— Theologica —

LESSON ALMOST CERTAINLY USELESS FOR CERTAIN SELF-TEACHED CATHOLICS ON THE LAICITY OF THE STATE: THE CONCEPT OF NATURAL LAW OF THE REVIVING NEOSCHOLASTICS, IN ADDITION TO NOT SERVING GOD AND THE TRUTH, IT IS IN RADICAL CONFLICT WITH THE TWO FOUNDATIONS OF THE CREATION OF MAN, FREEDOM AND FREE WILL

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For us men of faith, reason and science is unquestionable that God has instilled in the heart of man the natural sense of good and evil, hence the foundations of those laws which perhaps improperly, but correct, they are defined as Natural Law. The problem occurs when you try to change the Natural Law or Divine Law into Positive Law, in Laws of the State that bind all the associates. Because at that point the sin becomes a crime, with devastating and absolutely undesirable consequences.

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Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo

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Norberto Bobbio, jurist and philosopher of law

The ecclesial and ecclesiastical decadence that we are experiencing, afflicted by that sense of helplessness generated by having crossed the threshold of no return, it originated a crisis of doctrine and morals unprecedented in the history of the Church. Not a few are the faithful animated by good will driven by a reactive process to follow the teachings of bad teachers, making their own misconceptions in matters of doctrine, faithful, Morale. To capture these people who appear as "sheep without a shepherd" [cf.. MC 6, 34], bad teachers always put forward: "True tradition" and "defense of true doctrine". Magic words in front of which the lost no longer reason and in an uncritical and illogical way they drink everything that is offered to them inside the cocktail. The greater the nonsense that certain bad teachers say, the more numerous the lost faithful who will seek safety in them. Unfortunately, when trying to put them in front of the evidence of the error, the most probable risk is to find oneself in front of people closed to any reasoning, because their world is that of the emotional and their action that of passions. This makes them unable to exercise a lucid critical sense and at the same time convinced that they have reached the light of authentic truth.

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The theme I will now deal with is complex in itself, however, it can become accessible to all those who are not specialists in the philosophical field, juridical and theological, first of all by clarifying two concepts: natural law and legal positivism. In a simplistic way, perhaps even a little crude, but understandable to all, it can be said that natural law is based on the concept of the Law of God and legal positivism on the Law of man. Both imply adhesion by all affiliates, because this is what laws require by their nature and structure: obedience and observance on the part of man.

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From a philosophical-legal point of view at the time I assumed the thought of Norberto Bobbio who defined himself: "Natural lawyer in spirit and positivist in application". It is good to clarify this immediately, even because, when one has the grace of not being a Jesuit, always and strictly speaking, it is played fairly with uncovered cards. So I repeat: my juridical-philosophical setting is based on the school and thought of Norberto Bobbio.

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The Law of the State, known as legal positivism, in the face of disobedience that turns into a crime, the offender is sentenced to a sentence to be served in prison, or a sanction requiring compensation in cash. If there is no sanction for those who transgress, the Law would not be such but a kind of proposal, an invitation to act in a certain way.

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The Natural Law or Divine Law, known as natural law, it also provides for penalties, however linked to the spiritual sphere. Penalties that can range from the obligation to make reparation for the wrong inflicted on atoning penance, up to the most severe and drastic punishment, excommunication, which entails the exclusion of the faithful from the community.

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With these first descriptions that fundamental element on which many philosophers and theologians for hobby make enormous confusion. And here we clarify a fundamental concept: natural law or divine law condemns sin, the positive law of men condemns the crime. In the course of this discussion it will be explained and demonstrated what enormous imbalances and damages can derive from the failure to separate these two distinct spheres., which can have valuable exchanges between them, also drawing ideas and inspirations from each other, but without ever falling into the mix.

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All this may appear clear and straightforward, instead it is not, because outlined the meaning of the two concepts, then the problem takes shape: if the Laws of man, which are those of the secular states, they come into conflict with what some consider Divine Laws, which are those of the Church, what would come of it? Pseudo-Catholic fideists do not hesitate to answer: «Divine Laws must prevail over those of the State. Obvious, they come from God ". But these are precisely pseudo-Catholic fideists. To better clarify I remember that there are pages and pages of my published articles and books, to follow up with numerous conferences, where I accuse Europe of being sick with self-hatred, to the point of rejecting the undeniable evidence of its Christian roots. And the Christian roots of Europe are not an abstract concept, but an undeniable historical fact that should not disturb any radical Northern European secularist, apart from the black legends about the Catholic Church maliciously and falsely packaged at the table in total disregard of historical facts, first in the Lutheran and Calvinist sphere, then Enlightenment and to follow liberal-Masonic. Of course, mto the, as a modest speculative mind having reached maturity, I dreamed of invoking the secular states to change the foundations of Divine Revelation into laws binding on all citizens, of dogmatic theology, of Catholic morality and the discipline of the Sacraments. The Positive Law cannot dictate to believe in God, nor can atheism be prosecuted as a crime, even if some irrational fideists would like that, but they are precisely irrational fideists. Sin cannot be confused with crime, nor can the rejection of God be declared a crime. The sin, or the rejection of God, it cannot become a crime punishable by positive laws, doing so would fall into the paradox, not so much juridical but really theological, until the mystery of man's creation is nullified. And who for ideological reasons dictated by a misunderstood concept of Natural Law does not accept this criterion of decisive separation between the two distinct spheres, today even more necessary than in the epochs marked by the nineteenth-century Enlightenment, unfortunately he is destined to live badly as a Catholic and as a citizen, giving an adulterated and illogical-grotesque idea of ​​the Catholic faith.

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THE VOICE OF AN ANGEL SAID TO SANT'AGOSTINO "TOLLE LEGE», TAKE AND READ, DID NOT TELL HIM: CONNECT TO THE INTERNET AND MAKE A CULTURE ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA

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The problem that affects contemporary society is that people don't study anymore, they don't read and they don't reflect, they sift through and scroll quickly, finally believing they have understood. They are able to use the word metaphysics with ease, however, if we ask them what it means according to the Greek etymology, from whom it is born, who coined it, for what purpose and in what historical-philosophical context does this scientific thought develop, such as the main metaphysical works in the history of philosophy and related schools, here they fall from high to the ground like rotten fruits from the dry tree of their bleak ignorance. Unfortunately, internet and i social media they favored the destruction of the critical sense in modern man, the speculative spirit and the ability to study. It is the new form of digital illiteracy that the Fathers of The Island of Patmos in their latest publication: The Church and the coronavirus. Between supercazzole and tests of faith [cf.. WHO].

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I continue to clarify: when I refer to the school I am forced to specify that the classic one - pass me, the one I trained on - not to be confused with its parody, decadent neoscolastica, that taught and passed off as formulas in the format The Thoughts of the Perugina Kisses. Because it is what those who refer to it inappropriately know in bits and pieces, deluding themselves and deluding themselves into knowing her, having memorized four parrot formulas to pass off for each use. Indeed, the father of the scholastic Sant’Anselmo d’Aosta and to follow San Tommaso d’Aquino, they belong to the four formulas of the decadent neo-scholasticism of the late nineteenth century early twentieth century as can a nursery rhyme sung in a circle by the children of the nursery school.

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Complex issues therefore, that cannot be topics of debate and dissemination of misconceptions by unprepared Catholics who ignore the depth of such complex themes that involve deep specialist knowledge in the historical context, philosophical, theological and juridical, but which are transformed into diffusers of ideas that risk ranging between the absurd and the aberrant, up to the real unconscious blasphemy all typical of the ignorant learned, because - just to give an example - we cannot put Aristotle's philosophical concept of motionless motor as being and foundation of the entire Christian action. These subjects, moved by practice by narrow forms of closure to reason and comparison, always end up by procuring misunderstanding and hatred of Catholicism and Catholics by increasingly susceptible and aggressive secular thinkers.

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The voice of an Angel said to Sant'Agostino "Great doctor», take and read, that is, study. She didn't tell him: connect to the internet and learn about social media jumping from one blog to another. Unfortunately, amateurs without adequate legal training, philosophical and theological, who believe they have understood everything and possess the good of divine and absolute truth, they launch into more complex themes and then begin with simplistic statements that reduce scholasticism and metaphysics to a game of banalities: "... it is metaphysical truth that divine law is written in the heart of man and therefore is superior to the law of states". Soon said: being by etymological definition ignorant he who ignores, Logically, he will prove to be unaware of what it entailed, even in ferocious persecutions against the Catholic Church, starting from the pre-Constantinian era up to the worst dictatorial regimes of the twentieth century, having expressed it with unprecedented lightness that: "The laws of God are superior to the laws of man, therefore that "the Divine Law must prevail over the Law of States which must be subjected to the Divine Law".

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GIVE TO CAESAR WHAT IS CAESAR AND TO GOD WHAT IS OF GOD IS THAT PRINCIPLE OF SECOND SEPARATION BETWEEN POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS POWER THAT WILL ONLY BE UNDERSTANDED NINETEEN CENTURIES LATER

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To understand you have to start from afar: Why, during the persecutions of Decius and Diocletian of the second and third centuries many Christians died martyrs in the Roman arenas? Mainly due to the misunderstanding that today is re-proposed by the digital ignorance of the fideist apprentice sorcerers who, while not understanding anything of philosophy, theology, law and morals insist on not even understanding anything of history. The reason is soon said and explained: the Romans were convinced of what Christians had never claimed: that their God was superior to Caesar. The Christian communities claimed none of this, they were so aware that one cannot compare God to man and man to God and compete on the same level with each other, therefore the divine laws cannot be put in conflict with the human laws. Above all they were aware that Christ himself had commanded "Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God" [cf.. Mt 22, 21]. Reading this sentence well, any truly philosophical and theological mind, therefore speculative, understands that the separation between political power and religious power the Word of God had already outlined many centuries before the Enlightenment was born, Liberalism and the French Revolution with its guillotines activated after farcical summary trials celebrated in the name of freedom, of equality and fraternity. That "give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God", at the time it could not be understood either by the tolerant Emperor Constantine or by the first Christian communities, because it would have required a maturation of many centuries. It is no coincidence that the first great dogmatic councils in the history of the Church, starting with the great Council of Nicaea of ​​the year 325, were convened and presided over by the Emperor, the last in series order, the Second Council of Nicaea of 787, it was summoned by the Empress Irene at the humble and very courteous request of the Supreme Pontiff Adrian I, the series: If Your Majesty agrees and if this does not bother you, I would dare to propose a council.

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They wonder the supporters of a Natural Law in the balance between dreamlike and bizarre: because all the first great councils were convened and presided over by the Eastern Emperors? Simple, because there was no separation between political and religious power and because in the East political power totally prevailed over religious power. This subjection, more than a mixture, it even has a specific name, it is called caesaropapism. That is why the emperors were very interested in knowing what heresy was, because heresy was considered a serious crime and heretics were prosecuted and condemned by law. Faced with these historical facts, the supporters of a Natural Law in the balance between dreamlike and bizarre, for which history is obviously a completely useless accessory, they should ask themselves: but truly one can aspire to return to those "happy" and "idyllic" times in which sin was a crime and heresy a crime pursued by the law of the State?

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The mixture of natural law and positive law, if in the East it totally subjected the Church to the State, in the West, however, it involved an incessant tug of war between political and religious power, that at intervals of time prevailed over each other, playing on intrigue and blackmail, as well as on the life of entire populations, always and of rigor with results and consequences desirable only by those who, besides not knowing the history, they have now created a past history that never existed, all to justify the wrong thinking of their sad present made of digital truths acquired mainly at the great academy of social media.

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In front of an interlocutor who affirmed in a decisive and indisputable way the absolute primacy of the Divine Natural Law, stating that the state would have a duty to apply it, at first I replied: “You realize that making similar claims to a secular society is increasingly hostile towards the dimensions of transcendence, the only result you can achieve is to make people hate Catholicism and Catholics?». The answer was even more disconcerting: "And what's the problem? We must be hated, the Gospel also clearly says it ". It goes without saying that such speeches lead to the worst forms of religious integralism, without considering that the Holy Gospel does not at all invite us to be hated, least of all to desire hatred as a kind of good to be achieved, after having stimulated him through useless and dangerous provocations, because to stimulate hatred means to instigate to sin, that is to say to commit a sin worse than one who then unleashes hatred by reactive process. Christ God affirms:

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"If the world hates you, know that it hated me before. 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, 18-21].

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Pay attention: Christ Divine Master he explains to the Apostles of yesterday and to those of today how and why it can happen that the world has hatred towards us. But it is a given explanation, not an invitation to be hated. Read this sentence thinking that through thought attacks or provocations you have a duty to be hated by the world, it means having the total inability to read and understand the Holy Gospel.

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The amateurs of the faith than without teachers and guides, without school, without adequate spiritual training courses, they take the Holy Scriptures in hand, then, jumping from one blog to another creates a "religious culture", if not worse philosophical, theological, moral and legal, cause serious harm to themselves, to others and to the image of the Church before the laity, who often identify certain forms of blind and ignorant fideism from madonnari d'assalto with "the spirit of Catholics". My secular and non-believing friends, living in contact with me they know our sad reality well. They know, than if we try to take back, correct and educate these subjects, in response they stiffen, then they turn against us, to the point that we priests and theologians have understood nothing of the foundations of Catholic faith and doctrine. Indeed, having read from one blog to another texts that speak of the messages and revelations of saints and mystics, or being particularly devoted to that Madonna who gave some trembling secrets that they understood to some seers, thanks to another great "academic theologian" on the channel You Tube posted a video in which he explains the real third secret of Fatima, according to him fake and then kept hidden by the Church ... well, acquired all this good of the intellect and science in the field of doctrine and faith, they don't need to listen to the words of priests and theologians, who in vain try to take them back and guide them, but above all to recover them to the true faith. This is why my lay and non-believing friends who know this sad reality of ours, they always offer me understanding and solidarity, without losing an opportunity to tell me: “I don't want to be in your place, why deal with such a plethora of faithful, it must be really frustrating ". And just discussing this reality months ago with a famous Italian virologist, the distinguished clinician and academic answered me: "During a conference I was challenged by a beautician-masseuse who took the floor stating absurd illogical and anti-scientific nonsense about vaccines, after having made a "culture" on the sites and blogs of conspirators anti-vax. You see, Father expensive, you are a man of faith, unfortunately not me, however we both share the same sad fate, the same frustrations, in this our planet of imbeciles ".

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THAT INDEPENDABLE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN NATURAL LAW, GRACE AND FREEDOM

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For us men of faith, of reason and science, it is unquestionable that God has instilled in the heart of man the natural sense of good and evil, hence the foundations of those laws which perhaps improperly, but correct, they are defined as Natural Law. The problem occurs when you try to change the Natural Law or Divine Law into Positive Law, in Laws of the State that bind all the associates. Because at that point the sin becomes a crime, with devastating and absolutely undesirable consequences.

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An interlocutor replied to these explanations: «Sin is not a right!». Affirmation that constitutes the winning phrase with which the bad teachers of the "true tradition" and of the defense "of true doctrine" have always thought to shut the mouth of any interlocutor. I replied that I knew very well, explaining below that sin arises, however, from the freedom and free will of man, which are the two suffixes of his creation. Faced with the sin of Adam and Eve, it would be right to ask ourselves: because God did not prevent it from being committed? If not for the two, he could do it for the good of innocent humanity, that because of them he would inherit a corrupt nature. And here it is necessary to remind all those who believe they know Catholic doctrine in depth, that the original one is not a sin committed by us, but a sin contracted to us transmitted with nature originally corrupted by the sin of others. And why did God not prevent our ancestors from committing a sin that would have repercussions with similar consequences for all future humanity? If, before proceeding further, no clear and precise answer is given to this, we could deduce that God ranges between the unjust and the fickle irresponsible spirit. The answer is simple, for those accustomed to reasoning on the criteria of true metaphysics: if God did not prevent the commission of that sin it is because he does not contradict himself, He being divine coherence in the pure state. For this reason God would never have been against the freedom of man, not even in the face of the devastating consequences of original sin, which are entirely logical and consequential.

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The specialized natural lawyers at the internet academy who invoke the absolute supremacy of Natural Law and who consider it the duty of States to apply it as a superior law, are suffering from a dangerous disease typical of those who claim to impose what not even God has dared to impose on man. But they do, they would! But it gets worse: they would do it in the name of God and God's Law, regardless that God has never violated or limited man's freedom in any way. Man has no right to sin, because sin is not a right. But he has full freedom to sin, because God granted it to him by virtue of the freedom and free will he gave him. This is the fundamental passage that escapes the false natural lawyer, which basically aims only to take the place of God in the pretext name of God. Just as it has been done several times throughout the history of humanity, at the cost of human lives and at the cost of the destruction of many brilliant minds ignobly castrated.

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In philosophy and theology, but also in law, you cannot hide behind a finger, unless otherwise falling into sophisms or pharisaisms that do not benefit those who make awkward use of them and least of all those from whom one would expect to be heard. Therefore clarity requires clarifying the obvious that some people are afraid of and that others would like to keep hidden. In citizens of a State or in any community of associates, a moral conception can only be imposed in two ways: or through the power of supernatural grace, which however acts and produces its fruits if accepted by the freedom and free will of man by virtue of his rational mind, or through state coercion. In this second case, the principle of grace turns into terrible misfortune. A third possibility does not exist. That's why it has always been, those who try to mitigate these two unique and opposite realities, climbs on the mirrors to hide the inevitable consequence that would derive from the application of the natural law through the “armed arm” of the Positive Law: the State subject to the Natural Law or Divine Law would prosecute sin as a crime. I repeat: in the first case, through the accepted grace action, the observance of the Natural Law proceeds through the freedom of man, in the second case, observance of the Natural Law, takes place through a real violence carried out on the freedom of man, that even God has never limited or annulled. Simply said,: in the second case we are faced with the real contempt for grace that works only through the freedom of man. It is in fact the grace that underlies the Natural Law, with all due respect to those who make poetry, saying with laughable vagueness that Natural Law is based on the heart and intelligence, so as not to confront the mystery of grace that cannot be separated from the freedom and free will of man. For this reason, those who propagate a distorted idea of ​​Natural Law, to say the least, must necessarily climb the mirrors, something that has always characterized the limitations of non-speculative minds, not philosophical and not theological, which however presume to be able to speculate on the maximum systems. So here is the climbing on slippery mirrors and the launch of what they believe to be the great winning dart, the phrase is already repeated twice: «Sin is not a right!». It's true, however, it would be necessary to add that no one can claim the right to prevent a man, with private violence or with the coercion of the positive law to commit sin, because God himself did not prevent man from sinning. And for his sin man reaped all the consequences, relapses for his sake on the whole of humanity.

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The joke is not a penalty but just relevant: if instead of God, which at the time acted in a certain way, we had some pseudo-natural law fideists, still today humanity would live happily in the Garden of Eden, without knowing suffering, the illness, physical decay and death, which are - we remember - all consequences of original sin. Therefore, if instead of God we had certain pseudo-natural lawyers we would always be in the Garden of Eden, because they would have definitely prevented, with all the coercion of the case, to Adam and Eve, to commit original sin, after having confused in a grotesque way the freedom that man has to sin with sin, which instead cannot be considered a right.

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SAN TOMMASO D’AQUINO WHO SO MUCH LIKES THOSE WHO DO NOT KNOW HIM BY LETTING HIM TO SAY WHAT HE NEVER SAID AND THOSE DOCUMENTS OF THE HIGH MAGISTRY ADDRESSED TO MEN OF A WORLD AND A SOCIETY THAT NO LONGER EXISTS.

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Faced with these arguments, the dream natural lawyers usually begin to pull out irrefutable evidence in support of what documents of the Magisterium of the Church affirm as splendid as they are dated. In doing this they show another form of crass ignorance that leads them to dogmatize documents and acts that contain expressions of great inspiration and high stature, however, they refer to political contexts, social and pastoral linked to a society and a world that no longer exists. This is another pathology from which a serious illness then arises: the fixism on the past that prevents us from facing the reality of the present. To this disease is added a third more serious one: the dogmatization of these documents, which were opportune and precious in the real historical contexts of a society and a history that no longer exists today. And so they end up conferring the rank of dogma on the pronouncements of a supreme magisterium addressed to men and society of a past world, convinced of being right more than ever when, in support of their erroneous thesis, illogical and anti-historical, they begin: "Ah, but it is written in a document of the supreme magisterium!».

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Again, examples are always needed to make everything understand. Let's start then from San Tommaso d’Aquino, which appeals terribly to those who do not know him and that for this, more than using it, they abuse it in the worst way. In disserting on natural law, St. Thomas moves on questions philosophical-theological. On the subject it does not sanction absolutes or truths of faith. To understand those questions however, we must first know the history, the politics and society of the thirteenth century, especially the great Bolognese glossators who worked between the 11th and 12th centuries, because Aquinas refers to them by disputing over certain ones questions, then to know what their concept of natural law and positive law was. However, all this escapes the savage pseudo-natural law fideist who thinks he knows Aquinas and can sell him in doses of homeopathic pills.

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For the great doctor of the Church the natural law exists and how, but it can be rejected by man due to the existence of vices or decided closures to actions of grace. And incidentally, when Aquinas speaks of grace, it mostly refers to the work of Saint Augustine, Of nature and grace. Therefore, in the language of Aquinas, when it comes to “vizio” it is understood that it can be both intellectual and intellectual and moral, then a attitude which can lead man to choose evil, always on the principle of freedom and free will granted to him by God. So, for the Angelic Doctor, the Moral Law gives values ​​that cannot be understood in an oppressive and even more coercive way. These are values ​​that come from the rational nature of man and that can gradually be implemented through the principles and actions of grace. But above all of a path to take in history for the application of Natural Law, according to the different meanings of person, of time and place [cf.. The Government of the, QUESTION q. 77, a.2 and a.4]. This, Aquinas says, with all due respect to those who do not know it but try to use and abuse it as they see fit, just as if St. Thomas Aquinas were a magical-kabbalistic word type hocus pocus O abracadabra, with which you try to solve any arcane; with which even the last of the ignorant who believes that he can disquisition very complex sciences and specialties, believes he can legitimize his own huge blunders.

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It is equally wrong and misleading refer to the magisterium of the Supreme Pontiffs who expressed themselves on the specific matter of Natural Law in the nineteenth century, in the middle of the Enlightenment era, with the Church harshly attacked and attacked by the currents of liberalism born on the ashes of the French Revolution. Trying to apply those documents to contemporaneity is a game of absurdity. The same is true for those who use and abuse the magisterium of the Supreme Pontiff Pius XII, starting from his memorable radio message to which certain subjects refer to support their theses on Natural Law written by God in the heart of man. That radio message dates back to 1942 and was given in the course of the full course of the Second World War, when Nazism was devouring all European countries one piece at a time and on the other side there was Stalin's Soviet. And Hitler for one thing, Stalin on the other hand, they had given birth to a pagan and atheist natural law, using for its realization the typical styles of the worst religious integralisms, which always refer to the criteria of application of the Divine Law which is above any human law, including atheist regimes, which over time have created the worst forms of religious juridical law, now deifying the people and their race, now divinizing Marxism and the working class.

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Certain documents are of great value if placed in their history, groped, however, to update them today, it's something really bizarre. In fact, there is a magisterium that speaks to the eternal, what defines the dogmas of faith, or who definitively enunciates doctrines or ecclesiastical disciplines on the dogmatic foundations of the faith, and there is a magisterium that speaks to societies, to men, to the politics and history of a specific era, after which the speech is closed. there, there is nothing worse than those who cannot read the magisterium and cannot place it in its precise dogmatic context, doctrinal, historical, pastoral, political and social, but who presumes to know how to read it to the point of abusing it with clumsy cut and sew, copy and paste, finally transforming everything into dogma, obviously for the use and support of their bizarre theses.

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To understand what the magisterium has expressed it would be enough to analyze the different language and approach with which the theme of legal positivism or Natural Law is addressed in the encyclical The Splendor of Truth of the Holy Pontiff John Paul II, or in his encyclical Faith and Reason. It would be enough to read the document of the International Theological Commission of 2009, enclosed under the title: In search of a universal ethics: new look at the natural law. All the more reason we understand what mistakes people without school can face, training and method presume to deal lightly with issues that for many have involved a whole life of study and research, certainly not cut and sew, copy and paste …

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THAT INSANE DESIRE, SEAMLING OF THE COMBINATION BETWEEN ALTAR AND THRONE

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Let us now try to identify the real underlying problem, because what gnaws at certain twisted and distorted minds, is that in the 1929 the Catholic Church recognizes through the Lateran Pacts the full and legitimate sovereignty of the secular and liberal state of the Kingdom of Italy. For all answer, with the signature of a head of government who was a former socialist who remained an anticlerical and a Romagna blasphemer all his life, the Church is granted the sop of "state religion", with its compulsory teaching in schools, the religious marriage which also produces civil effects and saucers of various lentils to follow. But, like all the lentils given to poor Esau who sold his birthright for a soup [cf.. Gen 25, 29-33], such they are and such they remain, lentils. Incidentally: while all the liberal countries of Europe had already passed laws on civil divorce, the Kingdom of Italy, in order not to risk the definitive closure of the Roman Question with the Lateran Pacts, he gave up on passing that law. And that real home of such furious anticlericals was the Savoys, together with a Royal Parliament formed by a majority of disbelieving fascists, pretended to believe that sacred marriage is written in the eternal Natural Law along with its divine indissolubility. Rode therefore still, to certain twisted and distorted minds, that the Church, after further sops, subsequently recognized the legitimate secularity of the Republican State in the immediate postwar period, in the wise awareness that this secularism, in a regime of clear separation between political and religious power, between natural law and legal positivism, which can have exchanges but never merge into a single essence or expression of universal law, it was very useful above all for the very mission of the Church, it was beneficial to natural law and it was beneficial to legal positivism.

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Legal positivism abounds in legal institutions which are born because they are inspired by the Natural Law or because they drew their foundation directly from the Holy Scriptures. Just think of the concept of "legal person", present today in all civil codes of the world. It is in fact an institution entirely modulated by the Pauline principle of "mystical body", whereas the Blessed Apostle portrays the Church as a unitary body of which Christ is the head and we are all members [With the 1, 18]. But draw inspiration, or sometimes even foundation, does not mean that the state, through the Positive Law, should transform the Holy Scriptures or Catholic morality into binding laws for all citizens.

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And yet there continue to be redundant subjects from this clear separation and that still dream of the nefarious combination of throne and altar, with the altar that tries to prevail over the throne in every way and that in the course of history has only led us to disastrous situations and great moral degradation, produced within the Church and the clergy precisely because of this poisonous mixture of political and religious power. One example among many? This: to what low and lowest levels the episcopate of the Bourbon Kingdom was reduced, at the time when the bishops were chosen and elected following the satisfaction of the sovereign and the political power? The low and very low level explains it to us and documents a bishop himself in his writings, later became a saint and doctor of the Church, Alphonse Mary of’ Liguori.

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BECAUSE I AM FAVORABLE TO CIVIL DIVORCE WHILE CONSIDERING SACRAMENTAL MARRIAGE INDISSOLUBLE? CONSISTENCY OR COUNTERSENSE?

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Some Italian Catholics make a serious mistake when they place divorce and abortion on the same level, referring to the two referendum who saw the respective laws that regulated their use come into force. Saying divorce and abortion placing these two realities on the same level, is equivalent to combining the civil offense of payment insolvency and the crime of premeditated voluntary homicide together on the same level. These are two distinct elements on which I expressed myself in terms deemed unacceptable by certain Catholics who were listening to me., because they are convinced that even the most unthinkable things are written on the Natural Law imprinted in the heart of man. This is the reason for the controversy: I stated that as a Catholic and as a priest I would never dare to prevent two non-Catholics, to two non-believers, or to people belonging to one of the different religious confessions that recognize the legitimacy of divorce, to annul through this legal institution a civil marriage contracted before a public official of the State, because I consider everything a legitimate act. As a Catholic and as a priest I would never dream of obliging lay people and non-believers to submit to the indissolubility that the Sacrament of Marriage entails., appealing to a Natural Law to be imposed to all with positive laws. Indeed, in the first case we are dealing with a contract entered into by two contractors under positive laws, or so-called civil laws, in the second case we are faced with a sacrament of divine institution, assumption of which it is precisely the impossibility of being able to dissolve it. And the concept of the sacrament of divine institution characterized as marriage by the element of indissolubility, stands up very well by itself, it is not necessary to resort to additional incentives, pounding by stating that marriage is written in Natural Law, precisely because marriage is in its profound substance a sacrament of divine institution.

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Given that the Natural Law given by God has always existed, if I have not misread the Book of Genesis I seem to remember that God created them male and female and told them "Be fruitful and multiply" [Gen 1, 28]. Where it is written that he united them in indissoluble marriage? The Mosaic Law provided for the husband's repudiation of the wife and the possibility of marrying another - read unilateral divorce of man —, all codified and enclosed in the Old Testament [cf.. Lv 22,3]. So it is written, unless some natural lawyer doubts that the ancient law was truly given by God to Moses. At this point, the Internet natural lawyer with a doctorate in biblical sciences after consulting three different blogs that ensure “all about the Bible”, therefore strong in his invincible dialectic he replies: "Mistake, rather: heresy! In Genesis it is written that man will unite with his wife " [cf.. Gen 2, 24]. Yup, it is true, but the term "wife" is used in modern translations. If the internet lawyer already graduated in biblical sciences would also consult the specialist forum “learn Biblical Hebrew in just three hours”, will find that in the original text, the Jewish one, what is translated as "wife", it sounds different, at the semantic level …

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It was Christ God who affirmed that the possibility of leaving the wife it was given “For the hardness of your heart […] but at first it wasn't like that " [Mt 19, 8]. It is evident that "from the beginning" refers to before original sin, to what was the lost dimension of the eternal perfect harmony of creation. It is no coincidence that the term used by Christ is In the beginning, from the beginning [See. Gen. In the beginning God created the heavens and the land] then faithfully translated into Greek as “first”, “in ancient times” [See. Gen. ἐν ἀρχῇ ἐποίησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν]. E from the beginning there was no original sin. So Christ God clarified: «Therefore what God has joined, don't let man part " [Mt 19, 6]. We reflect, if Natural Law has always existed and marriage has always been enclosed in it, it should always have been indissoluble and above all monogamous, or not? What God does, first he makes a provisional Legislative Decree and then a real constitutional law? To the evidence of the facts imprinted in the sacred scriptures it seems that for the Law of the Old Testament this was not the case and that marriage becomes indissoluble through the revelation of the Word of God. So one of the two - but the pseudo-natural law fideists of the eternal Natural Law must respond to this -, or the Natural Law, which exists and is given by God, has had an evolution in the history of man, or Christ God gave a new law with retroactive effect from the beginning of time. I don't see many other solutions.

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Apart from the jokes aimed at encouraging the seriousness of the topic and the mechanisms of reasoning in those who are not closed to reasoning: Natural Law is not something magically still as some understand it, since they are unable to understand that the Creator is also the Supreme Divine Pedagogue. Natural Law has evolved through the grace and mercy of God over the course of human history through a gradual process. How gradually God revealed himself to man, from the Burning Bush of Moses [cf.. Is 3, 1-6] up to the incarnation of the Word of God [GV 1, 1-18]. An example of the evolution of the Natural Law is the sentence of Christ God that clarifies why the institution of repudiation was granted: "For the hardness of your heart" [Mt 19, 8]. A gradualness summarized by St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa against Gentiles, where it treats and explains, always through the principle of historical graduality, the element of the indissolubility of marriage. And this theme is treated with high specialized competence by our Dominican theologian Gabriele Giordano M. Scardocci, one of the Fathers of the Island of Patmos, in one of his valuable works to which I refer and which deserves to be read: This great mystery: the Sacrament of Matrimony in St. Thomas Aquinas» [see, WHO].

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Having clarified everything, I also became very critical going on to say that the Holy Pontiff Paul VI, in my humble opinion, he was wrong not to ask immediately, after the entry into force in 1975 of the civil law on divorce, the modification of the Concordat between Church and State, renouncing the possibility regulated by the Lateran Pacts which allow to celebrate religious marriage with civil effects. In this too it would have been consistent to return to a clear separation. The faithful could have received the Sacrament in the churches, then they would go to the Municipality to sign their marriage contract, thus celebrating two distinct marriages: what for the Church and believers is a sacrament that entails indissolubility; what for the State and which for the laity and non-believers is instead only a contract that can be dissolved if necessary. Therefore two distinct and separate acts, without any admixture and bond between them. Unfortunately the Church could not, for the ancient spirit of Caesaropapism, renounce keeping the tip of your foot in the political and administrative. And here the historical truth dictates to remember that to sign in the seventies, not so much the divorce law - the legitimacy of which I do not dispute, always within the terms clearly explained above -, but the one on the legalization of abortion in 1978, they were the politicians of the Christian Democrats, none of which occurred to them to raise problems of conscience, resign from their political posts, open a government crisis and let that law be passed by others. They all remained in their posts and put their signatures on it, trying to hide behind the finger of "the due act", starting with Giulio Andreotti, who sailed all waters and crossed all bridges, from the sacristies to the courts. A completely different story that of the sovereign of Belgium, Re Baldovino, a true believer and a true Catholic, who as such refused to sign the abortion law, so much so that Parliament resorted to an unusual expedient: the ruler abdicated for 48 hours. That law passed, but not with his approval and signature.

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THE REFUSAL OF THE LAW ON ABORTION IS BASED ON DEEP CONSCIOUS PROBLEMS WHICH SEE THE UNAVAILABLE GOOD OF HUMAN LIFE INVOLVED, FOR THIS THE STATE ALSO PROVIDES A LAW ON THE OBJECTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

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It is good to reiterate that if on the one hand I usually make a clear distinction between the indissoluble sacrament and the civil marriage contract, acknowledging non-Catholics, non-believers or belonging to other religious confessions, the right to be able to divorce, judging for this purpose a law on civil divorce is legitimate and even desiring appropriate, on the other hand I can't, on a moral level, ethical and theological, express a similar concept with regard to the law on abortion, because there human life comes into play, which is not a good available to either the mother or the state. The radical feminists also scream "the womb is mine and I do what I want with it!», because no one can claim that the human life of others is his and that he can do what he wants with it, including deleting it. Abortion is not a right because no one can legitimately kill an innocent human being. For this the two things, divorce and abortion, they are totally distinct, because in the face of abortion the respectful principle that leads to say cannot be applied: I cannot prevent a non-Catholic, to a non-believer or a member of other religions who consider abortion lawful, the freedom or the right to be able to abort a human being, because this is morally unacceptable. Kill an innocent human being, it can never come within the sphere of human rights and freedoms. For which reason this, contextually to that terrifying law, the legislator also took care to pass a special law on conscientious objection, aware that the legalization of abortion would have deeply touched many consciences. And note, not only the consciences of Catholics, because I can testify that I know not a few non-believers, atheists included, who are definitely against abortion, if anything, while not a few Catholics are very permissive in this. If it had not been, the referendum for the approval of that law, how it could have passed, in a country like Italy, where at the time the 96% some Italians were baptized? The referendum it had a majority and the law was passed under a very Christian Democrat government, because the first to vote in favor were armies of baciapile Catholics.

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As a citizen, I suffer that this law exists in my country through which tens of thousands of babies are killed in the wombs of their mothers every year. I would be the first to go to vote and to invite to go to vote if a referendum for the repeal of this law. But unfortunately, if the Italian Catholics of the 1978 they voted in favor of abortion in the secret of the ballot box, except to return the following Sunday to kiss the holy water piles or to bring the brides-daughters to the altar with three meters of white train between cascades of flowers and sviolinate, what remains of the Catholics in 2020 would go en masse directly to the streets to defend the "right" to abortion.

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WHAT COULD THE APPLICATION OF NATURAL LAW LEAD AS SOME UNDERSTAND IT?

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I go back to the beginning to explain in conclusion which from the post-Constantinian era to follow, the Church did not go to happy moments for the mixture of altar and throne, between political power and religious power fused together indistinctly. Obviously we are talking about other historical periods, where elements that today appear harmful, or even nefarious in our eyes, they had their own profound reason for being. Let's try to clarify with an example: it is a completely obvious element to say today that sovereignty belongs to the people who delegate it to their rulers through the mechanism of free elections [cf.. Constitution of the Italian Republic, art. 1]. But a similar concept expressed in the fourth century at the time of the Council of Nicaea, but also in the sixteenth century at the time of the Council of Trent, it would have seemed partly incomprehensible and partly absurd, and the masters of Natural Law and natural law would have screamed in horror, if not to heresy! In fact, let's not forget that until not so remote times, in the Roman ritual there was the sacred rite of the consecration of the King, complete with invocation to the Holy Spirit. Perhaps it is good to remember that that half antichrist of Napoleon is crowned in the Notre Dame Cathedral of Paris in 1804, present the blessing Supreme Pontiff Pius VII who had to undergo a great humiliation, when this former Corsican corporal took the crown and placed it on his head alone, saying in substance to the Roman Pontiff: you're just an extra at my play. It therefore makes one smile to think that in 2020 we still have to debate with Catholics for hobby, champions of «true tradition» and defenders «of true doctrine» who affirm with disturbing aplomb that the Positive Law must be subject to Natural Law and that States would have the obligation to apply the laws written by God in the heart of man. Perhaps they long to return to the "happy" times when the king, absolute tyrant and, if necessary, bloody, he was consecrated by the Roman Pontiff in his high capacity as king of the kings of the Earth? With the altar that tries to put its feet on the head of the throne and with the throne that puts the altar under your feet for a plate of lentils?

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What would follow from a state that turned sin into crime? In this case it must be said that the State should first of all make Baptism obligatory. Or could it possibly, a State subject to the supreme and divine Natural Law written in the heart of man, to prevent a child from being washed of the stain of original sin? And a politician, a magistrate and a public administrator not in line with the fundamental principles of Catholic faith and morals, he could hold certain offices? Obviously not, because a half disbeliever put in certain roles could cause enormous damage to the Holy Faith and to the eternal Natural Law written in the heart of man. Therefore, one of the fundamental examination subjects for the competition for access to the judiciary should be the perfect and in-depth knowledge of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. And to be candidates for the Chamber of Deputies or the Senate of the Republic, the anti-mafia certificate would not be needed but that of the Italian Episcopal Conference certifying the candidate's catholicity. And if two young people decide to live together outside of marriage? What a gruesome violation of the Natural Law written by God in the heart of man they would do? In that case the carabinieri would have to run to their home to prevent them from living together, then adequately punish them for that sin-crime against the Natural Law that has imprinted marriage and its indissolubility in the heart of man, or not? Because sexual relations before marriage are prohibited by the eternal Natural Law written in the heart of man since the beginning of time, vero? However, i fideisti pseudo-giusnaturalisti, they are convinced that God had not even finished creating the genital organs for Adam and Eve who had already imprinted on the eternal Natural Law written in the heart of man the prohibition of sexual relations before marriage, it's natural, rather, it is truth of faith! What if two free men, adults and consenting ones decide to have sexual relations with each other? In that case the state would have to apply very severe penalties, in the face of what for Catholic morality is the grave unnatural sin which according to the archaic biblical expression cries out for vengeance in the sight of God. And on this trail we could continue with numerous other examples, all of them logical and consequent, about the supremacy of the Natural Law written by God in the heart of man over the Positive Laws of the State.

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At the end of the speech I report a question I put to an interlocutor to whom I asked: should your wish come true that the Positive Law is subject to the Natural Law written by God in the heart of man, explain to me what would become of the Protestants, heirs and spreaders of the Lutheran heresy, in such an "idyllic" context? The answer was truly disturbing, but I invite you to laugh about it, like laughing at a grotesque joke: "The state has the duty to defend the truth from error, because the error cannot be accepted and tolerated in the name of freedom ". That is: non-Catholics, lay people and non-believers must be forced to believe the truths announced by the Church that the state would have the duty to defend against error. And note: those who think in this way, not only do they feel like true Catholics, but they also take it out on us when we try to explain their gross and dangerous errors.

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And with this it is said that by certain misunderstood ideas of Natural Law, by obvious consequence, only the Ayatollah Khomeini regime can be born, that he too did, like many other dictators, to a Divine Natural Law given by God: the Koran. All the worst and most violent theocracies of Islamic countries are based on a natural law of divine derivation, superior as such to any positive law. That is why I say that one must laugh at certain erroneous beliefs, to laugh so as not to cry. Of course, I am sorry and it hurts me when I hear certain speeches made by Catholics stubbornly in error, who are more proud than ever of their mistake and accept no reasonable correction, so much do they feel right and in truth, if anything, bringing up a metaphysics they do not know and a poor Saint Thomas Aquinas who never even vaguely thought about what they attribute to him, they are so specialized in cutting a piece by one question from the QUESTION, isolate it from the context, totally misunderstand it, make him say what is not written in the text and finally, to those who know Aquinas deny them, to answer blindly is stubborn: "Ah, said St. Thomas Aquinas!». And if anything,, to you who have been practicing Aquinas for a lifetime, they intimidate you as well: "But if you don't know Saint Thomas Aquinas, then study it!». For this I find myself forced to agree with a secular atheist, very little tender towards the Catholic Church and Catholicism, who talking to journalists just before he was awarded yet another degree in Turin Honorary, he said:

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«I social media they give the right to speak to legions of idiots who previously only spoke at the bar after a glass of wine, without damaging the community. They were immediately silenced, while now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It is the invasion of imbeciles ".

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This sentence was not said by the Holy Mother Teresa of Calcutta when in 1979 he received the Nobel Peace Prize in Stockholm, he said it in 2015 the little saint Umberto Eco, commenting that in concrete facts, the last of the conspiracy theorists he publishes on You Tube an anonymous video showing that the earth is flat, it will be more followed and listened to than a Nobel Prize in physics. Exactly as it happens to us priests and theologians, that by many of our faithful we are not taken into the least consideration and least of all listened to, they are so busy following the pseudo-theological bullshit uttered by the last of the imbeciles about social media, or by retired journalists who have become ecclesiologists in the balance between gossip and fantasy-theology. How can we blame that anticlerical atheist of Umberto Eco, we priests and theologians in particular, than with our faithful PhDs on the internet in philosophy, biblical sciences, theology, sacramental dogmatics and Catholic morals, we are forced to undergo what we suffer and to take beating if we dare try to correct them?

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the Island of Patmos, 15 December 2020

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