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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»
(in higher than the others, John has left the Church, the arcane mysteries of God)
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
creator of the website of this magazine:
MANUELA LUZZARDI
Dear Giancarla,
I will answer your question because I know Bishop Andrea Turazzi well, above all, I think I know how you would have acted in the cases you reported, also because his speech has always corresponded closely to his concrete actions, without any discrepancy. With great meekness he would have told the parish priest that the educators, despite being sinners like all of us, they must have a lifestyle suited to the catechism they teach, not a public life lived in open conflict with Catholic doctrine and morality. Then he would remind him that the post-synodal apostolic exhortation love joy did not at all allow the divorced and remarried to receive the Holy Eucharist and in this regard the provisions given by the Holy Pontiff John Paul II in the Familiar Consortium (n. 184), never modified to date.
I am not meek and I believe that authority should be applied in a rigid and harsh way with certain subjects – for their highest good, is intende -, I would have made the parish priest you described black from head to toe. But thank God the Church was careful not to make me a bishop, and he did very well, because in these times of “hairy mercy” and of “dialogue without listening” I would absolutely not have been suited to hold such an office, having the serious first “capital vice” to believe that the Church is a hierarchical structure that is based on the principle of authority, this would have made me a completely inadequate bishop for our Church new course. Or as Father Divo Barsotti said when preaching the spiritual exercises to the Roman Curia under the pontificate of Paul VI in 1971:
«The Church has a coercive power that comes to it directly from God and which it cannot fail to exercise».
Try to imagine a priest telling his bishop «I think that …» and in response the bishop replies to him: «What you think is irrelevant, you have to do what I command you and that's it, not what you think".
At the very least there would be a general uprising of the clergy, starting from those parish priests who feel like pontiffs, emperors and kings.
But know that today, for a bishop of any diocese, it is very difficult to manage your own presbyteries. And if we don't start from this we risk not understanding certain serious problems. So let me try to explain with an example: if when I was a teenager (I state that I have 58 year old) the parish priest or deputy parish priest of the parish church I attended had been called on Monday by the bishop's secretary and summoned for Wednesday morning, they would spend two sleepless nights thinking to themselves what the bishop had to say to them. They would appear at the hearing with their best cassock on and would greet him by bending their knee and kissing his hand, then they would wait for the bishop to open his mouth and speak.
It can happen today – even frequently – that the bishop calls one of his presbyters and he doesn't even show up, she sends him an email and he doesn't respond. Good part, when they show up, they arrive dressed in civilian clothes, they give the bishop a handshake, if not a pat on the back, then they start talking to them, or they interrupt the bishop while he speaks by saying «no, Personally, I really don't agree.".
This would be enough to ask: what ecclesial and ecclesiastical education is given today in our disastrous seminaries which, as I've been saying for years and years, they should be completely rethought and reformed?
another example: more than ten years ago it happened that while I was sitting with a brother in a living room of the bishop's office the bishop entered, upon his entrance I stood up from my chair and bowed with my head, the brother remained sprawled in the chair while the bishop – who was looking for him – standing he spoke to him. When the bishop came out I told the brother: «When the bishop enters and above all when he speaks to you, you have to stand up. The next day a priest who believed himself to be master of the diocese, therefore of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible, he complained to the bishop that I had the audacity, the presumption and arrogance of claiming to teach education to priests.
With these freshly painted pictures, the antiphon and the training situation of the clergy are clear to her? It's clear to you why I keep repeating that our seminars, nicknamed by me “pretify”, I'm a real disaster?
From this educational disaster, or rather deformative, parish priests like the one you painted can come out, with all that goes with it, including divorced catechists brought back with other men who affirm on the subject of abortion: «… there are situations in which …».
I finally make her smile: when i, priest and theologian, I told a parish priest that I was willing to teach catechism to the kids who were preparing for Holy Confirmation, he rolled his eyes and answered me: "No, It is not possible, the catechists would be disappointed, if a priest taught catechism!».
And with this I think I've told you everything.
I understand that this is not a nice way to console, but I guarantee you that I have known and know much worse.
Pray for the Holy Church and pray for the health of the souls of the priests.
Dear Father Gabriele C.P.
she put her finger on me with these words of hers, even if I remain with a doubt: It's the catechists' fault, it's the bishop's fault, it's the parish priest's fault … whose?
I don't know the bishop who speaks this way in this interview, From the way he speaks, however, I don't think he would allow divorced catechists, accompanied with a new partner and children in happy coexistence, to teach catechism to first communion children, as happened to me with my daughter. Catechists who, regarding abortion, stated that concrete cases must be evaluated because there are situations in which …
I do not think so, from how he speaks, that if he had known that the parish priest replied to my complaints that I am retrograde and that the church has changed, he would have said “Bravo!” to this parish priest.
Unless his speech is completely dissociated from his action.
And I conclude: and all the divorced and remarried parents of the children took communion, the parish priest responded to my complaints by telling me …”she hasn't read Amoris Laetitia”.
I am a Passionist priest, the last time I touched on the topic of abortion during one of my sermons, in the Campania province of Naples, with relative words of condemnation and referring with scruple only and nothing more than to the magisterium of the Church, I found myself in the sacristy with a small group of furious women shouting … “we don't agree!”, and those of all five who agreed least were two catechists. I asked the parish priest how it was possible that two abortionists could be catechists, he shook his head and I, leaving, I shook my head more than him, saying to myself: poor catechists, poor parish priest, but above all poor Church!
Monsignor's interview is beautiful. Andrea Turazzi Bishop of San Marino-Montefeltro.
Don Francis,
I am a priest in an Emilian diocese, I have known “Don Andrea” when he was parish priest in a parish in Ferrara (He is originally from Ferrara), I went to confession to him when I was a seminarian, an authentic holy man of God and consequently he can only be a holy bishop.
Says S.E. Mons. Andrea Turazzi
«So one cannot consider himself a Catholic and then, for instance, fail to recognize that human life is sacred from conception. A believer must contemplate God's creative action. The conceived is always within a relationship, a special covenant with the Creator, he has an immortal soul".
We are always fewer (priests included, alas!) to understand that this statement is completely obvious and that a bishop could not say otherwise, today, however, to make public statements of this kind it is necessary for a bishop to be truly endowed with heroic virtues.
This is why I was truly touched by this interview, because they are clear and clear words that have not been heard since the time of Saint John Paul II.
Listening in these times to the words of a Bishop who expresses himself in such a calm but decisive way, without penalty of any misunderstanding or ambiguity, It truly lifts the heart of every presbyter.
My sincere devotion to His Most Reverend Excellency.