge of controlling the laboratories of public places where food is packaged, a couple of weeks ago sealed a well-known pastry shop in the heart of Catania’s historic center.
The video documenting the state of the premises is just a necessary archetype to talk about the disastrous psychology of justifiers at all costs, ready to justifier:
«… it’s true, this video was shot by the State Police in the very center of Catania, in the city’s good living room of this sicylian city, but such a thing could have happened also in North Italy!»
I open with a digression: the “it could have been” theory reminds me of certain militants of the Italian radical chic left who live in the name of the most dreamlike political correctness. Those, to be precise, with super-apartments in the rich residential neighborhoods of Rome and villas in the most exclusive areas of Tuscany, who, faced with a girl raped by a gang of illegal North African immigrants, are quick to explain in various television talk shows that the girl could have ended up raped even by a group of Italians. Surely, for the victim of a rape always destined to leave indelible traumatic marks with complex psychological and behavioral implications, the idea that her rapists could also have been Italians will be of great comfort, but more than anything else of precious usefulness to overcome a traumatic event that is difficult to overcome. I’ll close this parentheses and get back to the topic at hand.
That this video portrays the laboratory of a historic bar in the center of Catania and not in the center of Bolzano or Belluno, where hygiene and health standards are far superior and much more respected than in certain areas of Sicily, is an incontrovertible fact, regardless of the justifying theory “it could have happened elsewhere”.
Let’s move from the hygienic-health issue to the doctrinal-moral one, because it was we priests who for generations have obsessed adolescents, as if the whole mystery of evil went strictly and exclusively from the waist down. Who has ever bothered to teach that a workshop like the one represented in this video is a much more glorification of mortal sin than the masturbation of a teenager in the throes of hormonal storms? And let not these secular bigots rise up, as has already happened several times, to teach the undersigned priest that they are two different things, thus demonstrating that they do not know how serious those sins against charity can be, which to them however would be something different, compared to the the very mortal sin of adolescent autoeroticism and various falls in the sixth commandment, which we remember is preceded by five others and then followed by four others, although they are not of interest to these people rigorous only in everyhing that concerns the sexuality sphere.
That we have exaggerated beyond measure on human sexuality, I already wrote fifteen years ago (see HERE), when John Paul II’s strict morality prevailed, when the Holy Father Francis very far from reaching Rome. Today, the things I was saying almost twenty years ago are said by the Holy Father, often even in ironic tones, while I, at the time, with the great moralphobia in force under the pontificate of John Paul II, was told in clear terms: «Go easy with these speeches, or you risk not becoming a priest». I replied: «Sure, because before everything and above everything goes the theology of the underpant».
In Rome, five kilometers away from the Apostolic Palace, the Holy Father “saint immediately!”, had the immense human and moral disaster of the Legionaries of Christ’s “pastry”, which looked as good on the outside as the shop windows of this pastry in the old city centre of Catania, except that it hid inside all the worst rubbish of Marcial Maciel Degollado and his faithful accomplices. Being us, however, too busy with the theology of the underpant, certain workshops were not inspected, even though everyone knew of their existence and their dirty interior.
When in record time, with an imprudence that we will soon pay dearly before history, John Paul II was beatified and then canonized, between his beatification and his canonization the confectionery laboratory of the Legion of Christ and its founder was discovered. Those who had decided to have John Paul II declared a saint at all costs, immediately justified this fact by saying: «The Holy Father had not been informed, is was deceived». In reality, the Holy Father was informed several times and even in the most dangerous and scandalous details, as documented in one of my books (see HERE). However, if he really had not been informed and had been deceived, this would be one more reason to clarify: who did not inform him, but above all who deceived him? Because deception – except in cases of self-deception – necessarily implies the existence of a deceiver. So who deceived John Paul II? This is a question that no one intends to answer.
These are our laboratories of ecclesial and ecclesiastical pastry, while, without shame or restraint, we had nothing better to do than discuss the underpant theology, the principle and center of the entire mystery of evil. And today, in the sea of social media, we must read the absurdities of an army of lay Catholics, bigots beyond all limits of human decency, who affirm without penalty of ridicule that the Virgin Mary, in Fatima, to little Jacinta Marto, baby of only nine-year-old, said that many souls were damned for the sins of lust, making her see damned souls of the lustful in hell.
God deliver us from committed and militant Catholic bigots! Only people obsessed with human sexuality can believe and spread the absurd rumor according to which the Virgin Mary, mother par excellence, great pedagogue and seat of human delicacy, talking about lust and lustfuls to a little girl born and raised in one of the most isolated, poor and retrograde of Portugal by beginning of the 20th century.
The underpant theology has never pleased priests who have always lived in contact with human matter, aware of being sinners who by an ineffable mystery of grace have received from Christ God the mandate to absolve sinners from their sins according to the ministry of Church:
«When He had said this, He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you withhold forgiveness from anyone, it is withheld”» (John 20, 22-23)
The underpant theology is terribly widespreadwith some lay Catholics on social media, behind which often hide frustrated and failed mothers and fathers who have multi-divorced and cohabiting sons and daughters, or teenage grandchildren who travel with the mattress tied firmly to their backs to be ready for use. But then again it’s an old and well-known story: all whores, but only other people’s daughters, not their own.
I see and experience certain things differently: we priests must necessarily all be whores who try to give ourselves to everyone, freely and for the love of God, without even asking for compensation for the service offered. This is why I said, seriously and not at all jokingly, but rather with a coherent theological spirit, that if I hadn’t become a priest, I would have become a whore. But I chose to do both: the priest and the whore, for love of God.
From the Island of Patmos, 4 February 2025
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DIRT IN PUBLIC PLACES BETWEEN SEX AND THE THEOLOGY OF UNDERPANTS
We priests must necessarily be all whores who try to give ourselves to everyone freely and for the love of God, without even asking for compensation for the service. That's why I usually say seriously and not jokingly, even with a coherent theological spirit, that if I had not been a priest, I would have been a whore. However, I chose to be both: the priest and the whore, for the love of God.
- Church news -
Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo
.
Italian State Police, in charge of controlling the workshops and kitchens of public places where food is packaged, A renowned pastry shop in the historic center of the Sicilian city of Catania closed a couple of weeks ago..
The video that documents the state of the premises is just an archetype necessary to talk about the disastrous psychology of justifiers at all costs, at any price, and ready to say:
«…If it is true that this video was recorded by the State Police in the center of Catania, but something like this could also be found in Northern Italy!!»
I open a parenthesis to make a digression: the theory of “could have been” It reminds me of certain militants of the Italian radical-chic left who live in the name of the most dreamlike political correctness. Those who are obviously from the penthouses in the residential neighborhoods of Rome and the villas in the most exclusive areas of the Tuscany region. And those who, faced with a girl raped by a gang of North Africans, rush to explain in different television programs: that the girl could also have been raped by a gang of Italians. Without a doubt, The victim of a rape is almost always destined to retain indelible traumatic marks with very complex reactive implications on a psychological and behavioral level.. The idea that her rapists could also have been Italian would be of great comfort to her., above all, of precious usefulness to overcome the traumatic event that is difficult to overcome. I close this parenthesis and return to the topic at hand..
Let the video show the laboratory of a historic bar in the city center of Catania, and not in the center of cities like Bolzano or Belluno where hygiene and health standards are much stricter and much more respected than in certain areas of Sicily., It is an incontrovertible fact., apart from the justifying theory of: “It could also happen in other places”.
From the hygienic-sanitary issue let's move on to the doctrinal-moral, because we ourselves priests, who for generations have obsessed teenagers in their intimate movements with their hands; as if the entire mystery of evil were de rigueur and only from the waist down. Who has gone out of their way to teach that a laboratory like the one recorded by the video, It is an exaltation of mortal sin more than the masturbation of a teenager in the midst of his hormonal storms.? And the secular fanatics who do not rise up and reply as has already happened in the past, teaching the priest who writes, which are two totally different things; demonstrating with this, of not knowing how serious sins against charity can be. According to them, They would be something else compared to the super mortal sin of adolescent autoeroticism and falling into the sixth commandment, which we remember is preceded by another five and followed by four other commandments; although this does not interest these people who are only rigorous in everything that concerns the sphere of sexuality.
That regarding sexuality we have exaggerated beyond all limits, I wrote it fifteen years ago (watch HERE), when the rigorous morality of John Paul II prevailed and the Holy Father Francis was still a long way off. Today the things that I stated almost twenty years ago, The Holy Father says them and often in an ironic tone. While at that time, with the great moralophobia of John Paul II, they told me in clear tones: «Stop talking like that, or you run the risk of not being ordained a priest". I then replied saying: "It's true, because above all and before all is the theology of underpants..
Five kilometers from the Apostolic Palace, the Holy Father “holy immediately!”, had the enormous human and moral disaster of “pastry laboratory” of the Legionaries of Christ, excellently presented on the outside like the pastry shop windows in the historic center of Catania, except hiding inside all the worst garbage of Marcial Maciel Degollado and his loyal accomplices. But the Holy Father and his collaborators were too busy with underpants theology, while certain laboratories were not inspected although everyone knew of their existence and their internal dirt..
When in record time and with a recklessness that we will soon pay in history with a very high price, John Paul II was beatified and later canonized. And during his beatification and canonization, the laboratory of the Legion of Christ and its founder was discovered.; for it, those who had decided to immediately obtain the saint at all costs declared: «The Holy Father had not been informed, On the contrary, he had been deceived.". Regardless of the fact that it was reported on several occasions and even with dangerous and lurid details as I have documented in one of my books (watch HERE) even, assuming that he had not been informed but on the contrary deceived, with all the more reason it should be clarified: Who wouldn't have reported it but above all, who would have deceived him? Because deception – except in cases of self-deception – necessarily implies the existence of a deceiver. Therefore, who deceived John Paul II? This is a question that no one intends to answer..
These are our ecclesiastical and ecclesiastical pastry workshops, while without shame or restraint we had nothing better to do than discuss the theology of underpants, beginning and center of all the mystery of evil. And today on social networks, we have to read the absurdities of an army of lay Catholics, fanatics beyond all the limits of human decency, who affirm without shame of ridicule: that the Virgin Mary in Fatima revealed to the little midwife Giacinta Marto that many souls were condemned for the sins of lust, showing the condemned souls of the lustful in hell.
God save us from committed and militant Catholic fanatics, because only their perversions and sexual obsessions can come to believe and spread the absurd rumor that the Virgin Mary, mother par excellence, great pedagogue and seat of human delicacy, spoke of lust and lustful people to an illiterate nine-year-old girl born and raised in one of the most isolated provinces, poor and backward in Portugal at the beginning of the 20th century.
Underpants theology has never pleased priests who have always lived in close contact with human matter, conscious of being sinners and that by an ineffable mystery of grace, have received the command from Christ God to absolve sinners of their sins according to the ministry of the Church:
Receive the Holy Spirit. Whom you forgive the sins, they will be forgiven; and those who do not forgive, they will be left unforgiven. (Jn, 20,22-23)
The theology of underpants certain lay Catholics terribly like it on social networks, behind which they often hide, frustrated and failed mothers and fathers who have multi-divorced and cohabiting sons and daughters, or teenage nieces traveling with the mattress firmly strapped to their backs, ready for use. But on the other hand, It's an old and well-known story: all whores, but only other people's daughters and certainly not their own.
I see and experience some things differently.: We priests must necessarily all be whores who try to give ourselves to everyone, freely and for the love of God, without even asking for compensation for the service. That's why I usually say, seriously and not a joke, even with a coherent theological spirit, that if I had not been a priest, I would have been a whore. However, I chose to be both: the priest and the whore, for the love of God.
From the Island of Patmos, 4 February 2025
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The visible Church of the Patches passes in a wheelchair the Holy Door of irreversible decadence (Italian, english, español)
(English text after the Italian / Spanish text after English)
THE CHURCH OF THE PATCHES PASSES THE HOLY DOOR OF IRREVERSIBLE DECAY ON A WHEELCHAIR
This Jubilee will be a failure on the spiritual and economic front, because a Holy Door has been opened, not so much about what we are no longer, worse! We have opened the Holy Door on what we have become through a paradigm shift: the Church of twenty-five years ago, even though she was already seriously ill, he tried to force himself to open, to open the doors to Christ; today's, patient in the department for terminally ill cancer patients, he tried to open, to open the doors to the world.
—Ecclesiastical current affairs—
Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo
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In the experience of man and in the life of the Church nothing happens by chance, if anything, we are increasingly incapable of reading the signs. And so, twenty-five years apart, two Supreme Pontiffs have opened the Door of the Holy Year, arriving before it with the weight of old age and their disabling illnesses.
At Christmas 1999, the visible Church led by John Paul II arrived seriously ill before the Holy Door. This Pontiff debilitated by Parkinson's disease was a plastic paradigm of this, who was aided by a master of ceremonies dressed in a dignified ecclesiastical robe, he wanted to kneel anyway, albeit with obvious difficulty and great physical suffering. Never did he agree to waive the genuflections, especially before the Most Holy Eucharist. For the solemn occasion the Holy Father was dressed with a blanket which precedes the birth of the by centuries Christianitas. A wallpaper known in ancient times religion Roman pagan as downpipe, used by Pontifex Maximus to shelter from the rain, when from the top of Sublicio Bridge, located between the current Trastevere and Testaccio districts, at Porta Portese, he studied the movements of the waters and the flight of birds to interpret the will of the gods.
For the solemn jubilee event of 2000 the Holy Father wore a cope on which much criticism was leveled. That save, packaged in Prato, it had been woven in very bright colors: rosso, blue and gold, symbols present in nature and in the human spiritual dimension. Red tends to symbolize life and strength; blue is the union between sky and earth; yellow the divinity.
Reflecting on it in hindsight, that play of colors was like the last explosion of light before the arrival of the dark gray that envelops us today and which cannot be attributed either to him or to the Supreme Pontiffs who have succeeded him since 2005 following, because the crisis of the Church begins from afar. A minimal knowledge of history would be enough - in this world that with memories only reaches yesterday, given that it doesn't even reach the day before yesterday - to understand that the seeds of the crisis giving rise to ecclesiastical and ecclesiastical decadence, boldly visible today, they were already present between the pontificates of Leo XIII and Pius, between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century.
If with John Paul II the disease was pressing at the door, with the Supreme Pontiff Francis the visible Church has gone beyond it, entering a point of no return, pushed onto a wheelchair by the shadow of a gaunt priest clad in a pair of trousers, rather than with a dignified ecclesiastical dress. That of John Paul II, despite being a Church that has already been in crisis for decades, he always knelt before the Body and Blood of Christ, fighting against the unavoidable worsening of the disease. Francis's does not kneel before the Body and Blood of Christ, because she was now seriously ill and irreversibly ill. But he kneels down to wash and kiss the feet of convicts and prostitutes Mass of the Lord's Supper, despising the richness of our glorious places of worship, which are not the fruit of princely splendor, as some uneducated people might think, but of the faith of believers and the work of the greatest artists who with them wanted to honor God, offering the best and paying the maximum that could be paid to the Divine Creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. This is why the abbreviation D.O.M is carved on many ecclesiastical buildings., what does it mean: God is the Greatest. However, on the one hand there is contempt for what is not known, on the other hand there is no hesitation in glorifying prisons, in which one ends up having committed crimes, except in cases of innocent people unjustly convicted of judicial errors, or in the cases of the prisons of anti-democratic dictatorial regimes. Although some don't remember it, or they are not really aware of this incontrovertible reality, it is worth reminding them that criminals end up in prison.
How many are inside the prisons can be recovered from the company, after a re-education process, not exalted as if they were faithful devotees of modern cathedrals, or unspecified victims of bad society, guilty of not having fully understood them. If I'm in there someone, out, often more than one, sometimes even entire families, because of them they cried. It would therefore be good to remember that forgiveness is such if it goes hand in hand with the punishment inflicted by justice, which on the spiritual level acts as a purification of the condemned, transforming prison into an action of that divine grace which first forms and then transforms man through the expiation of what the laws of the State indicate as crimes, Catholic doctrine as sins. In both cases, both as regards crimes and as regards sins, secular states with a liberal-democratic imprint, like the Church itself, they offer differently, but substantially similar, the possibility of atonement, which in itself implies that recovery which erases the guilt deriving from the crime or sin committed. This is the apostolate in prisons, the rest is just surreal and harmful ideology, between foot rinses and "prisoner jubilees" of a Supreme Pontiff who arrives in front of the Holy Door in the Papal Archbasilica of St. Peter being pushed in a wheelchair by an emaciated priest in trousers, because in that case he is unable to get up and walk. But he gets up and walks to pass the open Holy Door in the Rebibbia prison, comparing it to a basilica (cf.. video WHO). Someone wants to remind the Holy Father that in Rome we have basilicas built on the blood of Christian martyrs killed in hatred of faith and that the title basilica is not particularly suitable for a prison chapel? And right here the words of the Psalmist come to mind:
Until, man, you will continue to forget me?
Until you hide your face from me?
As long as I feel trouble in my soul,
sadness in my heart every moment?
Until the enemy triumphs over me?
Guard, answer me, Lord my God,
keep the light in my eyes,
so that the sleep of death does not surprise me,
so that my enemy does not say: «I won it!»
and let not my adversaries rejoice when I falter (Salmo 13, 2-5).
The Jubilee, also called Holy Year, it has a great spiritual significance that affects the life of the entire universal Church. The heart of this event is the Sacrament of Penance for the remission of sins and punishments for sins. Its institution is lost in the mists of time and is linked to the experience of the ancient People of Israel. The official website of the Holy See provides a excursus history that I recommend reading (cf.. What is the Jubilee). It is so precise and well done that further explanation is unnecessary, because for my part I could only repeat what is contained and explained in it.
Now I would like to move from the spiritual sphere to the financial one, starting from the premise that I hope to be wrong in some of my personal beliefs and to have to make public amends for them in the following months. In fact, I fear that this Jubilee will be a failure on the spiritual and economic front, because a Holy Door has been opened, not so much about what we are no longer, worse! We have opened the Holy Door on what we have become through a paradigm shift: the Church of twenty-five years ago, even though she was already seriously ill, he tried to force himself to open, to open the doors to Christ (cf.. WHO); today's, patient in the department for terminally ill cancer patients, he tried to open, to open the doors to the world. And as I have often had the opportunity to remember in recent years, the task that Christ God has entrusted to us by divine mission is not to please the world, but to counter it:
"If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you from the world, that's why the world hates you " (GV 15, 19).
Often images can summarize an entire state of affairs without resorting to words. For instance: what about the episcopessa Protestant sitting in the places of honor with the exponents of the various religions? But we are inclusive! Because of this, just to exclude everything that is Catholic, of necessity we must include everything that is not Catholic... of course, all expressed with due human respect for that Lady present in the grandstand as "bishop" in the Papal Archbasilica of St. Peter, without any of the clerical leaders realizing that in this way we run the risk of letting a message of normalization and approval pass through, given that a woman cannot define herself as a "bishop" and that no one, on the Catholic side, can somehow recognize it as such, even if belonging to a non-Catholic Christian religion born from the heresy and schism of Martin Luther, who we remember was a heretic, not a reformer.
Luther did not produce any reforms at all, that was done by the Fathers at the Council of Trent, he tore the Church of Christ apart with a terrible schism, which remains so today, with all due respect to bishop in the grandstand at the opening of the Holy Year above the tomb of the Apostle Peter in the total indifference of inclusive clericalism.
We were talking about the economic discussion... for the Jubilee of 2000 the law decree of 23 October 1996, n. 551, containing «Urgent measures for the Great Jubilee of 2000», then converted into the law of 23 December 1996, n. 651. Work began on that event years before, subject to the passing of specific laws, but above all an astronomical sum of money was allocated: 3.500 billions of old lire, corresponding in today's money to one billion eight hundred million euros. Also in this case I refer to the official website of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport, where everything is documented and detailed (cf.. WHO). Having said this, it should be remembered that the president of the Italian bishops of the time was Cardinal Camillo Ruini, endowed with rare political skills, with an army of bishops following him who were not yet today's caricatures who compete with each other to see who wears the humblest and poorest wooden cross around their neck, possibly made with the material of a boat sunk off the coast of Lampedusa on which human traffickers transported poor desperate illegal immigrants, often including women and children.
That of the years preceding the Jubilee of 2000 it was another Church, another episcopate, another pontificate... but above all another society and another national and international geopolitical structure. But here is an exhaustive example that can clarify everything: at the time, in Italy, if before the administrative elections some diocesan bishop expressed discontent towards one or some particularly polemical or aggressive candidates, these took care of correcting the aim and lowering the tone during the electoral campaign. But there's more: when in June of 2005 there was a referendum in Italy on assisted procreation, Cardinal Camillo Ruini expressly invited Italians not to go to vote. Outcome: three out of four Italians did not go to the polls and the referendum was a fiasco (cf.. WHO). The fact that you personally appreciate and recognize certain evident and undoubted qualities of Cardinal Camillo Ruini, regretting that today, figures of his high stature, unfortunately we no longer have any, nothing takes away from the fact that I would never have hoped to have him as my diocesan bishop. In fact, I still continue to consider it today, on a human and spiritual level, like "a cold dry bone covered in velvet", I had to define it as such, much to his little joy, a few years ago, oblivious on my part to how notoriously touchy he is, as well as having no sense of humor.
With completely different men and a completely different kind of Church, on the occasion of the great jubilee event of 2000, Rome was made new again. This is in the interest of the State, who recovered what was invested with high income and both economic and image interests, but also of the Church, which, thanks to the huge funds allocated for that extraordinary event, was able to take advantage of it to renovate most of its structures, many of which had already been in terrible conditions for years. And here it should be remembered that Rome, even then, it was teeming with religious institutes, most of which were built after the Concordat stipulated in February 1929 between the Kingdom of Italy and the Holy See. Works mostly erected in the 1930s, in a real competition between the historical Orders and the various religious Congregations, male and female, to those who built the largest institutes. At the gates of the Third Millennium, with a drastic drop in birth rate that began at the end of the 1960s, certain Catholic schools, nursery schools and various care institutions, they no longer had any reason to exist, being mostly pharaonic structures. It should then be considered that in 1978 that great social achievement of the law on abortion was approved, thanks to which even the orphanages disappeared, which was no longer needed, given that children could be killed before they were born. Not to mention the numerous curiae and general houses of the various male and female Orders and Congregations, almost always with novitiates or theological student houses within them, that led them to have, between the fifties and sixties, communities that numbered one hundred or two hundred religious, between those who had professed solemn vows and the young simply professed people in training.
In Rome at the beginning of the seventies it was impossible not to meet everywhere, along the courses of urban streets, priests and nuns, friars and nuns. Then there were the young seminarians and theology students from the various national and international Roman seminaries and colleges, who when they went for a walk formed lines of dozens and dozens of young clerics. Soon said: the decline in birth rates and the inexorable crisis in vocations had reduced in the following decades, most of these large structures, to be inhabited no longer by one hundred or two hundred, but by six or seven elderly religious men or women, with the buildings now in a state of semi-dilapidation, with obsolete systems and outside of all safety regulations. Thus it was that on the occasion of the Jubilee of 2000, not only were most of these institutions renovated, because it was decided to make them an income in some way, reserving a small wing for religious men and women now numerically reduced to a minimum and changing the bulk of the buildings into shelters, in fact in hotels, because that is what most of these institutes are today. It was a farsighted operation, thanks to which the buildings of many institutes were saved and put in a position to produce the necessary money to support themselves.
Unfortunately priests, brothers and sisters, they are capable - and truly are like few others - of throwing money away on useless expenses, sometimes even in harmful works from which great losses then arise, without having the ability to realize that certain structures require great care and careful maintenance. And so, twenty-five years ago, after being taken out of very serious trouble, faced with problems related to their large buildings which they were unable to restore, nor to store it adequately, nor to comply with legal regulations regarding safety, they found nothing better to do than to let them return to a state of semi-dilapidation over the next twenty-five years, not everybody, but most of it yes. This is what I usually call “clerical patch psychology”. The meaning of this definition will soon be revealed: a structure requires routine maintenance? Why ever spend money, just let it go, if anything saying, with all the typical and at times unique cynicism of priests, brothers and sisters: «It's not worth getting bitter blood unnecessarily, those who come after will then take care of it". A quel point, all ordinary maintenance operations omitted over the years, will end up turning into serious extraordinary maintenance needs, but it costs a lot. A quel point, the well-known priest-friar-nun foresight begins to attach patches to the right and left, if anything, spending exorbitant amounts in the belief of saving money, because there are few like priests, friars and nuns are such idiots to get cheated out of money, if they have not been adequately trained in concrete practical life with their feet firmly planted on the ground. Said and done: the walls were last whitewashed twenty years ago? Internal and external fixtures, air conditioners and radiators, the sanitary fixtures installed at the end of the 1990s and so on, on which the necessary ordinary maintenance interventions have never been carried out, today they are falling apart? No worries, a patch is attached, if anything - needless to say! — having the work done by people who, to change simple filters on air conditioners, they make the inexperience of priests, friars and nuns pay more than what the latest generation low consumption and high energy saving systems would cost.
Since there would be many examples I'll limit myself to just one: last year I had the opportunity to find myself in a nuns' institute while some painters were painting the rooms of their house-hotel. Seeing them mixing anonymous paints in buckets with plenty of water and smelling a rather unpleasant odor that smelled entirely of toxic chemical substances, I asked: «What brand of eco-friendly paint are you using?». After that, walking around the corridors, I noticed a riot of smudges not only on the walls, but also on the fixtures, on skirting boards and even on fire extinguishers dirtied with paint flows. I took the foreman and told him: «If law, in my house, had done something like that, I didn't let her out the door but out the window, I'm careful not to give her a single penny". the sera, the mother superior, she confronted me irritably and told me not to disturb their workers anymore. I answered her: «Of the people who placed the water drains of the air conditioners inside the shower cubicles of the guest bedrooms and who, not satisfied, even eliminated the earthing from the electrical system, they don't deserve to be called workers but criminals, while you demonstrate that you are only poor people incapable of managing the considerable patrimony from which your congregation has the grace of being able to benefit".
A wheelchair pushed by an emaciated priest in trousers inaugurated what we could reasonably define as "The Jubilee of the Patch" placed on our irreversible spiritual and financial decadence, of which our increasingly empty squares and churches are a paradigm. Or perhaps someone forgets that the 24 December 1999 St. Peter's Square wasn't just packed, because the crowd of people reached Castel Sant'Angelo and the Lungotevere? Someone wants to deal with the fact as evident as it is sad that the 24 December 2024, as shown in the photo accompanying this article, the square itself was completely empty in the center and in the four squares of chairs placed under the steps of the churchyard, many empty seats are visible?
The final question is of rigor: a devout Catholic, why he should leave from Australia or Peru to travel to Rome? Perhaps to hear an elderly Pontiff who, when he opens his mouth, talks about the poor and migrants, of migrants and the poor, of the poor and migrants...? As if the Word of God had come into this world only to speak and care for the poor of slums and those of Villas miseries (Villages of poverty)? And those who do not have the great privilege of being poor, they are also children of God, oppure no? And what would the jubilant pilgrim find in Rome? He would find the homeless camped under Bernini's colonnade; would find Borgo Santo Spirito and Borgo Pio, to the left and right of the Vatican and St. Peter's Square respectively, where early in the morning traders are forced to throw buckets of bleach to try to remove the acidic smell of urine that penetrates the nostrils in a nauseating way. And where should the jubilant pilgrim stay? Perhaps by the nuns or friars who after the Jubilee of 2000, once they had their structures rebuilt for free by the "Uncle Scrooge" of the Italian Republic, they have never asked themselves the problem of renewing beds and mattresses or redoing the bathroom fixtures; to repaint the plaster and paint the walls; who for breakfast offer you freeze-dried milk and substitute powders that rival the products put on the market during the period in which the old fascist regime proclaimed autarky, following which it was no longer possible to use foreign imported products, starting with coffee? Let's overlook the terrible quality of the food, in these houses which also offer meal service. Above all, we ignore the Indian and Filipino nuns taken from their countries and taken to the religious houses of Rome and placed under the direction of an eighty-year-old Italian nun as laborers equal to service women., which must be addressed in English, because despite living in Italy for ten years I am unable to understand and speak Italian. Let's fly over and draw a compassionate veil over all this and everything even worse that is circulating in certain houses...
At the end, how can we not mention the exotic characters who increasingly happen to be found working in shelters, especially the nuns, ranging from girls with bare bellies to boys sporting three bells in their ears, the piercing and the tattoos in plain sight? Of the series: we want to host pilgrims in religious reception homes, or in unsuccessful branches of the famous Muccassassina gay club in Rome? How come to the Holy See, sometimes even attentive to futilities, it hasn't yet occurred to us to send inspectors around to check whether certain houses are run by religious men and women, or by their lay representatives, they truly have all the necessary requirements to provide so-called religious hospitality in a dignified way?
Having opened the Holy Door in Rebibbia prison it was timely and far-sighted in its own way, being the most suitable place where many of us should be, and even for a long time, after having made an attack on the mystical body of Christ which is the Church (cf.. With the 1,18), on which today patches are stuck on day by day, which, however, cannot stop, let alone cure, the malignant metastases that have been circulating in his body for decades and decades, without this pontificate being blamed for them, who is not responsible for it, despite having done his, without backing down to the damage that has already largely existed for several decades, he decided to add others, as original as they are serious.
"But the Son of Man, when will, find faith on earth?» (LC 18, 8)
the Island of Patmos, 31 December 2024
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THE CHURCH OF THE PATCHES PASSES THE HOLY DOOR OF IRREVERSIBLE DECADENCE ON A WHEELCHAIR
This Jubilee will be a failure on the spiritual and economic front, because a Holy Door opened, not so much on what we are not longer, worse! On what we have become through a paradigm inversion: the Church of twenty-five years ago, despite al-ready being seriously ill, tried to open, to throw open the doors to Christ; the Church’s today, a patient in the ward for terminal-ly patients, has tried to open, to throw open the doors to the world.
Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo
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In the experience of man and in the life of the Church nothing happens by chance, if anything we are increasingly incapable of reading the signs. And so, twenty-five years apart from each other, two Supreme Pontiffs opened the Door of the Holy Year, both with the weight of their seniority and their disabling illnesses.
At Christmas 1999, the visible Church led by John Paul II appeared seriously ill in front of the Holy Door. This Pontiff, debilitated by Parkinson’s disease, was a clear example of this: aided by a master of ceremonies, dressed in a dignified ecclesiastical robe, he still wanted to kneel, albeit with obvious difficulty and great physical suffering. The Holy Father never agreed to give up genuflections, especially before the Holy Eucharist. For the solemn occasion the Holy Father was dressed in a cloak that precedes the birth of Christianity by centuries. A cloak known in the ancient Roman pagan religion as a “pluvial”, used by the Pontifex Maximus, starting from the 6th century BC, to protect himself from the rain, when from the top of the Sublicio Bridge, located between the current Roman districts of Trastevere and Testaccio, to the height of Porta Portese, he studied the movements of water and the flight of birds to interpret the will of the gods.
For the solemn jubilee event of 2000 the Holy Father wore a cope which received much criticism. That liturgical vestment, made in the italian city of Prato, was woven with very bright colors: red, blue and gold, symbols present in nature and in the human spiritual dimension. The red tends to symbolize life and strength; the blue the union between sky and earth; the yellow the divinity.
If we reflect on it in the present, that play of colors was like the last explosion of light before the arrival of the dark-gray that envelops us today and which cannot be attributed either to him or to the Supreme Pontiffs who succeeded him from 2005 onwards, because the crisis of the Church begins from afar. A minimal knowledge of history would be enough — in this world which with memories barely reaches yesterday, given that it doesn’t even reach the day before yesterday — to understand that the seeds of the crisis ecclesiasial and ecclesiastical decadence, visible today, were already present between the pontificates of Leo XIII and Pius X, between the end nineteenth century and the beginning twentieth century.
If with John Paul II the disease pressed in front of the door, with the Supreme Pontiff Francis the visible Church has gone beyond it, entering a point of no return, pushed on a wheelchair by the shadow of a gaunt priest dressed in a pair of trousers, rather than with a dignified ecclesiastical robe. That of John Paul II, despite being a Church in crisis for decades, always tried to kneel before the Body and Blood of Christ, trying not to become irreversibly ill. Francis’s does not kneel before the Body and Blood of Christ, because she is now seriously and irreversibly ill. However, he kneels down to wash and kiss the feet of convicts and prostitutes at the Mass of the Lord's Supper (Mass of the Lord’s Supper), despising the richness of our glorious places of worship, which are not the fruit of princely splendor, as some uneducated people might think, but of faith of believers and of the work of the greatest artists who with wanted to honor God offering the best and the maximum that could be paid to the Divine Creator of heaven and earth, of all visible and invisible things. This is why the abbreviation D.O.M, which means: God is the Greatest (to God we always offer the best and the maximum), carved on many ecclesiastical buildings. However, if on the one hand there is contempt for what is not known, on the other there is no hesitation in glorifying prisons, in which one ends up having committed crimes, except in cases of innocent people unjustly convicted due to judicial errors, or in the cases of the prisons of anti-democratic dictatorial regimes. Although some do not remember it, or are not aware of this incontrovertible reality, it is worth reminding them that criminals end up in prison.
Those inside prisons must be recovered, not exalted as if they were devoted builders of modern cathedrals, or unspecified victims of the bad society guilty of not having fully understood them. If one is in there, you need to remember that outside, someone, often more than one, sometimes even entire families, have cried of cause him. It would therefore be good to remember that forgiveness is such if it goes hand in hand with the punishment inflicted by justice, which on a spiritual level acts as a purification of the condemned, transforming prison into an action of that divine grace which first forms and then transforms the man through the expiation of those that human law indicates as crimes, Catholic doctrine as sins. In both cases, both as regards crimes and as regards sins, secular states with a liberal-democratic imprint, like the Church for its part, offer the possibility of atoning in a different but essentially similar way, which it implies that healing which erases the guilt deriving from the crime or sin committed. This is the apostolate in prisons, the rest is just surreal and harmful ideology, between eccentric foot-washing to prisoners and prostitutes in the Mass of the Lord's Supper, and the ‘prison jubilees’ of a Supreme Pontiff who arrives before the Holy Door of the Papal Archbasilica of St Peter’s in a wheelchair pushed by an emaciated priest in trousers, because he cannot get up and walk; yet he gets up and walks two days later to cross the Holy Door opened in Rome’s Rebibbia prison, where he compares the prison chapel to a basilica (see video HERE). Does anyone want to remind the Holy Father that in Rome we have basilicas built on the blood of Christian martyrs killed in hatred of the faith (hatred of faith) and that, for this reason, the title of basilica is not appropriate for a prison chapel? And right here the words of the Psalmist come to mind:
How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
Consider and answer me, O Lord my God; light up my eyes,
lest I sleep the sleep of death,
lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,”
lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.
But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation (Psalm 13, 2-5).
The Jubilee, also called the Holy Year, has a great spiritual significance that affects the life of the entire universal Church. Heart of this event is the Sacrament of Penance for the remission of sins and cancellation of the sentence. Its institution is lost in the mists of time and is linked to the experience of the ancient People of Israel. The official website of the Holy See provides a historical excursus that I recommend reading (see: What is the Jubilee). It is so precise and well done that further explanations are superfluous, because for my part I could only repeat what is contained and explained in it.
Now I would like to move from the spiritual to the financial sphere, starting from the assumption that I hope to be wrong in some of my personal beliefs, and to publicly ask for forgiveness for them in the following months. I fear that this Jubilee will be a failure on the spiritual and economic front, because a Holy Door has been opened, not so much on what we are no longer, worse! We have opened the Holy Door on what we have become through a paradigm inversion: the Church of twenty-five years ago, despite already being seriously ill, tried to force itself to open, to throw open the doors to Christ (see HERE); the Church of today is in the ward for terminally ill cancer patients, because has tried to open, to throw open the doors to the world. And as I have often had the opportunity to remember in recent years, the task that Christ God has entrusted to us by divine mission is not to please the world, but to oppose it:
«If you were of the world, you would be loved by the world: but because you are not of the world, but I have taken you out of the world, you are hated by the world» (John 15:19).
Often images can summarize an entire state of affairs without resorting to words. For example: the Protestant woman bishop in places of honor among the exponents of the various religions. But let’s be inclusive! In fact, to exclude everything that is Catholic, it is necessary to necessarily include everything that is not Catholic… All expressed with due human respect for that Lady present as “bishop” in the Pontifical Archbasilica of St. Peter. The leaders ecclesiastics don’t realize that in this way they risk transmitting a message of normalization and approval, given that a woman cannot define herself as a “bishop” and that no one on the Catholic side can in any way recognize her as such. It should not be forgotten that this Lady belongs to a non-Catholic Christian religion born in the 16th century from the heresy and schism of Martin Luther, who we remember was a heretic, not a reformer.
Luther did not produce any reforms. The true and only reform was made by the Fathers of the Council of Trent. Luther tore apart the Church of Christ with a terrible schism, which remains so even today, with all due respect to the Protestant women-bishops welcomed into places of honor for the opening of the Holy Year on the tomb of the apostle Peter. All this in total indifference of inclusive clericalism.
But let’s get to the economic question. For the Jubilee of 2000, work in Rome had begun years earlier. Specific laws have also been approved: Legislative Decree 23 October 1996, n. 551, containing «Urgent measures for the Great Jubilee of 2000», later converted into law 23 December 1996, n. 651. Above all, an astronomical sum of money was allocated: 3,500 billion of the old lire, corresponding in today’s money to one billion and eight hundred million euros (approximately 1,878,000,000.00 USD). Also in this case I refer you to the official website of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport of the Italian Republic, where everything is documented and detailed (see HERE). Having said this, it should be remembered that the president of the Italian bishops of the time was His Eminence the Cardinal Camillo Ruini, endowed with rare political skills, with an army of bishops following him who were not caricatures like today’s bishops, who compete between of them to those who carry on their chest the humblest and poorest wooden cross, made with the material of a sunken boat off the sicilian coast of Lampedusa isla on which human traffickers transported poor desperate illegal immigrants, including women and innocents children.
That of the years preceding the Jubilee of 2000 was another Church, another episcopate, another pontificate… but above all another society and another national and international geopolitical structure. But here is an exhaustive example capable of clarifying everything: at the time, in Italy, if before the administrative elections some diocesan bishop expressed discontent towards a particularly polemical or aggressive candidate, immediately the candidate corrected his tone during the electoral campaign. But there’s more: when the referendum on assisted procreation was held in Italy in June 2005, Cardinal Camillo Ruini expressly invited Italians not to go and vote. Result: three out of four Italians did not go to the polls and the referendum was a flop (see HERE). The fact that I appreciate and recognize certain undoubted qualities of Cardinal Camillo Ruini, stating that today, unfortunately, we no longer have figures of his high level, does not take anything away from the fact that I would never have hoped to have him as my diocesan bishop. Even today, on a human and spiritual level, I continue to consider it “a cold and dry bone covered in velvet”. This is how I defined him, to his scant joy, a few years ago, without caring how notoriously touchy and humorless the Cardinal is.
With completely different men and a completely different kind of Church, on the occasion of the great Jubilee event of 2000, Rome was remade new. This was in the interest of the State, which recovered what it had invested with high revenues and both economic and image interests, but also of the Church, which thanks to the huge funds allocated for that extraordinary event was able to take advantage of renovate most of its structures, many of which had already been in terrible conditions for years. And here it should be remembered that Rome, already at the time, was teeming with religious institutes, most of which were built after the Concordat stipulated in February 1929 between the Kingdom of Italy and the Holy See (in 1929, after the fall of the Papal State and the conquest of Rome in September 1870, the Kingdom of Italy recognized the Vatican City as an independent sovereign state governed by the Roman Pontiff). Works mostly erected in the 1930s, in a real competition between the historical Orders and the various religious Congregations, male and female, to see who built the largest institutes. At the gates of the Third Millennium, with a drastic decline in the birth rate that began at the end of the 1960s, certain Catholic schools, nursery schools and various care institutions no longer had any reason to exist, as they were mostly pharaonic structures. It should also be considered that in 1978, in Italy, the “great social conquest” of the law on abortion was approved, thanks to which orphanages also disappeared, for which no longer any need, given that children could be killed before they were born. Not to mention the numerous general houses of the various male and female Orders and Congregations, with novitiates or theological school within them, which led them to have, between the fifties and sixties, communities that numbered one hundred or two hundred religious, among those who had professed solemn vows and the young simply professed people in training.
In Rome, at the beginning of the seventies, it was impossible not to encounter priests, friars and nuns everywhere along the urban streets. Then there were the young seminarians and theology students from the various national and international Roman seminaries and colleges, who when they went for a walk formed lines of dozens and dozens of young clerics. In simple words: the decline in the birth rate and the inexorable crisis of vocations had reduced the majority of these large structures in the following decades to being inhabited no longer by one hundred or two hundred, but by six or seven elderly men and women religious, residing in buildings which were now in semi-degraded state, with obsolete systems and outside of any legal regulations regarding safety. So it was that on the occasion of the Jubilee of 2000, not only were a large part of these institutes renovated, but it was decided to make them profitable in some way, reserving a small wing for men and women religious, now reduced to a few members, and all the rest used for holiday home, in fact in hotels, because this is what most of these institutions are today: low-cost hotels. It was a far-sighted operation, thanks to which the buildings of many institutions were saved and made capable of producing the money necessary for their maintenance.
Unfortunately, priests, friars and nuns are capable — and they really are like few others — of wasting money on useless expenses, sometimes even on harmful works which then lead to great losses, without having the ability to realize that certain structures require a lot of care and maintenance. And so, the well-known sapience of priests, friars and nuns begins to attach patches left and right, spending exorbitant amounts in the belief of saving money, because few like priests, friars and nuns are so idiotic as to let themselves be robbed, if they have not been adequately trained in concrete practical life with their feet firmly planted on the ground. All said and done: were the walls, last painted twenty years ago? The internal and external fixtures, the air conditioners and radiators, the sanitar elements dilapidated and broken today fixtures, on which the necessary routine maintenance, has never been carried out they were installed in the late 90s? No problem, just apply a patch, entrusting the repairs to people who, to change banal filters on air conditioners, make the inexperience of priests, friars and nuns pay more than what the new latest generation air conditioners with low consumption and high energy savings would cost.
Since there are many examples, I will limit myself to just one: last year I had the opportunity to find myself in a nuns institute while some painters were painting the rooms of their house-hotel. Seeing them mixing anonymous paints in buckets with plenty of water, and smelling a rather unpleasant odor that smelled entirely of toxic chemical substances, I asked: “What brand of ecological paint are you using?”. Then, walking around the corridors, I noticed a riot of smudges not only on the walls, but also on the fixtures, on the skirting boards and even on the fire extinguishers dirtied with paint flows. I took the foreman and told him: “If you had done something like this in my house, I wouldn’t have let you out through the door but through the window, being careful not to give you a single penny.” In the evening, the mother superior confronted me irritably and told me not to disturb their workers anymore. I replied to her: «The people who placed the water drains from the air conditioners inside the shower cubicles of the guest bedrooms and who, not satisfied, even eliminated the earthing from the electrical system, do not deserve to be called workers but criminals, while you nuns demonstrate that you are womens incapable of managing the considerable patrimony from which your congregation has the grace of being able to benefit”.
A wheelchair pushed by an emaciated priest in trousers inaugurates what we might reasonably call “The Jubilee of patch” focused on our irreversible spiritual and economic decadence, of which our increasingly empty squares and churches are a paradigm. On 24 December 1999, the square of St. Peter’s, was not only packed, because the crowd of people reached as far as Castel Sant’Angelo. Same way, it is equally evident that on December 24, 2024 (as shown in the photo accompanying this article), the same square was completely empty in the central part, and in the four squares of chairs placed under the churchyard, several empty seats are visible.
The last question is obligatory: why should a devout Catholic leave Australia or Peru to go to Rome? Perhaps for hear an elderly Pontiff who, when he opens his mouth, speaks only of poor and migrants, of migrants and poor, of poor and migrants…? As if the Verb of God had come into this world only to speak and care for the poor of the “slums” and “Villas miseries” (Villages of misery)? And those who do not have the great privilege of being poor, are they also sons of God, or not? And what would the jubilant pilgrim find in Rome? The clochards under Bernini’s colonnade; Borgo Santo Spirito and Borgo Pio, respectively to the left and right of the Vatican and St. Peter’s Square, where early in the morning traders are forced to throw buckets of bleach to try to remove the acidic smell of urine that penetrates the nostrils nauseatingly? And where should the jubilant pilgrim lodge? Perhaps by the nuns or friars who after the Jubilee of 2000, once they had their religiouse homes renovated free of charge by the “Uncle Scrooge” of the Italian Republic, never asked themselves the problem of renewing beds and mattresses or redoing the bathroom fixtures; restore the plaster and paint the walls; that they offer freeze-dried milk and substitute powders for breakfast that rival the products put on the market during the period in which the old fascist regime proclaimed autarky, following which it was no longer possible to use products imported, starting with coffee? Better not even to mention the very poor quality of the food they offer in these houses where they also serve meals. Better to ignore, for Christian charity’s sake, the problem of the Indian and Filipino nuns taken from their countries and brought to the religious houses in Rome, placed under the direction of an eighty-year-old Italian nun and used as serving women, who, despite living in Italy for ten years, are unable to understand and speak Italian. Let us overlook and draw a veil over all this and all the worst that circulates in certain homes…
Finally, how can we not mention the exotic characters that we working in this religious houses, especially in those of nuns, who vary from girls with bare bellies to boys who show off three earrings in their ears, piercings and tattoos view? But do we want to host pilgrims in religious homes, or in failed branches of a gay village? Why has it not yet occurred to the Holy See to send around inspectors to verify whether certain houses managed by men and women religious, or by their lay preposed, really have all the necessary requirements to do so-called religious reception in a dignified way?
Having opened the Holy Door in the Roman prison of Rebibbia was appropriate and in its own way farsighted, being the most suitable place where many of us should be, and also for a long time, after having launched an attack on the mystical body of Christ which is the Church (Colossians 1,18), on which attached day after day patches that cannot stop, much less cure, the malignant metastases that have been circulating in his body for decades and decades. A state of affairs for which this pontificate is certainly not responsible, despite having done its part, without holding back when, to the damage that has already largely existed for several decades, it decided to add others, as original as they are serious.
«But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?» (Luke 18, 8)
From the Island of Patmos, 28 December 2024
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THE CHURCH OF THE PATCHES PASSES THE HOLY GATE OF IRREVERSIBLE DECADENCE IN A WHEELCHAIR
This Jubilee will be a failure spiritually and economically, because a Holy Door has been opened, not so much about what we are no longer, worse! We have opened the Holy Door on what we have become through a paradigm inversion: the Church of twenty-five years ago, despite being seriously ill, tried to force himself to open, to open wide the doors to Christ; the Church of today, Lying like a patient in the oncology hospice, she has tried to open wide the doors to the world..
Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo
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In the experience of man and in the life of the Church nothing happens by chance, If perhaps we are increasingly incapable of reading certain signs. And so, twenty-five years apart, two Supreme Pontiffs opened the Door of the Holy Year, appearing before her with the weight of old age and her disabling illnesses.
At Christmas 1999, The visible Church led by His Holiness John Paul II arrived seriously ill before the Holy Door. This Pontiff, weakened by Parkinson's disease, It was a plastic example of this.: assisted by a master of ceremonies dressed in a dignified ecclesiastical vestment, who wanted, in any case, kneel although with obvious difficulties and great physical suffering. He never agreed to make exceptions with genuflections, especially before the Holy Eucharist. For the solemn occasion, The Holy Father wore a mantum that precedes the birth of Christianitas by centuries. A cloak known in ancient Roman pagan religion as a “pluvial”, used by him Pontifex Maximus to shelter from the rain, when from the top of the Sublicio Bridge, located between the current neighborhoods of Trastevere and Testaccio, at the height of Porta Portese, He studied the movements of water and the flight of birds to interpret the will of the gods.
For the solemn jubilee event of the year 2000, The Holy Father wore a cape about which much criticism was made. That garment, made in Prato, It had been woven in very bright colors: rojo, blue and gold, symbols present in nature and in the human spiritual dimension. Red usually symbolizes life and strength.; the blue, the union of heaven and earth; the gold, divinity.
If we reflect on it in retrospect, That play of colors was like the last explosion of light before the arrival of the gloomy grayness that surrounds us today.; and that it is not attributable to him, nor to the Supreme Pontiffs who succeeded him from 2005; because the crisis of the Church began a long time ago. A minimal knowledge of history would be enough — in this world with memories that barely reach back to yesterday, since we do not even reach the day before yesterday - to understand that the germs of the crisis that caused the ecclesiastical and ecclesiastical decline, blatantly visible today, They were already present between the pontificates of Leo XIII and Pius, at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century.
If with John Paul II the illness pressed at the door, With the Supreme Pontiff Francis the visible Church crossed a point of no return, pushed onto a wheelchair by the shadow of an emaciated priest dressed in a pair of pants, instead of a dignified ecclesiastical vestment. That of John Paul II, despite being a Church in crisis for decades, always tried to kneel before the Body and Blood of Christ, trying not to get irreversibly sick. The Church of Francis does not kneel before the Body and Blood of Christ, because now she is seriously and irreversibly ill. However, He kneels to wash and kiss the feet of prisoners and prostitutes in the Mass of the Lord's Supper, despising the wealth of our glorious places of worship, that they are not the fruit of princely splendor — as some uncultured people might think — but of the faith of believers and the work of the greatest artists who wanted to honor God, offering the best, paying the highest homage that could be offered to the Divine Creator of heaven and earth, of all visible and invisible things. That's why the abbreviation D.O.M, what does it mean: God is the Greatest, It is sculpted on many ecclesiastical buildings. If, on the one hand, what is not known is despised, on the other hand, there is no hesitation in exalting prisons, among those that end up having committed crimes, except the case of innocent people unjustly convicted due to judicial errors. Although some don't remember it, or are not really aware of this incontrovertible reality, It is worth reminding them that criminals end up in jail.
Those who are inside prisons must be recovered, not exalted as if they were faithful devotees of modern cathedrals, or unspecified victims of a bad society, guilty of not having fully understood them. If someone is in there, outside, often more than one, and sometimes even entire families, They have cried because of him. So, It would be good to remember that forgiveness is such if it goes hand in hand with the punishment inflicted by justice, which on the spiritual level acts as a purification of the condemned, transforming prison into an action of that divine grace that first forms and then transforms man through the atonement of those whom human law designates as crimes, and Catholic doctrine as sins. In both cases, both in regard to crimes and sins, secular states with a liberal-democratic imprint, like the Church for its part, They offer differently, but substantially similar, the possibility of atonement, which implies in itself that recovery that erases the guilt derived from the crime or sin committed. This is the apostolate in prisons, the rest is surreal and harmful ideology, between foot washing and “prisoners' jubilees” of a Supreme Pontiff arriving before the Holy Door of the Papal Archbasilica of Saint Peter pushed in a wheelchair by an emaciated priest in trousers, because in that case it is impossible to get up and walk. But he gets up and walks until he opens the Holy Door in the Roman prison of Rebibbia, comparing it to a basilica (cf.. video WHO).
Does anyone want to remind the Holy Father that in Rome we have basilicas built on the blood of Christian martyrs cruelly murdered in hatred of faith (in hatred of the catholic faith) and that the title basilica is not particularly appropriate for a prison chapel? And this is where the words of the psalmist come to mind:
How long will I feel anguish in my soul and sadness in my heart, day after day? How long will my enemy triumph at my expense??
Señor, My God, look at me and answer me! Enlighten my eyes so that I don't sleep with the dead,
and let my enemy not say that he finished me, Nor will my adversaries rejoice to see me hesitate..
As for me, I trust in your goodness; I will know the joy of your salvation and I will sing to the Lord who has treated me well (Salmo 13, 2-5).
The Jubilee, also called Holy Year, It has great spiritual significance that affects the life of the entire universal Church. The heart of this event is the Sacrament of Penance for the remission of sins and the penalties for sins.. Its institution is lost in the mists of time and is linked to the experience of the ancient People of Israel.. The official website of the Holy See offers a historical tour that I recommend reading (watch: What is the Jubilee?). It is a text so precise and well done that there are no more explanations, For my part I could only repeat what was contained and explained in it..
Now I would like to move from the spiritual sphere to the financial one., starting from the premise that I hope to be wrong in certain personal convictions and have to publicly correct them in the coming months. I fear that this Jubilee will be a failure spiritually and economically., because a Holy Door has been opened, not so much about what we are no longer, worse! We have opened the Holy Door on what we have become through a paradigm reversal: the Church of twenty-five years ago, despite being seriously ill, tried to force himself to open, to open wide the doors to Christ (watch HERE); the Church of today, lying as a patient in the oncological hospice ward, has tried to open, to open wide the doors to the world. And as I have often had the opportunity to remember in recent years, The task that Christ God has entrusted to us by divine mission is not to please the world, but to oppose him:
«If you were of the world, the world would love them as their own. But since they are not of the world, but I chose them and took them out of him, "the world hates them" (Juan 15,19).
Images can often summarize an entire state of affairs without resorting to words. For example: What to say about the Protestant episcopese sitting in the seats of honor along with representatives of different religions? But we are inclusive!! Therefore, to exclude everything that is Catholic, we must necessarily include everything that is not Catholic… of course, all obviously expressed with due human respect towards the Lady present on the podium as “obispo” in the Papal Archbishopric of St. Peter, without any of the clerical solons realizing that in this way we run the risk of letting through a message of normalization and approval, because a woman cannot define herself as “bishop” and nobody, on the catholic side, in no way can you recognize it as such, not even if it belongs to a non-Catholic Christian religion born from the heresy and schism of Martin Luther, what we remember: He was a heretic and he was not a reformer.
Luther did not produce, in fact, some reform; the only true reform was carried out by the Fathers at the Council of Trent. Luther tore apart the Church of Christ with a terrible schism, which remains as is to this day, with due respect to the bishops on the platform of honor at the inauguration of the Holy Year, over the tomb of the apostle Peter, with the total indifference of inclusive clericalism.
We were talking about the economic discourse… for the Jubilee of 2000, The Decree Law of the 23 October 1996, n. 551, containing "Urgent measures for the Great Jubilee of 2000", later converted into law 23 December 1996, n. 651. Work for this event began years ago., after the approval of specific laws, but above all with the attribution of the astronomical sum of money: 3.500 billion of the old liras, which in current currency is equivalent to one thousand eight hundred million euros. Also in this case I refer to the official website of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport, where everything is documented and detailed (watch HERE). That being said, It must be remembered that the president of the Italian bishops at that time was His Eminence Cardinal Camillo Ruini, endowed with rare political skills, followed by an army of bishops who were not yet like the current caricatures, who compete with each other to see who carries the most humble and poor wooden cross on their chest, possibly made from material from a sunken ship off the coast of the Sicilian island Lampedusa; boats on which human traffickers transport poor illegal and desperate immigrants, among whom there are often women and children.
That of the years preceding the Jubilee of the 2000 It was another Church, another episcopate, another pontificate… but above all, another society and another national and international geopolitical structure. Here is an exhaustive example capable of clarifying everything: in that period in Italy, if before the administrative elections any diocesan bishop expressed his dissatisfaction with one or more particularly controversial or aggressive candidates, They took measures to correct the objective and lower the tone during the course of their electoral campaigns.; but there is more: when in June 2005 There was a referendum in Italy on assisted procreation, Cardinal Camillo Ruini expressly invited Italians not to go to vote. Result: three out of four Italians did not go to the polls and the referendum was a fiasco (watch HERE). The fact of personally appreciating and recognizing certain evident and undoubted qualities of Cardinal Camillo Ruini, regretting that today figures of his high stature, unfortunately we no longer have, It takes nothing away from the fact that I would never have wanted to have him as a diocesan bishop.. In fact, I still consider it today., on a human and spiritual level, as “a cold, dry bone covered in velvet”, how I defined it, for your little joy, for a few years without repair, for my part, of anything he is notoriously susceptible to outside of lacking a sense of humor.
With all other types of men and all other types of Church completely different, on the occasion of the great jubilee event of the year 2000, Rome was made new. It was also the interest of the State, that he recovered everything he had invested with high income and interest, both economic and image, as the Church did, which thanks to the enormous funds allocated to that extraordinary event it was able to take advantage of to renovate most of its structures., many of which had already been in terrible conditions for years. And here we must remember that Rome, Even then it was full of religious institutes, most of which were built after the Concordat stipulated in February 1929 between the Kingdom of Italy and the Holy See (in it 1929, after the fall of the Papal State and the taking of Rome in September 1870; The Kingdom of Italy recognized Vatican City as an independent sovereign state governed by the Roman Pontiff). Works erected for the most part in the years 1930, in a true competition between the historical Orders and the different religious Congregations, male and female, to see who built the biggest institutes. At the gates of the Third Millennium, with a drastic decrease in the birth rate that began at the end of the years 1960, certain catholic schools, day care centers and various assistance institutions no longer had a reason to exist, since they were mostly pharaonic structures. It must also be considered that in the 1978 was approved in Italy “great social achievement” of the abortion law, thanks to which orphanages disappeared, no longer necessary, since children could be killed before they were born. Not to mention the numerous curias and general houses of the different male and female Orders and Congregations., almost always with novitiates or theology students inside, what led to having, between the fifties and sixties, communities that numbered one or two hundred religious, between those who had professed solemn vows and the young simple professed in formation.
In Rome in the early seventies, it was impossible not to find priests, friars and nuns everywhere along the urban roads. There were also young seminarians and theology students from the different national and international seminaries and Roman schools., that when they went out for a walk they formed lines of dozens and dozens of young clerics. In a nutshell: The decline in birth rates and the inexorable crisis of vocations had reduced, in the following decades, most of these large structures to being inhabited no longer by one hundred or two hundred., but by six or seven elderly men and women religious, with buildings that were now in a semi-ruinous state, with obsolete systems and outside of all legal regulations regarding security. So, on the occasion of the Jubilee of the year 2000, Not only were a large part of these institutes renovated, but it was decided to make them profitable in some way: reserving a small wing for religious men and women, now numerically reduced to a minimum and transforming the bulk of the buildings into hostels, actually in hotels, because that is what most of these institutions are today. It was a forward-thinking operation., Thanks to which the buildings of many institutes were saved and they were allowed to produce the money necessary to sustain themselves..
Unfortunately, priests, friars and nuns They are capable - and they really are like few others - of wasting money on useless expenses., sometimes even in harmful works that later cause great losses, without realizing that certain structures require a lot of care and careful maintenance. And so, twenty-five years ago after having been saved from very serious problems, related to their great buildings that they had not been able to restore, nor properly preserve, nor to adapt to legal standards regarding safety; They found nothing better to do than let them return to their semi-ruined state for the next twenty-five years., not all, but a good part of them do. This is what I usually call “clerical patch psychology.”. And it is easy to reveal the meaning of this definition: Does a structure require routine maintenance? Why spend money, just leave it like this, and just in case, say with all the cynicism typical and sometimes unique to priests, friars and nuns: “It's not worth the useless bitter blood, Those who will come later will take care of it”. At this point, all the ordinary maintenance interventions omitted over the years end up becoming serious needs for extraordinary maintenance, which however cost a lot. No problem, we will put a patch on it, entrusting the work to people who, to change the banal air conditioner filters, they will do that due to the inexperience of priests, friars and nuns are paid more than what they are paid in the latest generation systems, low consumption and high energy saving.
As there are many examples I will limit myself to just one: Last year I had the opportunity to find myself in an institute of nuns while painters were painting the rooms of their house-hotel. Seeing them mixing anonymous paints in buckets with plenty of water and smelling a rather unpleasant odor that smelled like toxic chemicals, I asked: “What brand of eco-friendly paint are you using??”. Then, as I walked through the hallways, I noticed an avalanche of stains not only on the walls, but also in furniture, on baseboards and even on fire extinguishers dirty with paint drips. I grabbed the foreman and told him: «If you had done something like that in my house, I wouldn't have let you out through the door but through the window., "taking care not to give you a cent". At night, The irritated Mother Superior told me not to bother the workers anymore.. I replied: «People who have placed water drains from air conditioners inside guest room showers and are not satisfied with that, They have even removed the outlets from the electrical system, They do not deserve to be called workers but criminals. While you nuns demonstrate that you are incapable of managing the considerable patrimony from which your congregation has the grace to benefit.".
A wheelchair pushed by an emaciated, pants-clad priest inaugurated what we could reasonably define as “Jubilee patch” focused on our irreversible spiritual and financial decline, of which our increasingly empty squares and churches are a paradigm. Or maybe someone forgets that the 24 December 1999 St. Peter's Square was so full of people that the crowd of faithful reached the Castel Sant'Angelo and the Lungotevere? Someone wants to address the obvious and sad fact that the 24 December 2024, as shown in the photo accompanying this article, the same square was completely empty in the center and in the four squares of chairs placed under the steps of the basilica you can see so many empty seats.
One last question is essential.: Why would a devout Catholic leave Australia or Peru to travel to Rome?? To listen to an old Pontiff who, when he opens his mouth, talks about poor and immigrants, of immigrants and poor, of poor and immigrants…? As if the Word of God had come to this world only to speak and care for the poor in the favelas and the Villas of misery?? And those who do not have the great privilege of being poor, They are also children of God, or not? And what would the jubilant pilgrim find in Rome? I would find the vagabonds camped under Bernini's colonnade; would find Borgo Santo Spirito and Borgo Pio, respectively to the left and right of the Vatican and St. Peter's Square, where early in the morning merchants are forced to throw buckets of bleach to try to eliminate the sour smell of urine that penetrates the nostrils. in a nauseating way. And where should the jubilant pilgrim stay?? Perhaps where the nuns or friars who, after the Jubilee of the 2000, once he Uncle McDuck O Scrooge McDuck of the Italian Republic renewed its structures free of charge, They never considered the problem of renewing beds and mattresses or redoing the toilets.; restore the plaster and paint the walls; that offer freeze-dried milk and powdered substitutes for breakfast that rival the products marketed during the period in which the former fascist regime proclaimed autarky, after which it was no longer possible to use products imported from abroad, starting with coffee? Let's ignore the poor quality of the food that these houses offer as catering services.. Above all, Let us ignore the sad reality of the Indian and Filipino nuns taken from their countries, taken to the religious houses of Rome and placed under the direction of an eighty-year-old Italian nun as domestic servants, who should be addressed in English, because even if they have lived in Italy for ten years, they do not understand or speak Italian. Let us overlook and draw a compassionate veil over all this and all the worst that circulates in certain houses.…
And finally, How can we not mention the exotic characters that we increasingly find working in these religious reception houses?, especially in the nuns' houses, ranging from girls with bare bellies to boys who wear three earrings in their ears, piercings and tattoos in sight? From the series: Do we want to welcome pilgrims in religious houses of hospitality, Or do we want to transform religious houses into failed branches of a gay village?? How is it possible that the Holy See, sometimes even attentive to trivialities, It has not occurred to them to send inspectors to verify whether certain houses run by religious men and women, or by their lay supervisors, really meet all the necessary requirements for religious reception in a dignified manner?
Having opened the opening of the Holy Door in the Roman prison of Rebibbia It was timely and farsighted in its own way., being the most appropriate place where many of us should be and even for a long time, after having attacked the mystical Body of Christ which is the Church (Colossians 1,18). A Holy Body on which today they are placed, day after day, patches that can't stop, much less cure, the malignant metastases that have been attacking him for decades. The metastases were not caused by this pontificate, who is not responsible for them, despite having done their part without stopping the damage that had already existed for several decades, decided instead to add others, so original, as equally serious.
"But, when the Son of man comes, Will you find faith on earth?» (Lucas 18,8)
From the Island of Patmos, 31 December 2024
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We can have a Christmas without the birthday boy?
WE CAN HAVE A CHRISTMAS WITHOUT THE CELEBRATOR?
Christ Jesus our Lord, that on this day we remember embodied in our humanity and history, manifests the fundamental mystery of all the Christian mysteries that are related to our salvation.
Author:
Gabriele Giordano M. Scardocci, o.p.
Christmas it is among the most loved and celebrated holidays in the world, because it is universally considered a moment of joy, of family reunion and sharing.
Cities in every part of the globe light up of glittering decorations, the Christmas markets are full of typical products of this period and the houses are filled with the scent of traditional dishes. But this Solemnity can be celebrated, specifically Christian, without mentioning the reason for the party? It is true that Christmas creates a magical atmosphere, but we can be satisfied with just this or let the commercial component prevail, without remembering the reason for this occasion, that is, without inviting to the party the One who is the reason and the reason for so much joy and peace desired and invoked?
We can have Christmas without the Celebrant, Christ Jesus our Lord, which on this very day we remember embodied in our humanity and history, thus manifesting the fundamental mystery of all the Christian mysteries that are related to our salvation? This is precisely the angelic message brought to the shepherds on the holy night of Christmas:
"Fear not:: there, you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people: today, the City of David, is born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord" (LC 2,10-11).
A merely "consumed" Christmas cannot be enough and satisfy us in the party or in the dishes, even if this is done with family or friends. Indeed, precisely the preparation of the latter, delicacies of all kinds that fill our Christmas tables, of panettone or pandoro, traditional Italian desserts of the period, that divide the sides of lovers of one or the other, they send us back to slowness, to that care that requires time and dedication, respect for tradition and patience.
So our faith also needs as much passion and care, especially when faced with the all-to-be-adored mystery of Jesus' birth. It cannot be overshadowed by the commercial aspect, from the frenzy of shopping Christmas looking for the perfect gift for the people dear to us. Nothing can obscure the message of love, hope and redemption that Christmas brings with it. Yet also the preparations, if done with love, with due attention to their meaning, they can help us keep alive this important aspect of the Christian faith which corresponds to the Incarnation of the divine Word.
Rediscover the authentic spirit of Christmas also through the things that are done in this period, in the family or in the Christian community, setting aside the purely worldly spirit of the celebration to live every occasion with deep faith and sincere love among ourselves and towards the Lord who was born in Bethlehem. Do simple things together, how to prepare the foods that will go on the table, take care of details to ensure that everyone feels welcomed and loved. Not forgetting sharing with those who are poorer or less fortunate, because precisely in this circumstance we can reevaluate and give significance to the virtue of charity, since it was precisely out of love that Christ was born for us. And then read Christmas stories, among all the Gospels of the Nativity, which make us understand the purpose and meaning of this mystery; and participate in the Christmas Mass to understand through liturgical action and prayer how much the Lord loved us by coming among us.
How precious it is, to this end, presence at home and obviously in Church, of a nativity scene. Widespread throughout the world, it was born right from us, thanks to the religious genius of Saint Francis who in 1223 he created the first living nativity scene in Greccio. Each figure of the nativity scene and the symbols hidden in it have a profound meaning of faith and culture: help tell the story of the birth of Baby Jesus.
It would be nice, as happens for example in religious Jewish families on the occasion of Passover, that also in Christian families, in front of the Nativity scene, the little ones were told the reason for those figures, of those poses and how the gift of the eternal Father was given to humanity, Baby Jesus light that brings salvation to the world, has passed through the availability of some people, particularly Joseph and the Virgin Mary.
Mary is the Mother that we perceive in the attitude of love and dedication: they recall his faith which abandoned itself to the divine will. St. Joseph, with his stick, it is the right silent and full of strength, placed to protect the family of Nazareth, figure of a Church to come. Immediately after the shepherds, which are located near Bethlehem, symbol of humility and simplicity. First to receive the announcement of the birth of Jesus and first to approach the mystery: they anticipate the future calling of the people, among which the humble and simple will stand out.
And how can we not mention the Magi, who arrive from afar guided by the star. They bring precious gifts: air, frankincense and myrrh, which help us meditate on kingship in advance, on the divinity and even on the future suffering of Jesus. Even the presence of the Magi in the nativity scene underlines the universality of the Christian message, which embraces every people and culture. Then the angels, which overlook the Nativity scene, they announce the good news of the birth of the Lord. They sing: «Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth to the men loved by the Lord», bringing a message of joy and hope. Finally, the star, who guides the Magi to the manger, symbol of divine light and grace that illuminates humanity's path towards salvation. Even the animals present in the nativity scene have their own spiritual relevance. The ox and the donkey, often depicted next to the manger, they represent patience and industriousness. According to tradition they warmed the Baby Jesus with their breath, thus indicating the simplicity and generosity of nature.
The nativity scene and every aspect linked to Holy Christmas, no matter how trivial it may be, It has its own meaning to which we can give the right value in order to help us understand Christmas today, although they have passed approx 2024 years from that Event. Even traditional things can marry with the innovations of modernity and what is apparently ancient in truth has a validity that never fades. Thus Christmas does not appear as a celebration of only consumption or lights, but it conveys a profound and beautiful message, full of hope for men and for the whole of creation, which never fades and which does not expire with the passage of time. God loves us and remains with us, this is why He sent His Son Jesus, born for us.
Santa Maria Novella in Florence, 25 December 2024
Christmas Day
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From the spirit of the world to the Holy Spirit. The necessary sanctification of priests is a certainty of sanctification also for the lay faithful
FROM THE SPIRIT OF THE WORLD TO THE HOLY SPIRIT. The necessary sanctification of the priests is a certainty of sanctification also for the lay faithful - when the spirit of the world is preferred to the Holy Spirit, a transmutation occurs in the life of the priest and his sanctification is no longer the work of the presence of agapic love but of that erotic love..
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Perhaps not even the Virgin Mary mourned the death of her son, Carlo Acutis' mother may have succeeded?
PERHAPS NOT EVEN THE VIRGIN MARY DID MOURN THE DEATH OF HER SON, CARLO ACUTIS' MOTHER MAY HAVE SUCCEEDED?
Carlo Acutis' mother goes around giving lectures on her holy son who died in 15 years in 2006 for fulminant leukemia. We are at tragicomedy? Of course not, we are only at the understandable tragedy of a mother who has chosen an unusual way to try to process her son's mourning.
—Ecclesiastical current affairs—
Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo
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I owe eternal gratitude to my two main trainers: Peter Gumpel S.J. (Hannover 1923 – †Roma, 2022) e Paolo Molinari, S.J (Torino 1924 – †Roma 2014) who for half a century directed the general postulation of the Society of Jesus and who also instructed me in the postulation of the causes of the Saints. We are not talking about remote times, but from an era in which the so-called "vamp postulators" with degrees were not yet in fashion of both rights at the Pontifical Lateran University, who change companions in the same way they change clothes designer labels and which together with the “manager postulators", also lay people, they are capable of extracting mind-boggling sums from the nuns of some congregation in agony, but endowed with considerable assets, who are unaware that they are now at the entrance door of the cremation centre, which will soon entrust their ashes to history, at all costs they want the founder to be blessed or saintly.
the theologian and historian of dogma Peter Gumpel, S.J. (1923 – 2022)
I was on the unforgettable third floor of the general curia of the Society of Jesus, at the civic 4 of Borgo Santo Spirito, where I believe I made some of the most fundamental decisions of my life, starting from the most important: become a priest. It was the month of September of the year 2011, I was helping Father Peter Gumpel in some work related to certain documents of the cause of beatification of Pius XII, when during a break he told me that various experts had great reservations regarding the beatification, then to follow for the canonization of Maria Goretti, because direct family members were always alive: brothers and sisters, but above all his mother Assunta. Father Peter told me this way:
«Although the matter is not known, before proceeding with the beatification, occurred 45 years after the death of the martyr - not six years later as is done today with the Roman Pontiffs -, was asked of the mother, to the brothers and sisters the promise that they would lead a private life and would never tell stories or make public testimonies about their daughter and sister, because the Church had taken care to say what there was to say and if anything had been necessary to add or integrate, the Church itself would always have provided".
Mother Assunta, with the brothers and sisters of the Goretti family, they complied with what was requested by the Ecclesiastical Authority and none: journalist, writer, scholar or simply curious has never gleaned a word from them beyond what the Church has told about the story of the teenage martyr.
The mother of Carlo Acutis he goes around giving lectures on the dead holy son a 15 years in 2006 for fulminant leukemia, without any Ecclesiastical Authority having invited her to exercise maximum discretion, quite the opposite, they stimulate her in this sense! We are at tragicomedy? Of course not, we are only at the understandable tragedy of a mother who has chosen an unusual way to try to process her son's mourning; a mourning that can never be processed, especially from a mother, so unnatural is the loss of a child for parents.
Proof of what has just been stated it is imprinted in the vocabulary: a child who loses his parents is an orphan, a wife who loses a husband is a widow, a husband who loses his wife is a widower. A parent who instead loses a child, what is it, with what term is it defined? There isn't even a term in the dictionary to define a parent who loses a child, with all due respect to the currents of certain wild psychology that speak of the mourning process for the death of a child.
Maybe, perhaps not even the Blessed Virgin Mary mourned the death of his son. Including divine plans, she acquired the awareness - we do not know when and through what gradual process over time - that the son she brought into the world was the incarnate Word of God "begotten not created of the same substance as the Father", who offered himself as a sacrificed lamb to wash away the sins of the world.
However, processing the mourning of the child is something else, even for the Blessed Virgin Mary, who despite being the mother of the incarnate God who died and rose again, even though she was born without original sin and assumed into heaven after having fallen asleep, he was still a created creature, was human, not divine. Just as a created creature she is the mother of San Carlo Acutis, which is not the Immaculate Conception.
the Island of Patmos, 7 December 2024
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Ok Houston, down here in the visible Church we have had big problems in religious life
OK, HOUSTON, DOWN HERE IN THE VISIBLE CHURCH WE HAVE HAD BIG PROBLEMS IN RELIGIOUS LIFE Some people who in lay life would not have been able to access positions of responsibility because they were deficient from various points of view, taking advantage of the weakness of the Religious Orders they manage to realize themselves in them and acquire prestige and credit, keeping track....
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Dear Tucho, I'm writing to you so I can distract myself a bit’
DEAR TUCHO I'M WRITING TO YOU, SO I DISTRACTED MYSELF A LITTLE BIT
However, we really like colloquial speaking, like between old friends, goes a long way A lot nice. Also because behind that Italian is a bit like that, which is found in official documents, we always perceive those South American cadences that immediately make us "fiesta", or as the late Raffaella Carrà sang: «How fantastic is this party?»
Author
Hermit Monk
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You don't mind, vero, if I address you like this? It's that you - you and the Big Boss - have cleared the colloquial style outside the box and the precision to which that other guy had accustomed us. That, what was his name? The one who left before his due time. However, we really like colloquial speaking, like between old friends, also because it does a lot A lot nice. Also because behind that Italian is a bit like that, which is found in official documents, we always perceive those South American cadences that immediately make us "fiesta", or as the late Raffaella Carrà sang: How fantastic is this party?.
They also remind us Speedy Gonzalez when he shouted: "Above, Above!»; or the Argentine song: Boys, tonight I'm getting drunk.
It's just that we read your letter sent to the Synod on abandoning the question of the ordination of women deacons. It is the Grand Chief who said that the matter is not mature. Like pears or kiwis. All right. If he says it, he obeys.
But what a great excuse you made at the beginning. It reminds me of when they called me to the interview and I wasn't prepared. I think I made my grandmother die I don't know how many times, poor woman! But it did her good, because she left at a good age. How do you write in an official document addressed precisely to that "Group 5" that was supposed to debate the issue, than the group coordinator, The Doctrinal Secretary of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, he was absent because he had to go to the doctor? And since they were expecting you, then you sent two other people to write down the proposals. Come on. It wasn't better to say, like you do now: Let it go. If anything, let them know the day before: "Day off tomorrow", as Ancelotti said to the Real Madrid players the day they won the Champion.
However, a lot knit also the reasons why it can't be done. The first. Since the ministry of catechists, proposed by the Grand Chief, the bishops did not accept it, except for a very few, then deaconesses are no good. A compelling logic. How to say: Since aspirin does not cure cancer, then let's forget about those drugs that cure this evil. Optimal. You say: But not even the bishops of the Amazon did it, that women and catechists find themselves leading communities without a priest. Grace to the cabbage. They asked for the ordination of married people, what do they do with aspirin, to return to the example.
The second is also strong. The acolyte for women has been accepted to a small extent in the dioceses and priests are often the first to not propose anyone. Another logic that puts you in a corner. So since a product doesn't sell, or is hindered by someone, let's close the factory or send another supply chain to hell that could bring in good money instead. Extraordinary.
But the nail it is touched upon in the last motivation which is really from Feline thrill. Especially if you consider that it comes from someone who presides over a Dicastery of the Holy See:
«The diaconate for males: in how many dioceses of the world has he been welcomed. And where they were welcomed, how often are they just ordained altar boys?».
Now, if I were a permanent deacon I would feel offended, but a lot eh, that such a vulgar caricature of the diaconate comes from the place you occupy. Then, felt, I can say that all priests are pedophiles? That you in the Vatican live the good life and that you are in the richest state in the world, as the speakers of black legends say? Of course I can say that, because this is the logic you use, touch, similarly to the speakers of the black legends.
Sorry huh, if I told you so directly. If you get angry I'm sorry, I take everything back. Because I would also have some on the Big Chief. Oh yeah. You say that He would have chosen that the Commission established during the year should continue to work on the issue 2020. Four years that «trabajan», cabbage. How long does it take them? And there are twelve of them, like the Apostles. Oh well, you know how things go over there. Forty years to say something about Medjugorje. By the way, It's not like that talkative Lady could tell us anything precise about these matters, even eavesdropping at the Principal's door? Instead of all these secrets to be revealed?
However, what I wanted to give you is a suggestion. Next time instead of taking us for fools, tell us: «It is done, or, it's not done". If anything adding: «Because it's a hard thing for everyone to digest». It's better. That we have no time to waste, not even to delude ourselves.
Always yours most devoted, Kind regards from a concerned hermit.
From the Hermitage, 24 October 2024
P.S.
For those who will read: the writing is not in favor of women deacons, nor married priests. These are debated theories, no? He is only interested in the way of communicating currently in force in those parts, in the Vatican. I beg you: don't be Tucho too.
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Medjugorje by Agatha Christie: «A clue is a clue, two clues are a coincidence, but three clues prove it"
MEDJUGORJE AND AGATHA CHRISTIE: «A CLUE IS A CLUE, TWO CLUES ARE A COINCIDENCE, BUT THREE CLUES MAKE PROOF"
«The faithful, regarding the cult of Mary "Queen of Peace", are “authorized to observe it with prudence”, although this does not imply approval of the supernatural character of the phenomenon in question, with the note that believers are not obligated to believe it. That the priests of this Diocese, accepting and respecting the decision of the Church, are free to agree or disagree with this spiritual proposal" (Decree of the Bishop of Mostar-Duvno, 19 September 2024).
Author
Hermit Monk
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That with the advent of Francesco, a paradigm shift has occurred in the Church, it is no longer a case that needs proof. It's not possible yet, nor is it prudent to take stock of his pontificate so far, but some things can already be said. Even Father Antonio Spadaro writes that the way of communicating has changed with the current pontiff S.J., immediately his trusted interpreter, in an article that recently appeared on The Republic:
«Francis understood that comprehensibility is not the same thing as clarity... Today's man, more than simply "clear" speeches... it needs speeches that are credible, carriers of complexity, situations, of experiences, of life that sometimes is not and cannot be so "clear". The clear language is that of the norm. If the pastor adopts it as a communication method he ends up getting confused and taking on the role of the legislator and the judge" (The Republic, 19.09.24, pg. 39).
What is worse than lying and deceiving the People of God? The awareness that the People of God are being lied to and deceived
The famous mystery writer Agatha Christie said: «A clue is a clue, two clues are a coincidence, but three clues prove it". So no more clear and distinct ideas, so dear to his last predecessor, but a new style that is attentive to complexities, to situations and experiences, of individuals as well as communities. This is probably why the Pope chose Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez as his close collaborator at the head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.. Who received these recommendations from the Pontiff on the occasion of his assignment, in a letter that we report here in the Spanish version because there is no official translation from the Holy See:
«The Dicastery that you will preside over, In other times he used immoral methods. These were times when, rather than promoting theological knowledge, possible doctrinal errors were persecuted.. What I expect from you is undoubtedly something very different.…What's more, You know that the Church "needs to grow in its interpretation of the revealed Word and in its understanding of the truth" without this implying imposing a single way of expressing it. Because "the different lines of philosophical thought, theological and pastoral, if they allow themselves to be harmonized by the Spirit in respect and love, "They can also make the Church grow.". This harmonious growth will preserve Christian doctrine more effectively than any control mechanism. It is good that your assignment expresses that the Church "encourages the charisma of theologians and their effort for theological research" as long as "do not be satisfied with a desktop theology», with «a cold and hard logic that seeks to dominate everything». It will always be true that reality is superior to the idea. In that sense, We need Theology to be attentive to a fundamental criterion: consider "inadequate any theological conception that ultimately calls into question the omnipotence of God and, especially, his mercy". We need a thought that knows how to convincingly present a God who loves, that forgives, that saves, that liberates, that promotes people and calls them to fraternal service» (cf.. text WHO, italics and underlining mine).
Vatican, 1 Julio 2023
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Since that day the Cardinal has not failed in this trust and this can easily be found in the notes or responses given by the presided over Dicastery. Among these, the Note on the blessing that can be given caused quite a stir, under certain conditions, to irregular or homosexual couples and the very recent one about the spiritual experience linked to Medjugorje, which created a wide debate in the ecclesial community. The Cardinal Prefect cannot be accused of having failed in his mandate, moreover, its orientation is clear and made explicit on several occasions, as when he said, in a meeting at the Lateran University in February this year:
«A theology for the People of God is a theology attentive to the dynamics that this people is experiencing in this historical moment, to help him interpret them in the light of faith, both to purify them and to encourage everything that is positive. This is typical of any enculturation process that includes both aspects. Hopefully, therefore, that theologians can be equal to this mission. It is certainly not a question of inventing a new Revelation, but to bring out from the inexhaustible source of the Gospel what can best illuminate the life of the People of God, what can help these people to live happily amidst the limits and difficulties of life. Indeed, in the letter that the Pope wrote to me when he appointed me Prefect, he said that ultimately today we “need a theology that can convincingly present a God who loves, who forgives, that saves, that frees, who promotes people and calls them to fraternal service" (WHO).
Sixty years ago or more the Second Vatican Council was celebrated. As the dean of Italian theologians said, Severino Dianich, it put the theme of the hermeneutics of faith back at the center of the life of the Church. Since then many things have changed and societies and cultures have profoundly transformed. The great social pressures, cultural and ideological ideas that animated the period of the Council have faded, some tragically, others changed and divided into a thousand streams. Above all, the loss of great ideals and points of reference common to the masses has led to a reevaluation of religious sentiment, after all, never suppressed or erased, as some hoped. But even within it the same dynamics that run through society have been reproduced; as much as the loss of common identity, as much as the subject left alone in the face of the great problems that afflict existence and the post-modern world, they highlighted the same neuroses found elsewhere: anxiety, disorientation, depressions, loss of meaning in one's life. Thus the search for places of apparitions that provide confirmation, messages from above offering reassurance have multiplied, so much so as to become a serious problem for the Church. The most striking signal is the religious phenomenon of Medjugorje on which the Church could no longer fail to intervene with an authoritative word, encouraging the spiritual journey that takes place there, but placing serious limits on both the messages and the "alleged" seers, both not recognized in a blatant and clear way. But if we look at the latest documents of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith before the recent Note on the Medjugorje phenomenon, there are nine texts that precede it, mostly responses to bishops about alleged apparitions and messages from the Virgin Mary, in different parts of the world. These responses were possible after the issuing by the same Dicastery of the «Regulations for proceeding in the discernment of alleged supernatural phenomena» (WHO).
It took twelve years for a first declaration for the facts reported by Bernadette which allowed the influx of faithful and veneration in Lourdes. Fatima had almost immediate relevance; at just two years old from the events declared by the shepherd children the local bishop, with the approval of the Holy See, he declared:
«Worthy of belief, the visions of the shepherd children of Cova da Iria, occurred in the parish of Fátima, in this diocese, from the 13 May to 13 October 1917".
But they were also other times and other contexts. In France, at the time of the Lourdes events, Emperor Louis Napoleon blocked any agreement with the Church beyond the concordat of 1801. In Portugal, the shepherd children were jailed for two days by order of the then mayor of Vila Nova. Beyond the historical context, we will be able to say that the Holy See's declarations on the events of Lourdes and Fatima were timely and concerned "facts considered extraordinary".
For the facts of Medjugorje It took over forty years for the publication of a Note that valued religious experience more than message data, defined with extreme clarity as “presumed”, the apparitions were defined as “alleged” but, above all, "alleged" self-styled seers. Now it's just that, religious experience, the fact that stands out most in the eyes of those who read the Note from the Dicastery. Of course, the partisans, sometimes actual Taliban, of the religious and spiritual events arising from the area of Bosnia-Herzegovina, they won't notice and have already hailed the Note as a victory, as a great recognition. But it has to be said. What the Note introduces, as well as in the nine documents that precede it, there are two aspects: that of the personal perception of a phenomenon on the one hand, and on the other hand the recognition of a religious experience even if not fully founded and clear in all its aspects. This is the new paradigm that stands out. The importance given to the perception of the individual, very in tune with what modern society hopes for, even in multiple areas; and the value given to experience which can even lead to good fruit beyond an ambiguous doctrine present in some groups. The Note asks the various bishops to monitor the religious experiences of individuals and groups; at the same time, recalling the rules, asks to "appreciate the pastoral value and also promote the diffusion of this spiritual proposal".
In my opinion this is something new in the Church, which I have defined as a new paradigm, moreover anticipated by the ways of doing and communicating of the current Supreme Pontiff and put into practice by his closest and most important collaborators. Where all this will lead is anyone's guess. It is evident that the Church, the current state, it is more inclined to govern these processes so that they do not deviate or deteriorate, rather than stopping them. This is the recommendation given to the bishops, that is, to the overseers of the People of God. The Bishop of Monstar-Duvno, the person directly involved in the events of Medjugorje, in fact he issued his own note following that of the Holy See in which after a resumption of the same, he clearly says the exact words:
«The faithful, regarding the cult of Mary "Queen of Peace", are “authorized to observe it with prudence” (Standards, art. 22, §: cf. Benedict XVI, Word of the Lord, n. 14), although this does not imply approval of the supernatural character of the phenomenon in question (cf.. Standards, art. 22, §2), with the note that believers are not obligated to believe it. That the priests of this Diocese, accepting and respecting the decision of the Church, are free to agree or disagree with this spiritual proposal" (WHO).
How can one greet a text of this kind calling it a historic approval by the Holy See, how he rejoiced, to name one among many, Father Livio Fanzaga, who from Radio Maria's microphones even speaks of "full recognition" (cf.. WHO). How can you? It is a question.
Incidentally it must be remembered that all the bishops who have succeeded one another in that Diocese since the beginning of the alleged apparitions, they didn't just be skeptical, they have declared apparitions throughout history to be false and the so-called seers to be unreliable. The alleged apparitions were declared not authentic by H.E. Mons. Pavalo Zanic, Bishop of Mostar-Duvno since 1980 al 1993, who was succeeded by H.E. Mons. Ratko Peric gave 1983 al 2000, than in his book The throne of wisdom (Church on Kamen, Mostar 1995), in the chapter entitled The criteria for evaluating apparitions dedicates a paragraph to the apparitions of Medjugorje where he tries to demonstrate that the apparitions of the Madonna are not true and that the alleged visionaries lied repeatedly and immediately (cf.. pp. 266-286).
Today we are certainly in a transition phase, long gone, as we said, since the conciliar times, but the approach has also changed rapidly compared to the previous magisteriums of recent Popes. Because of this, perhaps, attempts must be viewed with some benevolence, sometimes even curious, eccentric and clumsy used by the Pope and his collaborators to spread this new course? Just one example. Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez in the press conference to present the Note had to mention the difficulties that some "Marian messages" given in Medjugorje posed. But to interpret them positively, despite containing obvious inaccuracies, even doctrinal, he referred to the texts of mystical authors such as Saint John of the Cross or Saint Therese of Lisieux, which according to him would also report inaccuracies. Now the mystical experience is in itself unspeakable and with difficulty is translated into human words, even written ones. But these are still human authors who use the human tools available. This can be compared to the supposed messages that would come from above, from the Virgin Mary, of which the so-called seers are only intermediaries? What would messages be if they are not messages and must be decrypted? This is one of the many difficulties that should be seriously questioned.
The Church has chosen to operate in this way It is probably, rather than governing the ongoing processes, tries to chase them and contain them as best he can, accepting that personal experience and a religious proposal can become an opportunity for salvation, although it needs to be monitored carefully. But the Church is also called to deal with other aspects that accompany our contemporary society, among these the progressive distancing of it from the ecclesial community, the science and resulting technologies that now regulate the lives of human beings, the pressure of algorithms and so-called artificial intelligence which now dictate the choices of individuals and social groups. How will the Church respond to these requests, while it still appears too closed in on itself and its internal problems? Maybe with a double track, one for the simple people who still seek visions and ask for messages from above and another with which he seeks to dialogue and interact with society and contemporary worlds?
Again the aforementioned Italian theologian Severino Dianich he recently lambasted his brothers and fellow theologians, accusing them of treason (cf.. WHO), because they are incapable of uttering an insightful word about the facts happening in the world and the cultural processes underway. The responses of some theologians who felt caught short were either out of context or too verbose. It is certain that the Church is experiencing trouble, who knows if it will lead to a transformation or a new birth, certainly different from the previous ones to which we have been accustomed for centuries. In the years that followed the Council, as the movement born in May of spread 1968, he inherited Michel de Certeaux, much listened to in very secular France and who went on to direct the studies of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris spoke of "shattered Christianity" (WHO). An uncomfortable expression that was not accepted at the time, but whose effects we feel today. What the Christianity of tomorrow will be like? It is not known, because it's like wondering what the world will be like in the near future, in which the Church with its members will be inserted. Of course, hopefully tomorrow's Christianity is not composite, according to what is unfortunately revealed today, an aggregation of faithful fideists in the morbid search for Madonnas who appear around the world predicting catastrophes and delivering terrifying secrets to self-styled seers who now appear like wildflowers after the rain. The hope, at least my personal one, is that she stops looking at her own navel and begins to confidently announce the Gospel of Jesus Christ again, capable of forming solid and tenacious Christians "always ready to respond to anyone who asks you the reason for the hope that is in you" (1PT 3,15).
From the Hermitage, 5 October 2024
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The website of this magazine and the editions take name from the Aegean island in which the Blessed Apostle John wrote the Book of the Apocalypse, isola also known as «the place of the last revelation»
«God revealed the secrets of others ALTIUS»
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The bezel used as the cover of our home page is a 16th century fresco by Correggio. preserved in the Church of San Giovanni Evangelista in Parma
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