The failure of a badly understood apostolic collegiality. Those bishops reduced to officials stripped of all authority who must ratify the whims of others through interdiocesan seminaries

THE FAILURE OF A MISUNDERSTANDING APOSTOLIC COLLEGIALITY. THOSE BISHOPS REDUCED TO OFFICIALS STRIPPED OF ALL POWERS WHO MUST RATIFY OTHER PEOPLE'S WHIMS THROUGH THE SEMINARIES INTERDIOCESANI

More than an "outgoing Church", ours is a Church which, having concluded the pre-bankruptcy controlled administration phase, finds itself with the bailiffs at the gates for the seizure of the buildings, after the fraudulent bankruptcy produced by the imaginative Council egomenico of the interpreters of “spirit of the council” in that inauspicious season of the post-council which made the Holy Pontiff Paul VI say: "With the Second Vatican Council we expected spring and instead came the winter".

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"With the Second Vatican Council we expected spring and instead came the winter" [cf.. John Guitton, Paul VI secret].

It happens more and more often that various Italian bishops of whom I am a friend and confidant turn to me. If sometimes I report the experience or the bitterness of some of them, it is only because those directly involved have asked me to deal with that issue, so that we know what hardships and situations the few good bishops who still remain are facing.

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Faced with very delicate issues, not only does the saying "sin is said but not the sinner" apply, because not even the sin should be mentioned. Being confessor of many priests and not only, I would never say that I am the confessor of this or that other priest. Of necessity, secrecy must extend beyond the content of the confession itself. Otherwise there is a risk of generating problems like that crazy parish priest who said during a sermon: «Today I have been among you for ten years. I always remember my arrival, my first Holy Mass in the parish and also my first confession, where I began the ministry of confessor with a penitent who confessed to his adultery". He said the sin but not the sinner, which the mayor was not happy about, because unbeknownst to the parish priest he had always told the villagers that he was the first to confess to him.

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the bishop in question he was a man of great pastoral experience, even before it was launched spot of «shepherds with the smell of sheep», the result of which was that within a short time we saw priests radical chic with tailored clothes and sweaters by cashmere improvise overnight «poor for the poor», reaching the episcopate in chameleon-like glory amidst pastoral canes made by carpenters and pectoral crosses carved from the piece of wood from a sunken boat off the coast of Lampedusa. And in the final greetings of their letters, instead of the phrase "In Christ your Lord...", we have begun to read about locks of this kind: "In Christ the migrant ... In Christ poor among the poor ...". How to say: the episcopate is not enough for me, I also want the cardinalate. And someone has been given the cardinalate, between wooden pectoral crosses and migrant Christians.

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As I have said several times, complete with a reference to whores ― who, unlike these subjects, are honest and above all coherent ―, if tomorrow there was a change of course, get ready to see them enter their cathedral churches with seven meters of cappa magna and precious eighteenth-century damask mitres and gems on their heads. As if nothing had happened, because this is the style of people without restraint and human dignity, which even whores are gifted with, to the point of going before us into the Kingdom of Heaven, as Jesus Christ admonishes us [cf.. Mt 21, 28-32].

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The interview was about the problem of the seminar so-called inter-diocesan or regional. Institutions of which - I'll specify it immediately - I have always been a declared enemy, because I believe that every bishop should have the power and the right to train his future priests in his diocese, even if they were only two or three seminarians. the bishop in question, emeritus today, as soon as he was ordained a priest, he was appointed assistant pastor of an elderly and holy brother, of which he then always kept the souvenir photo in his studio, first as pastor, then when he was appointed auxiliary bishop of a nearby diocese, then again when he became metropolitan archbishop. At the time he had completed the necessary studies required for sacred ordination, without ever achieving any specialist and least of all theological doctorates. Having known him personally and deeply, I can testify that I have never known in Italy, at least as far as I'm concerned, a more competent pastoralist, wise and enlightened than him, above all behind the chairs of the various ecclesiastical universities.

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As an auxiliary bishop he actually lived in the diocesan seminary, he knew the seminarians one by one, he looked after them and followed them. These former seminarians, today all priests over fifty, they always speak of him with veneration. Some are my penitents or direct spirituals, because it was he who when asked which confessor or spiritual director to turn to, given the lean times we are living in, he addressed them to me. When there are no giants, it is a virtue of necessity to be satisfied with the dwarfs that the square offers.

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Finally, the metropolitan archiepiscopal see, never desired by him but almost imposed. At the time, two bishops from the region had put themselves in the running as self-candidates, that they found nothing better to do than to wage war against each other to win the favor of the nomination. The then apostolic nuncio excluded a priori the two contentious contenders brought forward by two factions of the bishops of that region and proposed a third, what he had shown as auxiliary bishop before, as diocesan bishop after, the greatest pastoral skills, that he was comfortable in his diocese and that he had no desire to be appointed to that metropolitan archiepiscopal see.

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Promoted to that metropolitan see first of all, like his style, he showed all his availability to the clergy and his particular concern for the regional seminary. Until one day, the young rector, in an almost sibylline way he gave him this strange speech: «You see Your Excellency, ours is a regional seminary that welcomes seminarians of bishops from various dioceses. She is very thoughtful and present, but I fear that this assiduous presence could create some discontent in the other bishops, who, like you, cannot be present in the seminary". Soon said: the appointment of the rector, of the vice-rector, of spiritual fathers, to follow up with the teachers in charge, they were decided by the bishops of the region, each of whom had some of his protégés to place. In short: a priesthood formation snatched from the bishops and totally delegated like a blank signed check to people chosen by them, so to speak … collegial. And here the first question arises: of when, in the name of a badly understood collegiality to say the least, a bishop is prevented from forming his own future priests? Question follows question: future priests, they are presbyters of the bishop or they are "regional presbyters" of an unspecified and understood ... collegiality?

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Before continuing the sad story I would like to clarify that the exchanges and talks that took place between this bishop and me date back to almost ten years ago, at the time when he decided to consult me ​​and choose me as a confidant. Clarification necessary to clarify who is the archbishop, both the diocese and the Italian region linked to these facts cannot be identified. Because if it were, I wouldn't talk about it.

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In those years this bishop complained to me that he not only had to visit the seminary of his diocese which had become a regional seminary with caution, because there was more and worse: several bishops of the region, considering him a so-called “conservative”, they had named, in a spirit of exquisite collegiality, the presbyters of two other dioceses were rector and vice-rector of the seminary. In another diocese he was also the dean of the theological faculty and more than half of the teachers, including teachers, both priests and laymen and women, to whom this bishop would never have entrusted the training of his future priests for the theological baccalaureate courses. While at the time its seminarians were about 15, those of the bishops of the other dioceses of the region varied from one to three or four. And suddenly the Metropolitan Archbishop found himself isolated and a stranger in his own home. All in the supreme name of an unspecified episcopal collegiality, of course.

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Faced with this situation, because he did not raise the necessary objections? He did, but we were already at the beginning of 2014, in the full honeymoon of the current pontificate based on «Poor church for the poor», «shepherds wearing the smell of sheep», "field hospital church", «Church outgoing» and so on. To silence any bishop or parish priest, it was enough to say: "It is not in line with the pastoral directives of Pope Francis", to end up sentenced more or less to civil death. Phrase that reminded so much of another, one that many of us have heard mockingly from emeritus and blatantly ignorant: "Ah, but you don't know that there was a Council in the Church?». How many times, I replied to those who confused the Council with the post-council of the extravagant "interpreters of the spirit of the council" that what they were trying to get across was not found written or sanctioned in any of the documents of Vatican II. How many more, I chastised pretini trendy and clericalized laity, making them look like the ignoramus they were, citing documents and fundamental passages of Vatican II of which they ignored the existence in the name of their vulgar teasing: "Ah, you do not know that there was a Council?».

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I know very well that there was a Council, on which anyone could question me, finding me far from unprepared for his documents, because I think I know and can prove another thing, daring anyone to deny it: with the Council of Trent seminaries were opened and adequate training was given to the clergy whose mass even bordered on illiteracy. In that season there was a flourishing of new religious congregations, of great Saint educators and pedagogues, of great saints of charity. Furthermore, a great missionary and evangelization activity took life which led the Church to be, from the almost exclusively European phenomenon that it was, truly universal and spread throughout the world. These were the historical fruits of the Council of Trent that no one can deny, except to deny incontrovertible historical data. Even though today, the Council of Trent and the term “of the Trent” it is used as a synonym for obtuse and backward wit, even within ecclesiastical universities, as proof of how much ignorance has come to power in the Church through the worst ideological mystifications and the most dangerous alterations of historical facts.

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We come now to the Second Vatican Council, considered by some to be the council of councils, stuff before which the first Nicene Council and the first Constantinopolitan who dogmatically established the foundations of deposit of credit compared to him - which even of new dogmas he didn't even define half - they were almost the stuff of quarrelsome amateurs, which it is no coincidence that they even fought each other in the Sala del Trullo when they discussed the nature of Christ who was finally defined as «begotten not created of the same substance as the Father», not instead a created creature as the Arian bishops understood it.

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objective historical results of Vatican II were these: first of all the secularization of the clergy and the clericalization of the Catholic laity formed today by an army of cumbersome and harassing pious women and priests who were half-service, the purpose of which is to only create confusion in the pastoral structures and make the life of parish priests sometimes almost unlivable. Then the progressive depopulation of diocesan seminaries and religious novitiates, the buildings of many of which have been sold to private companies, or converted into shelters or hotels for the right purpose of making buildings profitable in some way, the maintenance costs of which would in themselves be exorbitant both in terms of maintenance and taxes [cf.. My previous article WHO]. From many small and medium-sized dioceses the nuns have now disappeared and the buildings of their former religious institutes closed and converted to other uses. The majority of Italian bishops cannot afford to have a diocesan seminary because it is all God's grace if they manage to have two or three seminarians at most. In those same dioceses, in “cup” Tridentine era, there were at least twenty or thirty seminarians, but maybe they weren't authentic vocations enlightened by that “Spring Spirit” which, by admission of the Holy Pontiff Paul VI himself, caused winter to fall on the Church: "With the Second Vatican Council we expected spring and instead came the winter" [cf.. John Guitton, Paul VI secret].

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Let me be clear: here we do not intend at all to discuss either the validity of Vatican II, which was not even necessary but indispensable, nor even less on the validity of his pastoral documents. What should be seriously discussed with a long litany of MEA culpa this is what was done with the Council in the inauspicious post-council season, when in the name of a misunderstood "spirit of the Council" each one ended up creating his own personal council, in the head of all those who do not know the full-bodied and long documents of Vatican II and have never studied them. It was for this reason that in my book of 2011 I coined the term of Council egomenico of the interpreters of the spirit of the council in the post-council season [cf.. And Satan became triune].

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Simple question, of those unfortunately destined to remain unanswered, as happens when you go to touch the totem intangible of blind ideology: it is true or not that after the Council of Trent seminaries were opened and flourished over the next three centuries, raising both the pastoral and cultural level of that clergy which in the previous season was in a pitiful state, few exceptions? Is it true or not that after the Second Vatican Council, over the next fifty years, the seminaries emptied and were gradually closed? It is a historical question which should be answered with objective historical rigour, not with blind ideology. It would be enough to take the statistical data of the Italian clergy of 1950 and compare them with those of the 2022, instantly discovering that more than data they are war bulletins. Example: diocese that in 1950 they had a presbytery consisting of 1.000 presbyters between secular clergy and regular clergy for a number of 350.000 baptized, today, with a number of baptized equal to 700.000 they have a presbytery composed of 350 presbyters. Then, if we look at the statistics on the age of the presbyters, there is serious crying there. I take an Italian diocese at random. Year 2021: average age of priests 70 year old, new priests ordained 2, deceased presbyters 18. Request: of this and other Italian dioceses, what will happen within 10 O 15 year old? Or does someone really think of solving the now irreversible problem that beats inexorably on the doorstep with the establishment of “acolyte” who will soon end up being used as surrogate-priests? [cf.. WHO]. Because some particularly enlightened bishops have found nothing better to do than to entrust one of these to them “acolyte” of provincial parishes for years now without a parish priest. Because that's how our enlightened bishops work things out.

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Faced with these questions which concern in part the consequences of the "spirit of the Council" generated by the great "interpreters of the Council", partly on data that, I repeat, more than such they are war bulletins, the response of the bishops and certain priests, which, as we know, have no faults, they are so busy looking for the faults of others, it is soon given: “It's all the fault of the de-Christianization of societies!». Good, but at this point the question is added to the question: and the de-Christianization of who is to blame? Perhaps of the League of Libertarian Anticlerical Anarchists? Because people have always tried to de-Christianize, since the dawn of Christianity itself, my he sense of faith prevailed over Decius, Diocletian, Nero ... to follow on Attila, then on the Mohammedans that if in the 1571 had won at Lepanto the following week they would have hoisted the banner of the crescent on the chair of the Bishop of Rome in San Giovanni in Laterano. And still to follow: on the landsknechts who put Rome to fire and sword in the 16th century, on the Jacobins of the French Revolution, about Napoleon taking Pius VII as a package and transporting him prisoner to France, water Hitler, about Stalin … no one made it. And if the sense of faith he managed to prevail and survive in the face of certain historical characters and seasons, someone explains to me why instead it collapsed precisely in the season of a post-council while the great spirit of the council of councils was blowing astern and astern?

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Let us now return to the good bishop who one day almost ten years ago had that painful conversation with me, which continued with the problem of the sacred ordinations of deacons and priests. He began by telling me that the situation of the inter-diocesan seminary wanted that way by the bishops of the region, with that imprint, those trainers and that kind of teaching, he had created the extraneousness between the bishop and the seminarians, between whom there was only a superficial and courteous acquaintance. He was due to ordain two deacons shortly, aware of how they had been raised throughout the training cycle, not only in antithesis to the pastoral imprint of their bishop judged too conservative, because those candidates had repeatedly expressed that what heartened them was the fact that their bishop had already turned seventy and that "five years go by quickly, thank God!». And it was there that the bishop asked me for an opinion, which I did not hesitate to give him in front of his very explicit question: “What would you do in my place?». I replied that I would do the dutifully worst thing, without showing discomfort, but basing everything on both sacramental and coherent principles. I became bishop for a moment in his place - that is, I fell into his role - and I said that I would take the two explaining that both with them and with any other candidate for sacred orders it was not my habit to declare the authenticity of the vocation, because I never have and I never will. On the contrary, I always smiled whenever I heard triumphal overtones: «Authentic and solid vocation!». Vocation remains for the most part a mystery and no bishop or formator can issue certificates of absolute authenticity. Also because it would not explain why there have been cases of priests who have left the priesthood even after twenty years, declaring and explaining that he "lived two decades of illusions" or "made a wrong choice" because "the priesthood was not my way". They certainly didn't have a calling, because an authentic and solid vocation is never lost and never dies, it can at some point be rejected or even destroyed by the free will of the presbyter, but not even difficulties and sufferings that can even cross the capacity of human endurance can cancel it. A priest truly suited to the priesthood can also irreparably compromise his health and meet premature death for the pains inflicted and suffered, but he will never leave the priesthood, because the character it received transformed it ontologically, it is indelible and eternal and has given it a dignity superior to that of the Angels of God themselves.

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What a bishop and trainers can certify is the candidate's suitability for sacred orders. Then, if some bishop or formator manages to read the most impenetrable spheres of consciences, moreover in the complex intimate and profound relationship between God and man, blessed be they for such a rare and special gift.

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Playing the role of bishop who speaks to candidates for holy orders, I go on to say that in his place I would have said: … you are eligible to receive sacred orders because nothing prevents them from being granted to you. But I cannot be the one to ordain you deacons and then presbyters for the Church that I currently govern. I do not think it right and coherent for you to receive sacred orders from a bishop you do not esteem and whose pastoral guidelines you do not share. Let's clarify: to the bishop you will have to promise filial respect and devoted obedience, you must not promise him esteem or appreciation for his pastoral work, this is not required and expected, nor could it ever be, because if that were the case it would be truly aberrant. But one fact remains: for the priest the figure of the consecrating bishop is destined to remain indelible for life. During the sacred rite the question is asked «Promise filial respect and devoted obedience to me and to all my successors?». With the mention of the "successors" it is implicitly specified that tomorrow the bishop may be another and then yet another. There are elderly presbyters who after their consecrating bishop have had four or five others. Although the memory of the one who generated you in the sacred priestly order remains for life and walking towards old age, the more time moves away from that happy event the more alive and dear it becomes. Little is worth my experience: the bishop who welcomed me, who provided for my education and finally consecrated me a priest, I revered him, respected and obeyed. He had a difficult character and temperament and in the following years I was also hard with him in addressing him deserved criticism and severe judgments, highlighting some of its serious flaws, but I have never failed for a single moment in my affection and gratitude towards him. And among the different presbyters he ordained, maybe I'm the only one who always celebrates Holy Masses of suffrage for his soul. He was called Luigi Negri [1941-2021].

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It can happen, and it happened, that a presbyter finds himself with an unpleasant bishop, incapable and even harmful, to whom to pay filial respect and devoted obedience in any case, while not appreciating him or having any trust and esteem for him, or having lost it later. However, the discourse of the consecrating bishop is different, why in that case, a relationship of mutual esteem and trust must have been established between him and the ordering candidate. Or as the brother told me recently Simone Pifizzi, one of the new Fathers of ours Patmos Island: «Before ordaining me a deacon, the Cardinal Silvano Sandpipers, Archbishop of Florence, mi said: “when during the sacred rite I ask you to promise filial respect and devoted obedience, we will have to look each other very well in the eye, because that promise and that bond will be indelible with me and with all my successors”». We miss great men and shepherds like Silvano Piovanelli terribly today, figures of a season appear to us that becomes more and more distant as the first white hairs appear on our heads, but their memory alone is a comfort and hope for us to live our ministerial priesthood to the fullest.

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Appreciate and esteem a bishop it is neither mandatory nor due, But, if you are consistent, from a bishop who is not appreciated and does not esteem himself, it would be good not to be ordained, because in this case the ordinand would transform the bishop into a sort of public official who ratifies a bureaucratic act, while for his part the bishop would transform sacred ordination into a simple bureaucratic act to be ratified. And I concluded by saying to the bishop: you could tell them that with your approval and the guarantee of suitability of the formators they can go to any bishop in the region who will be willing to welcome them. In fact, I believe that on the embarrassments and inconveniences, which then become reciprocal, one should not pass over it with diplomatic hairiness clerical, confront each other and find solutions.

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He listened to me and with pastoral wisdom he acted in this sense. Shortly thereafter, a quarrel was triggered by the rector of the seminary who dared to address the bishop in these peremptory tones: “You have to ordain them for your diocese, and that's, otherwise it nullifies all our formative work». retorted the bishop: “I thought the deacons, then to follow the presbyters, were deacons and presbyters of the bishop, not of team inter-diocesan seminary». They were taken, ordained and incardinated by another bishop in his diocese, then revealing themselves as unmanageable priests from the first year of priestly ministry, while in Rome the complaints against this bishop multiplied by some bishops of the region and of the so-called team training of the regional seminar. Incidentally: a couple of years later the rector of the seminary could only be named bishop, after having marked the new training of future priests with visits to refugee camps and Roma camps. It doesn't matter that these future priests didn't know the works, but not even the name of the greatest Holy Fathers and doctors of the Church, because a trip to a Roma camp makes up for everything and confers special gifts of grace from the Holy Spirit.

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If in fact it is taken from a bishop the faculty of being able to train his own deacons and priests as he deems right and appropriate for his diocese, in the name of a very badly understood episcopal collegiality, perhaps it would be appropriate to definitively close the few seminaries that remain, the majority of them disastrous and disastrous. In this way avoiding transforming the dioceses into something between free collectives and social cooperatives, with bishops reduced and forced to ratify the whims and errors of priests and laymen. More than an "outgoing Church", ours is a Church which, having concluded the phase of pre-bankruptcy controlled administration, now finds itself with the bailiffs at the gates for the seizure of the buildings, after the fraudulent bankruptcy produced by the imaginative Council egomenico of the interpreters of “spirit of the council” in that inauspicious season of the post-council which made the Holy Pontiff Paul VI say: "With the Second Vatican Council we expected spring and instead came the winter".

the Island of Patmos, 22 November 2022

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