«MY FREE SONG» IN A WORLD THAT REACTS BEFORE READING

In the current Catholic panorama, too often everything is reduced to a morbid search for the sensational: apparitions of an army of presentist and talkative Madonnas, rivers of messages, prophecies of the most unlikely seers, private revelations passed off as certainties of faith. All followed by an audience that grows in direct proportion to its religious ignorance.

- Church news -

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Author
Ivano Liguori, Ofm. Cap.

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PDF print format article

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The year was 1972 when it came out My free singing, album which in a few weeks became a great success, as happened to almost everything that bore the signature of Lucio Battisti. The refrain of the song that gives the album its title goes::

In a world that

It doesn't take anymore

My free song is you

And the immensity

It opens around us

Beyond the limit of your eyes

Lots of songs like that author are built on hermetic texts, born from the poetic inspiration of Giulio Rapetti, aka Mogol. It is therefore not only music that can be perceived in different ways by those who listen to it: even the words lend themselves to multiple readings, according to the sensitivity of those who welcome them. My free singing talks about love and freedom in a world that has stopped wanting us. And this world, often in the name of a presumed and misunderstood freedom, he handed us the worst form of dictatorship: the single thought, from which it is not permitted to dissociate oneself without being pointed out, silenced or simply deleted. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had denounced it with prophetic words, in the homily of the Mass for the election of the Roman Pontiff, the day before ascending the throne of Peter with the name of Benedict XVI:

«A dictatorship of relativism is being established which does not recognize anything as definitive and which leaves only one's own self and its desires as the final measure»¹.

It is the paradox of our time: a relativism that declares everything questionable becomes intolerant towards anyone who dares to affirm a truth.

We Fathers of the Island of Patmos we are first and foremost a community of priests who have chosen to live their ministry also through telematic means, as a real apostolate that requires a lot of care and commitment. And sometimes, as men and as priests, especially as the years pass we have the impression of seeking and singing about freedom precisely "in a world that no longer wants us", folded in on itself and blinded by the immediate and therefore incapable of seeing "the immensity" that «it opens around us», a horizon that opens up before those who have the courage to raise their gaze towards the eternal.

Today people no longer read. At best they quickly scroll through text with their thumb on a screen, they hold a title, an extrapolated phrase, an image; on this little they construct a definitive judgment. Then they argue, often with impetuosity, on what they did not understand and even on what was never written in the article. We realize this every day from the comments and messages that circulate on social media: objections to theses that have never been supported, indignation for sentences never uttered, accusations built on a word torn from its context.

The phenomenon is deeper than it might seem, because it concerns the very order with which man relates to reality. Once upon a time it was read, it was analysed, we understood and only then reacted: the reaction, whether for or against, it was the conclusion of a journey of reason. Today the reaction, emotional and often violent, precedes reason and often replaces it completely. You no longer react to what you have understood, but to what has been misunderstood, by distraction or by deliberate choice. It is a reaction as an end in itself, who does not seek the truth but only the confirmation of what was already thought before starting to read.

Talking to such a company it's been a gamble since October 2014, when our magazine was born. We knew we were addressing a company that doesn't succeed, does not want or often no longer has the tools to go "beyond the limit". Yet we have chosen not to lower the level to chase the distracted reader, but to continue to offer the attentive reader what he deserves.

We believe in culture and accurate research. We believe that an article must be based on verified sources, that a quote must be exact, that a thesis must be argued and not simply shouted. It is this patient work that allows us to offer texts that, without presumption or vanity, personal or collective, we can define high quality. And we say it consciously, evaluating how much in the current Catholic panorama everything is too often reduced to a morbid search for the sensational: apparitions of an army of presentist and talkative Madonnas, rivers of messages, prophecies of the most unlikely seers, private revelations passed off as certainties of faith. All followed by an audience that grows in direct proportion to its religious ignorance: people who have never opened the Catechism of the Catholic Church but know by heart the last message of the visionary on duty. People who do not hesitate to raise their fingers towards priests and theologians dedicated to study and research for decades, subpoenaing: "No, It is not so, because I read on the Internet that...".

Nothing new, in truth. The Blessed Apostle Paul predicted this with words that seem written for our days:

«The day will come, indeed, when they will not endure sound doctrine;, ma, to hear something, men's masters according to surround their whims, refusing to listen to the truth to get lost behind fables " (2 TM 4,3-4).

Our activity and our publications demonstrate, even when certain topics required harshness or irony, that we have never indulged in that itch that an increasingly large portion of the Catholic world is looking for. Harshness and irony are tools, sometimes necessary, to tell the truth to those who would rather not hear it; itching, on the other hand, is something else, it is the tickle offered to those who just want to be entertained. And among the various types of itching, the clerical one is by far the worst, especially when it is cultivated by clericalized lay people capable of being much worse than priests.

Ever since we founded this magazine we never pretended to imitate a newspaper or a magazine, because our editorial work is completely different: spread knowledge of history, of the doctrine and magisterium of the Church, also addressing current issues and social impact in this light. It's not our job, for instance, report on papal travels, compile curial chronicles and even less fuel clerical gossip. Anyone who wants to follow an apostolic journey of the Holy Father will find the reports of the major newspapers and international news agencies. For the affairs of the Roman Curia there is the official Bulletin of the Press Office of the Holy See and the institutional bodies of Catholic journalism involved in reporting. For those looking for gossip instead, There's certainly no shortage of blogs ready to offer the best slander on the market, with a lot of guarantee: «We have all the evidence, but for now we cannot make them public to protect the source". Of the series: the only evidence we have is the lack of evidence.

It's not easy to work like this, in a world that rejects the idea that faith is also a journey of knowledge and culture, which implies guides, teachers and above all docility to listening on the part of those who intend to learn. But this is the only path we know to open, through patient and often thankless work, that immense horizon that the immediate world can no longer see. This is our free song: we will continue to sing it even when few people listen to it.

Finally, I take this opportunity to renew, on behalf of all the editors, the thanks we have already addressed to the Readers who have offered us their financial support (cf.. who), allowing us to cover the management costs of the site that hosts this magazine and thus guaranteeing us another year of free singing for the whole 2027.

Cagliari, 30 September 2026

NOTE

¹ Joseph Ratzinger, Homily of Mass for the election of the Roman Pontiff, St. Peter's Basilica, 18 April 2005.

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The books of Ivano Liguori, to access the book shop click on the cover

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