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The soothsayer Tiresias and Christianity: the reality of disability, between joy and hope

4 November 2020/1 Comment/in Pastoral Care, Theologica/by Father Gabriele

— Theologica —

THE SOOTER TIRESIA AND CHRISTIANITY: THE REALITY OF DISABILITY, BETWEEN HOPE AND JOY

Author:
Gabriele Giordano M. Scardocci, o.p.

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Ulysses and the soothsayer Tiresias

One of the strong themes which involve a lot on an emotional and intellectual level every faithful, by the individual believer, to the priest, from the man of culture to the theologian, it is certainly the issue of disability. To be precise, there is no disability in the abstract, but there are people with physical or mental disabilities, which can be congenital, innate or acquired.

I would like to sketch biblical-theological reflections on the theme of disability. I am aware, together with the whole Christian tradition, that the mystery of human evil and suffering remains a mystery and can never be fully disclosed. But it can be contemplated, scrutinized with an eye of faith, hope and charity and be placed in the highest and greatest plan of God's Plan.

In this article first of all we will make some historical considerations on one of the most famous and oldest disabled people in history, the soothsayer Tiresias. Subsequently, we will move on to the theme of suffering in the Christian sphere.

A DISABLED PERSON KNOWN TO ANTIQUITY. TIRESIA, BLIND SOOTER.

The disability, certainly falls within the theme of suffering, of those who are afflicted and who will be comforted, according to the evangelical beatitude. Persons affected by disabilities are fully included in those who are welcomed into the bosom of Trinitarian love. The world of culture, of philosophical and anthropological reflection has always been fascinated and at the same time shaken by this theme. So much so that she has recently allowed herself to be questioned by disability, trying to build a reflection. First of all I would like to point out the text by Gian Antonio Stella: Several – The long battle of the disabled to change history, recently published by the well-known journalist of Corriere della Sera. With a journalistic slant, Stella tries to do a excursus starting from different historical figures of people with disabilities who have really proposed their innovative experience for the time of history in which they lived. I would not like to dwell on this text though ^[1].

For some time the Sicilian culture it has lost one of its most fruitful writers, Andrea Camilleri. Almost like a testament, along with some books now out, the author of Porto Empedocle, known for creating the character of Inspector Montalbano, has published a text entitled Conversations about Tiresia. It is a small booklet that faithfully reproduces the text of the homonymous show staged last June 2018 and played by Camilleri himself.

The central theme of the text, as the title says, is the figure of the soothsayer Tiresias. Legendary figure, of which little is known. Of course, of him, it is known that he is originally from Thebes, has a daughter named Manto, she guesses too, but above all that he is blind, or as we would say today: blind. The play is a small one excursus from irony, mockery and a few digs at today's world, how this figure has been described, mocked and at the same time loved and respected over the centuries. notoriously, Greek antiquity produced a series of sources on Tiresias. The most interesting thing to note is that in a pre-Christian antiquity, who had a very difficult relationship with the disabled, a physically disabled figure such as Tiresias has instead remained alive in the writing of these authors. Of course, the figure of the Theban soothsayer, it is especially interesting for a cultural reflection on disability.

The Pseudo Apollodorus he tried to explain where Tiresias' blindness originated. So he reported three narratives, in its Library; the second and third narratives are particularly interesting^[2], also told theatrically in Camilleri's text. In the second narrative, the one according to Apollodorus, Tiresia is the son of Evereo and the Nymph Cariclo: the blindness comes from the punishment of Athena that Tiresias saw naked taking a bath; then Cariclo intervened and asked for mercy for his son. Athena did not remove the blindness of the wretch see, but joined in the ability to be a soothsayer. The third narrative Apollodorus takes it up from the Greek poet Hesiod, and it is the most complex, because it inserts other elements. Tiresias meditated while walking on Mount Citerone: here he saw two snakes in the act of sexual union and then in disgust he decided to trample and kill the female. As soon as the lustful asp was crushed, magically Tiresias changed from man to woman. This image, it induces Camilleri to put in the mouth of Tiresias a theological consideration linked to snakes:

“As a teenager, I loved taking long solitary walks on the Citerone and one day, suddenly, while I was sitting on a stone, I saw two large coiled snakes rushing towards me in the act of reproduction. I was lost in thought, for this I reacted as I never should have. Why with snakes, on Citerone, one had to be careful. In order to possess Persephone, Zeus changed into a serpent and Cadmus also "asserted himself" for his escapades. So in those reptiles a god could hide "^[3].

We will come back to this detail shortly. We observe how Tiresias is truly wise: that is, he is able to go beyond the material aspect and grasp the divine nature of even such an animalistic act as sexual union. However, proceeding with the narration, we know that later the Theban soothsayer became a man again, but his misfortune was not over. Indeed, in an indefinite period, Zeus and Hera quarreled and often found themselves divided by a controversy: if in the act of intercourse the man or the woman felt more pleasure. They could not come to any conclusions because in fact the two main positions confronted each other strongly: Zeus, in fact he claimed it was the woman, while Era was the man. To settle the dispute they decided to turn to Tiresias, considered the only one who could have solved it since he had tested both the male and female nature. Perhaps it would have been better if Tiresias had followed the old adage of not putting a finger between husband and wife^[4]. Ma, for that time, he was not careful about this. So, once summoned by the two quarrelsome gods to resolve the overrun problem, replied that sexual pleasure consists of ten parts: the man only tries one and the woman nine, therefore a woman feels a pleasure nine times greater than that of a man. Tiresias thought of answering thus doing Hera a favor, believing that the goddess had answered according to her own reasoning. The goddess, instead, she was furious that Tiresias had revealed that secret: and so it blinded him. Instead Zeus, contrary to his wife's reaction, he decided to repair the damage suffered, and empowered Tiresias to foresee the future and the gift of living for seven generations. And this, in the Greek perspective, it implied having a practically eternal life.

Here then are the three elements highlighted in Tiresias' disability: blindness follows the punishment of knowing a deep secret of man. Tiresia, a bit like Prometheus, he is to blame for having ventured to guess and reason, get beyond the achievable: therefore of having entered the highest spheres of the intimacy of man and woman. Of having been able to dissolve the very secret of the total donation of man to woman and vice versa, therefore of their profound identity. At the same time, Tiresias entered the deep secret of bodily pleasure and the origin of life. He really couldn't stand this affront. Like this, he thinks he is displeasing Tiresias, blinding him: but doing so actually takes it away from the view of material things and leaves it forever to the view of information, higher notions and concepts. I dare say that Tiresias can be the slave in the Platonic cave who, freed from the snares of material visions, finally sees the light of Ideas., in the eternity of timeless truth. However, I do not want to enter into a platonic analysis.

Returning instead to the disability of Tiresias is added, with the action of Zeus, the gift of foresight and eternal life. The anthropological masterpiece of Tiresias the Theban is definitively finished. The disability, so condemned, so stigmatized in the Greek world, and instead, in Tiresia, loaded with a set of extraordinary gifts donated by the gods^[5]. So the lack of light on everyday things matters little.

Tiresias knows the fact present in her most intimate secrets. The same applies to future events: knows what is deeper, what is most sought after by every Greek man, philosopher, mathematician, astronomer or historian. The scholar Paolo Scarpi writes about this:

«[…] Tiresias' blindness is actually the condition for him to fulfill his role as a soothsayer […] The three reasons presented in the Library, […], in reality they appear connected by a common denominator represented by the optical code on which the story is built. […] sight enters directly into question, configuring itself as a transgression of a code of behavior enunciated by Callimaco […] (the laws of Cronus thus establish who sees an immortal against his will, will pay a great price for this view)»^[6]

In confirmation of this it seems interesting to note what the Odyssey of the Theban diviner. Homer offers an important task to Tiresias, in fact in the tenth canto we read:

"To ask the soul of the Theban Tiresias,

the blind soothsayer, whose precordi are firm:

to him only Persephone gave even when he was dead,

the faculty to be wise; the others are wandering shadows "^[7]

Ulisse, nell’Ade, he is forced to look for Tiresias, to find out about the way back to Ithaca. In the verses of the Homeric poem, we read between the lines that only Tiresias are granted the extraordinary gifts that make him so wise. I add a couple more elements: in Tebaide, the poet Stazio describes that Tiresias, deaf-mute and blind at the same time, retains its extraordinary powers. Who, physical disability, it is even more pronounced, nevertheless wisdom and prophecy remain. And they will have a dramatic role in Sophocles.

Nell’Oedipus Re, Tiresias is called prophesying also the famous incest between Oedipus and Jocasta and the killing of Laius: in this tragedy the prophecy of the blind is even an element of help in the discovery of a moral action condemned by time. The contribution of Tiresias becomes fundamental in the dissolution of the Oedipus drama.

Returning and concluding the reading of Camilleri's text, I find a splendid poem dedicated to Tiresias by the poet Thomas Sterne Elliott

«I Tiresias, although blind, button between two screws,

old man with withered female breasts, I can see

at the purple hour, the hour of the evening that comes

on the way back, and bring the sailor home from the sea,

I can see the typist at home at tea time, clears breakfast,

turns on the stove and takes out canned food.

Outside the window dangerously hung out to dry

Its combinations touched by the last rays of the sun,

on the sofa (his bed at night) they are crowded

socks, slippers, shirts and corsets.

I Tiresias, old man with shriveled boobs,

you perceive the scene, and predicted the rest -

I too expected the expected guest.

His, the pustular young man, he arrives,

employee of a small rental agency, with a single glance

baldanzoso,

one of the people to whom the security is

like a top hat to an enriched peasant.

The time is now right, as he conjectures,

lunch is over, she is bored and tired,

try to engage her in caresses

which are not rejected, even if unwanted.

Excited and determined, he attacks all of a sudden;

exploring hands meet no defense;

his vanity requires no answer

and takes indifference as a welcome.

(And I Tiresias have pre-offered everything

What was done on this same sofa or bed;

I who sat under the walls of Thebes

and I walked among the humblest dead).

[…]

Then I came to Carthage

Burning burning Burning burning

O Lord You take me

O Lord You seize

Burning^[8].»

The analysis of Tiresias' disability it therefore shows how disability has a contradictory value in the pre-Christian world: in which a relationship of damnation is highlighted, stigma, removal e, on the other, almost instead a state of elevation to higher knowledge. The theme of disability, for the Greeks it therefore called for a sapiential knowledge of the present, a prophetic knowledge of the future, a call to eternal life (certainly not of the same characteristics as the Christian Kingdom of God). Obviously, the aspect totally absent in Tiresias' disability, as indeed to all Greek reflection before the coming of Christ, it is obviously the link between divine and human activity: that relationship between grace and nature that will only subsequently be probed by Catholic theology.

In fact, Tiresias suffers from disability in his human nature as a punishment: it is not explained by the Greek myths in what way, after obtaining the disability, his person is brought, through disability, to a path of improvement and moral elevation with the help of the Gods. The disability, in Tiresia, in short, it is a special epistemological methodology but not one of sanctification. A special way of knowing but not of raising oneself to a relationship with the sacred. On the other hand, it is completely different in character, the sense of physical suffering, and therefore also a visual impairment, since the advent of Jesus Christ: all disabilities are part of the affliction and suffering love of Christ. They can therefore be grouped under the great category of suffering.

AFFLICT BUT INTIMALLY UNITED IN THE SUFFERING LOVE OF JESUS

One thing is certain. About Christianity, it is founded by Jesus and it is a religion of joy; indeed, Christianity, it started with a joyful imperative. «Kaire / Rejoice Maria!» [9] so the archangel Gabriel greeted the adolescent Mary. We certainly recognize with Joseph Ratzinger that "Christianity is therefore the faith of joy"[10]. but yet, within the path of a Catholic faith that is joyful, it does not escape some particularly delicate issues such as suffering, penance and pain. Let us think for a moment that in the journey of the Catholic Church there is a great period of penance and asceticism: Lent. This is because Lent is above all a time of conversion, but also a time of desert and reflection. In that period there is an invitation to linger, in our personal prayer or meditation, on those issues that are ordinarily difficult to assimilate and deal with, like sin, the death, the illness, pain. Suffering is a very sensitive issue. Above all it is delicate because it is experienced by men and women. Theme that we have all touched firsthand. These men are suffering. Therefore they are afflicted. In fact, one of the themes that the Old Testament also speaks to us about is suffering. Let's think, for example, of the story in the book of Job. Uright omo, today we will say a pious, a decent and very devoted person. The Lord, At that time, it allows the devil to be tried in moral suffering, we remember in fact that all his children were killed; so, material, we remember that he lost all his possessions; finally physics, we remember that he fell seriously ill with leprosy and was isolated from everyone, except from four friends.

In Job, according to the exegetes, we find four typically human reactions. The first is acceptance (cf.. Gb 1,22). He peacefully accepts that all this comes from God. At the same time, he also demands from him a kind of return in the future. The second reaction, it is rebellion (cf.. Gb 3, 1). He will even wish to die. It is also a typical reaction of today's sick people: it is a desire for tranquility and peace. The third reaction is custody (cf.. Gb 40). Job entrusts himself to God recognizing his littleness, one's being created creature, with respect to God the uncreated creator. So he truly relies on the Creator because he recognizes that he was proud and pretentious towards him. Fourth reaction, the unearthly reward (Gb 42,7). Job is given back all that he had lost in a double way [11].

Job is an afflicted one. God after a journey of conversion, of purification and growth is consoled by God. I was very impressed when I too hear the voice of an afflicted one. An afflicted one a few years ago: but that in his today, as today it has been abandoned by all. For this I would like now let you hear the voice of that kind of afflicted that, unlike Job, He did not make it.

"I lived (male) for thirty years, someone will say that it is too little. That someone is not able to determine what the limits of tolerance are, because they are subjective, not objective. I tried to be a good person, I've made a lot of mistakes, I have made many attempts, I tried to make sense and purpose using my resources, to make an art of discomfort. But the questions never end, and I'm tired of hearing it. And I'm sick of pormene too. I'm sick of making efforts without getting results, fed up with criticism, fed up with job interviews like unnecessary graphic designer, tired of wasting feelings and desires for the other gender (who obviously doesn't need me), tired of envying, sick of wondering what it's like to win, of having to justify my existence without having determined it, fed up with having to meet everyone's expectations without ever having met mine, tired of putting a good face on bad luck, to feign interest, to delude myself, to be made fun of, of being pushed aside and being told that sensitivity is a great quality. […] Nothing can be expected from this reality. You can't expect a job, one cannot expect to be loved, recognition cannot be expected, you cannot expect to expect security, a stable environment cannot be expected. […] I entered this world as a free person, and as a free person I got out of it, because I didn't like it even a little. Enough with the hypocrisies. […] I know this seems crazy to you, but it is not. It's just disappointment. The urge has passed: not here and not now. I cannot impose my essence, but my absence does, and absolute nothingness is always better than a whole where you cannot be happy doing your destiny. […] Forgive me, mum and dad, if you can, but now I'm home again. I'm fine"[12].

It is terrible to read such lines. It is almost impossible to empathize with the pain of a young person who wants to take his own life. It is absolutely impossible to understand the pain of those parents who have lost a child in this way. but yet, this young man was an afflicted one. An afflicted one left alone by all: abandoned to the mentality and fashion of the world, who believes and inculcates everyone that suicide is the only way to live their freedom. This is the freedom that today's world wants to convince us Catholics too that it is the one to live: a freedom that is not true freedom. That freedom that would be expressed in assisted suicide and euthanasia techniques, as happened for the case, rose to the fore of the news, by Dj Fabio. Dj Fabio was also a sufferer, one that we will biblically call afflicted[13]. The world, instead of giving him true freedom, he has abandoned him for good. The rule of law even offers him reason and jurisprudence to found the belief that one can only get out of suffering by committing suicide. As if suicide were the maximum expression of a "freedom"[14]. That freedom that eliminates suffering and affliction. Because a suffering and afflicted life has no value, then it is eliminated. It is taken and thrown away. And everything is disguised with the magic word: li-ber-Ta. Three syllables with which today we ride the wave and allow everything.

"We live in an era in which we are entitled to live only if they are perfect. Any insufficiency, any weakness, every fragility seems banished "[15]

There is only one answer to this terrible conviction of today's culture. The real answer that each of us can give is this: the joy of Jesus Christ. It responds to a logic of death, of throwaway culture, of necroculture simply by showing the joy and love that Jesus had for the afflicted. Because Jesus Christ himself often met with suffering. That is, Jesus met suffering and afflicted people: who in the body and who in the spirit. And he put himself at the service of them and their relatives and friends. For this he was able to relegate a special place in the Beatitudes to the suffering: "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted"[16].

If we take a look at the Gospel of the resurrection of Lazarus, let's see immediately how Jesus relates to the death of his dear friend Lazarus. Jesus himself cries. He is afflicted, and lives this moment together with other afflicted ones. Let's try to follow the Gospel text closely:

«Jesus loved him very much (agapan = loved with mercy) to Marta, to his sister [Maria] and to Lazarus. Marta then, as he knew that Jesus was coming, went to meet him; Maria, on the other hand, was sitting in the house. Martha said to Jesus: "Man, if you had been here, my brother would not have died! But even now I know that whatever you will ask of God, God will give you ". Jesus told her: "Your brother will rise again". Marta answered him: "I know he will rise again on the last day". Jesus told her: «I am the resurrection and the life; who believes in me, even if it dies, will live; whoever lives and believes in me, will not die forever. You believe this?». She answered him: "Yup, o Lord, I believe you are the Christ, the Son of God who must come into the world " (= peepisteuka, the Greek verb expresses a strong leap of faith) Then Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her also weep, he was deeply moved (embryonic masts = to get angry), he was upset and said: "Where have you placed it?”. They told him: "Man, come and see!”. Jesus burst into tears. Then the Jews said: “See how she loved him!”. After placing the stone in which Lazarus was placed, Jesus then raised his eyes and said: "Dad, thank you that you listened to me. I knew you always listen to me, but I said it for the people around me, so that they believe that you sent me ". E, said this, he shouted loudly: "Lazarus, come outside!”. The dead man came out, with his feet and hands wrapped in bandages, and the face covered with a shroud. Jesus said to them,: "Untie it and let it go" "[17].

Let's try to read the text analytically. In verse 5 we see first of all that Jesus performs the action ofagapan that is, he loved Marta deeply, Maria and Lazzaro. agapao is the Greek verb from which it comes agape, that we precisely translate with Mercy. So he loved them with mercy. Also to the verses 20 – 27 Jesus is rebuked by Martha, later also by Maria, of not having been present at the time of Lazarus' death. He gets from them an act of faith in eternal life that happens through His Presence: the presence of Jesus, Son of God in the world. Subsequently (cf.. V.33) when he later learns of Lazarus's death, Jesus is moved: he has an angry movement of passion (so does the Greek verb embryonic masts), of aversion towards death which is one of the effects caused by original sin in turn generated by the devil. Jesus himself, so, expresses aversion and hostility towards death. Commenting on the verses 41 – 42, the exegete Brown writes:

"Through the exercise of the power of Jesus, which is the power of the Father, they will know the Father and thus will receive life themselves. Jesus will get nothing for himself, he only wants his listeners to know the Father who sent him. […] The crucial thing is that Jesus gave physical life as a sign of his power to give eternal life on this earth and as a promise that on the last day he will raise the dead "[18].

March, Maria and Lazzaro are afflicted. Jesus makes him discover, right in affliction, a true and real relationship with God. Suffering then becomes one of the possible "places" to truly encounter the Lord's love and receive consolation from it. As God did with Job and as now Jesus does with Lazarus. Effectively, the affliction, it can generate a sense of isolation: as we have seen so far, the suffering, if on the one hand it is an experience, on the other hand it is at the same time a solitary experience, permitted by God to the individual and only to the individual. In an indirect way it also affects relatives, the friends and neighbors of the afflicted one, but it serves first of all to the single person. These afflicted ones are not that far in time and space from our lives.

We too can be merciful and show God's love to the afflicted. We can express and communicate the joy and vitality of Jesus through these suffering brothers of ours? Through the exercise of material and corporal works of mercy, it is possible to express the biblical sense of consolation. Here is the connection between consolation and a sense of brotherhood: knowing how to enter into someone's drama and support it. To be truly with - brothers through the Mercy / Agape of God for the other. To live by helping the afflicted is to support them. In being a support then there are three drifts that must absolutely be avoided:

a) pitying the afflicted one. In other words, there is a risk of creating a victimization. Through this dynamic, the person gets stuck in his own pain and closes himself in a narcissism that prevents him from getting better [19].

b) The narcotic effect. That is, trying to get rid of pain by putting the conscience on it. The person is therefore pushed by society to live as if pain does not exist. This leads to superficiality, which is dangerous because it postpones the problem of pain and aggravates it[20]. In fact, escaping from a problem means aggravating it.

c) Invite the afflicted to see who is worse off than him: there is nothing worse than making existence like a Serie A ranking and saying who is better and who is worse off. It makes no sense to console someone by saying "since there are those who are worse off than you, you have to be fine " [21].

Let's see', At that time, the work of mercy to console the afflicted in what it really consists of. The words of the presbyter Fabio Rosini who writes will help us:

Physical pain can be harsh, but if there is a reason, it is supported, the heart is serene; if however, the pain is without explanation then becomes unbearable. Affliction needs a word to fill it, that address you, an indication that guides understanding " [22]

The same word consolation (in Hebrew nacham), biblically it is rendered with the verbs to rest, stop, find tranquility or even give refuge[23]. This is what we just saw Jesus doing with Lazarus' afflicted relatives. Pacifying a person means giving him that word of fullness, of understanding, sense that pain seems to have stolen from him.

"Whoever performs the act of consular is capable of putting himself next to the sufferer by showing him what he cannot see and allowing him to open his heart, the look, the spirit to another perspective, an integral depth that gives completeness "[24].

In a certain sense, all Christians are called to console, remember that it is they who are called to give this completeness. So this is the call to be those who remember that God is above all hope in suffering. Remind the world and today's culture that hoping is a typically human act, but at the same time elevating: because it allows even the worst of the afflicted to rise above their pain. As Fabio Rosini always writes, consular, giving hope basically means, make an act of mercy that "makes eternity present, that reveals the face of God in pain "[25]. This will also allow us to resume first of all hope. And hoping is a typically Christian act. More, to hope is the typically Catholic act! Because the believer is the one who has placed all trust in Jesus. And just like Martha and Maria, he expresses his hope aloud in pain. Always keep this in mind, while you prepare sandwiches for the poor, while you prepare the spinal stretcher, while you rearrange the civil protection facilities. Hoping means first of all kindling the expectation of a God who is the immensely good absolute good.

Each of us can be a bearer of hope, carriers of joy even to the afflicted of the poorest neighborhoods, to the afflicted one due to grief or depression, or precisely of a disability. Here then is that by relating these reflections to disability, we will say that even the person with disabilities, despite his afflictions and physical pains, he is called to a path of joy and sanctification. There is always a higher plane to which God the Father directs, how he directed the sufferings of Jesus of the Passion, to the joy of the Resurrection. We too will be transported to the joy of consolation. Because when we will console an afflicted one, this will make us truly discover the joy of our life. Our whole life will be knowing how to rediscover the presence of a Trinitarian God, who is with us even in pain. It is by loving who is afflicted, making him rediscover this joy of living, together with the poet Giacomo Leopardi we can say "I have never felt so much living as loving" [26].

Rome, 4 November 2020

_______________

NOTE

[1] The reader can consult for further information: G. A. Stella, Diverse - The long battle of the disabled to change history, Solferino, 2019, Milan.

[2] Pseudo-Apollodoro, Library, III, 6, 7.

[3] A. Camilleri, Conversations about Tiresia, Sellerio, Palermo, 2019.

[4] A. Camilleri, op.cit.

[5] Along this same line M stands. Schianchi, History of disability - From the punishment of the gods to the welfare crisis, Carocci, Rome, 2012, 40.

[6] Apollodoro, Greek myths, by P. Shoes, translate. at M.G. Ciani, Monadori, Milan, 1996, 55.

[7] Odyssey X, 492 and following, Translation by G. Aurelio Privitera

[8] T.S. Elliott, Wasteland mentioned in A. Cammileri, Conversations about Tiresia, 41 – 42. Check page again.

[9] Luca 1, 26.

[10](J). Ratzinger, Elements of fundamental theology, Morcelliana, Brescia, 69.

[11] S. Pinto, The secrets of Wisdom, Introduction to the wisdom and poetic books , St. Paul, Cinisello Balsamo, 2013, 21 – 23.

[12] Letter from M., a suicide in his thirties, taken from http://messaggeroveneto.gelocal.it/udine/cronaca/2017/02/07/news/non-posso-passare-il-tempo-a-cercare-di-sopravvivere-1.14839837 last access 10/01/20 hours 18.07.

[13] See. http://www.huffingtonpost.it/2017/02/28/fidanzata-dj-fabo-vorrei-notte-non-finisse_n_15055120.html Last Access 23 March 2017 hours 16.43).

[14] https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2019/09/25/news/consulta_cappato_dj_fabo_sentenza-236870232/ Last Access 10/01/10 hours 18.16.

[15]A. D’AVENIA, The art of being fragile, 2016, 147.

[16] Mt 5,4

[17] Gospel according to John, chapter 11.

[18] R. E. Brown, Giovanni, 2014, pp 567 – 568

[19] Fabio ROSINI, Only love creates, 2016, p. 121.

[20] In the same place.

[21] Fabio ROSINI, on,cit, p. 122.

[22] Fabio ROSINI, p. 120.

[23] Fabio ROSINI, p. 127.

[24] Fabio ROSINI p. 129.

[25] Fabio ROSINI, p. 129.

[26] (Zibaldone 1819 – 1820.)

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The period of the lockdown how it was experienced by the priests? Who was prepared for such an emergency? The world of politics was not, health care, of science, of public education, of work, of trade, of entrepreneurship, of finance, of information, of the show. What was the difficult relationship between priests and faithful during the months of suspension of the sacred liturgies? Above all: what happened in the Piazza dei social media, about which Umberto Eco said:

«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 harming 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 ".

I social media they are a savannah where supercazzolari attack like hyenas. Those who believe they can solve the problem by ignoring them, wrong. The French Revolution teaches that it is dangerous to lock yourself up in the palace of Versailles while in Paris the square is filled with hatred. When in fact the square exploded, the heads of those who ignored the problem were cut off by the angry people. During the lockdown for Covid-19 the Fathers de The Island of Patmos they had to clash with the supercazzole of false Catholics and theologians do it yourself popped up on the internet like wildflowers after the rain. Their experience as priests and theologians has been collected in these pages, together with the analysis of a danger not to be underestimated with snobbery, because on the piazza dei social media irrational emotionality is rampant, while the guillotines have already been in operation for some time.

A book, that of our Fathers, which will take you into the heart of a problem that has created debates for months, frictions and rivers of nonsense published on social media by Catholic supercazzolari or presumed to be so.

From the island of Patmos, 3 November 2020

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THE ASPIRINE OF MODERATE ISLAM, at Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo

The Bishop of Ascoli Piceno Giovanni D'Ercole has a choice “the Benedict option”, the same one that many of us will follow shortly, together with those who have already undertaken it for some years

30 October 2020/4 Comments/in Actuality/by Father Ivano

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THE BISHOP OF ASCOLI PICENO GIOVANNI D'ERCOLE HAS A CHOICE THE BENEDICT OPTION, THE SAME THAT SOON MANY OF US WILL FOLLOW, TOGETHER WITH THOSE WHO HAVE ALREADY UNDERTAKEN IT FOR A FEW YEARS

One could say that it is an escape, but not as the world of gods can understand it adult Catholics who see God as a militant and the Gospel as a political manifesto to strike in the face of those who do not think like them. The escape of Giovanni D'Ercole is the same escape of Pope Benedict XVI, to be understood and read first of all as the flight of Benedict from Nursia who dares to separate from the Empire now corrupt and upset by the invading barbarians in order to rediscover his origins, their roots and the Christian identity that today in the world sounds like an unpronounceable blasphemy.

Author
Ivano Liguori, Ofm. Capp.

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S. AND. Mons. Giovanni D'Ercole, Bishop emeritus of Ascoli Piceno

The Bishop of Ascoli Piceno S.E. Mons. Giovanni D'Ercole, Orionine religious, at the threshold of 73 years of age - two years ahead of the expected withdrawal of the bishops from the episcopal chair a 75 years - he decided to present to the Supreme Pontiff the letter of resignation from the pastoral care of his diocese and to enter the monastery to live a life of silence and prayer.

Thus he motivated his decision:

“Loving the Church also means having the courage to make difficult choices, suffered, always having in front of the good of the Church and not oneself ".

Words that recall those of the Supreme Pontiff Benedict XVI and which weigh like boulders in this historical moment of disorder and loss of leadership inside and outside the Church. The situation, we understand it well, it includes the responsibility of many, not just a single.

Among the battlefields bloodied by the sacrifice of the martyrs, there is a strong fight for the safeguarding of doctrine, of the morality and freedom of the Church. Let's ask ourselves: in this scenario, perhaps a bishop flees?

Yet, we men of the Church, we did not understand that to convert others it is necessary to convert ourselves first, the goodness of the Gospel and of the person of Jesus Christ is not embraced by hybridizing politics [cf.. WHO] which by its nature is secular and the century is the historical space and time of man fallen and punished because he rebelled against God. Like this, as the Gospel is not the pauperistic ideal of those who claim to remove poverty with a sort of Roussian optimism, who sees the perfect watch in man, the demiurge who has denied God and creates order in disorder and salvation in despair.

Being a Church without compromise is possible if Christ is the privileged option of believers and pastors, option that Giovanni D'Ercole has reiterated in these months of health emergency, reminding the top of the government the truths of the faith and diverting the People of God from that safe anesthetized blanket that shakes off all responsibility and involvement with God in the name of an unidentified common good that kills all hope.

The world now does not understand the choice of the bishop emeritus of Ascoli Piceno, but he will understand it when he realizes that the cisterns are now dry and the granaries empty and full of rats.

Maybe some bishop, priest or simple faithful will consider this decision hasty, because a bishop who enters monastic cloister looks so much like a Ferrari hidden in the garage, all alone, parked there to rust.

But no, my dear! In that silent solitude the granaries are being prepared, the grain of Christ's Word is piling up, the good seed that feeds and that will be sown in the future is being preserved. Before long we will all be hungry, the cry of Jeremiah according to which

"The prophet and the priest wander around the country and don't know what" [Gives 14,18],

of this impotence we are more than witnesses in many realities. But not all the prophets of our time and priests are unaware and indecisive, some, like Giovanni D'Ercole, as well as Benedict XVI in front of the spiritual desert, they choose the desert of the cloister. They do

«[…] what the farmer does when the river overwhelms the banks and invades the fields: the seed must be saved. When the river has returned to its bed, the earth will re-emerge and the sun will dry it. If the farmer will have saved the seed, he will be able to throw it on the earth made even more fertile by the silt of the river, and the seed will bear fruit, and the turgid and golden ears will give men bread, life and hope. The seed must be saved: faith […] we must help those who still have the faith and keep it intact. The spiritual desert stretches every day, every day new souls wither because they are abandoned by faith " [1].

All this will pass and pass for everyone, hungry and starving. The way out is to immediately look for whoever keeps the good seed in the barn, even with difficult and painful choices that involve one's own person.

Giovanni D'Ercole, presbyter and bishop, did this, and it is a duty and, above all Christian, express a blessing thank you to God for giving it to us. Which I express not only in a personal capacity, but also in the name of all the Fathers de The Island of Patmos.

Laconi, 30 October 2020

NOTE

^[1] See. Giovannino Guareschi, Don Camillo and Don Chichì, in all Don Camillo. Small world, (II), BUR, Milan, 2008, pp. 3114-3115.

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In praise of madness. Heads beheaded by Islamists in Europe? Don't be afraid: "Islam is a religion of peace and love"

30 October 2020/30 Comments/in Actuality/by father ariel

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PRAISE OF MADNESS. HEADS BEHEADED BY ISLAMISTS IN EUROPE? DO NOT FEAR: "ISLAM IS A RELIGION OF PEACE AND LOVE"

No thinking and rational mind can argue that all Muslims are potential terrorists, such a statement would be truly aberrant. However, we must ask ourselves: Why, right from Islam, violent extremist streams have been generated, which do not constitute minority phenomena or groups of so-called mavericks? Those of the Islamist terrorists are numerous and organized associations that benefit from enormous economic resources, not a few of which come under the table from rich Arab oil countries. The same countries that at every terrorist attack offer condolences to the West for the dead killed by the hands of those Islamist terrorists that they themselves have financed.

Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo

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The first week of November the book by Father Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo who analyzes the roots of violence contained in Islam

The work of Erasmus of Rotterdam it is not what those who do not know it believe and who use its title to effect. Dedicated to his friend Thomas Moore, today venerated by the Holy Martyr Church, In praise of madness is a work based on the principles of scholasticism and classical metaphysics which through the use of satire speaks of the divine origin of madness. In periods of irreversible forfeiture, irony combined with the wisdom of faith of the fools of God, it is the most effective reactive tool to pave the way to salvation.

In France, the 16 October, an Islamist beheads a teacher, then posting on social media the image of the victim's head [See. The Republic, WHO]. Today, 29 October, another Islamist breaks into the Nice Cathedral, kills three people and beheads a woman with a knife [cf.. Avvenire.it, WHO].

A book of mine will be out in a few days titled Aspirin moderate Islam, reflecting on which I wonder: with the times that run today and the worst ones that will come tomorrow, I can take risks, after explaining that Mohammed is a false prophet from which an Islam comes to life that to define in reassuring tones "religion of peace and love" sounds like an insult to human intelligence, to history and to the many victims who have fallen under its fatal blows over the centuries?

The risks I cannot foresee, but the reactions of oneiric do-gooders who dialogue at all costs and whatever costs, especially with all that is not Christian and Catholic and that caress the dangerous enemy that we have long dragged into the house, those yes, I can anticipate and predict them with ease. If as happened to the poor French professor, an eighteen year old would come and kill me and cut off my head, posting on social media the images of my beheaded body, it will happen that the loving and merciful Catholic teachers of dialogue at all costs and whatever it costs, they would hasten to ask Islam for forgiveness for the book I wrote. And if the members of the police forces of our country shot down my killer, as happened in Paris, for having brandished a weapon against them and not having stopped at the blocking order, after killing and beheading a person, would end up under investigation for murder, because this is how the magistrates of the Democratic Magistracy in Italy would arrange, reassuring banner that conceals today's post-communist and post-1968 Left, the newspapers of which they would explain that "it is only a legal act due", to investigate the police who fired. Meantime, idle daddy children from social centers would spark controversy, giving rise to hate campaigns towards the "fascist police", guilty of violating the rule of law, which for them is equivalent to the right to the protection of crime and criminals.

This is actually what happens in a European society conditioned by poisons philosophy by Jean Jacques Rousseau, now rendered unable to say "poor murdered victim", but "poor killer", no longer "poor robbed", but "poor thief", no more "poor aborted child", but "poor woman who had an abortion"…

… before proceeding further it is worth clarifying who Jean Jacques Rousseau is, born in Geneva in 1712 and died in Ermenonville in 1778. Above all, what damage your thinking has done to European society. Incorrectly counted among the philosophers, Jean Jacques Rousseau to the test of the facts is a sociologist who is not free from points of surrealism and illogicality. In the post-Enlightenment period, his theories influenced politics and modern legal systems through the so-called "good savage" theory, according to which man is considered fundamentally good, if he then becomes a violent or a criminal, the causes are not to be sought in him, but in the society that led astray him and which is the real culprit for his violence and crimes. Needless to say, what these assimilated theories applied to politics and jurisprudence have produced in Western societies.

After the attack on the Bataclan nightclub in Paris consumed on 13 November 2015 by a team of Islamists who killed 113 people, the next day an open letter to the terrorists written by Chaimaa Fatihi was released in the press. An authentic monument to the emotionality and manipulation of reality, thanks to a dreamy adolescent spirit which reached its peak through the announcement of the wonderful link between Islam and peace; a magnificent bond that many insist on denying and recognizing. The letter soon became a workhorse in the Left press radical chic and some Catholic press even more to the left of the Left radical chic.

“Damn terrorists, sono Chaimaa Fatihi, ho ho 22 year old, I am Italian Muslim and European. I am writing to you so that you may understand that you will never have us, that you will not make Islam what it is not, you will not make Europe a place of massacres and your project of terror will not be effective. I am writing to you as a Muslim to tell you that my faith is Islam, a religion that preaches peace, which teaches fundamental values and principles, like kindness, the education, freedom and justice. You are what Islam has opposed for centuries, you are enemies, you are the ones who shed the blood of innocents, of young people, Senior citizens, men and women, children and babies. I'm not afraid of your Kalashnikovs, of your knives and weapons, because as a Muslim I disown you, I fight you with the word, with information, with the voice of those who live their faith every day, giving an example of his teachings ".

In the book by Chaimaa Fatihi published a little less than a year later by the Rizzoli Publisher in 2016, this biography is reported: «She was born in 1993 in Morocco, where he lived until the age of six. She has since moved to Italy. After attending primary and secondary schools in the province of Mantua, in Castiglione delle Stiviere, now studies law. With this book he won in 2016 the 18th Casato Prime Donne di Montalcino Award, awarded to women who symbolize female courage and talent ".

There are many examples to give, about the catto-sinister radical chic who have changed this letter to Santa Claus in a kind of Fourth Gospel. I choose one of the many signed by Daniela Rocchetti, delegate for the Christian life of the ACLI (Catholic Association of Italian Workers), far from knowing the texts of Islam, reports three striking phrases that have been reported to her by some Muslim scholars, clumsily extrapolated from the Koranic texts and presented as irrefutable proof that Islam repudiates violence [see, WHO]. This course of action is intellectually dishonest, but not moved by bad faith, but from gross ignorance and superficiality, typical assumptions of those who do not even understand the extreme complexity of the topics they presume to be able to deal with.

First of all let's clarify: for the Islamic faith the Koran is not a collection of metaphors to be interpreted, it is the word of Allah. Mohammed is none other than the faithful editor of a sacred book that must be applied to the letter, not interpreted. The Koran is a complex and very confusing text, inside, everything is affirmed, then its exact opposite. If in one sura non-violent behavior is invited, in another hundred it is detailed how violence is to be exercised on the infidels in a holy way. And if we read carefully certain invitations to non-violence, we will discover that in them the children of Islam are exhorted not to exercise violence against the other children of Islam, as his brothers. However, infidels are not brothers, The detailed explanations on how to deal with this prove it, assaulted and subdued by all coercive means available. The Quran even teaches how infidels are to be deceived: first by gaining their trust, then, once they have relaxed and become friends, attacked and submitted. A real exaltation of the "holy" betrayal. So not only that, the "sacred text" of Islam legitimizes violence, but it explains in the smallest details how and with what severity it should be exercised. Obviously, these much more numerous texts, are not subject to exegesis by Prof.. Adnane Mokrani, Tunisian Muslim theologian who only members of the modern Company of the Indies ― what was in the past the Society of Jesus founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola -, they could invite to the chair at the Pontifical Gregorian University, to show how open we are and how communicative we are. Especially when we are no longer Catholics, at least in those parts, where Jesuitism has supplanted Catholicism.

These texts of the Koran called a "religion of peace" in the tender letter to Santa Claus, but we know them. They are to be exact 123 those who explain how to fight and kill infidels for the cause of Allah. I will take only some excerpts below, those dedicated to the infidels, that is, all those who do not submit to Islam and whom the Koran invites to "arrest them, besiege them and prepare ambushes everywhere " (Sura 9:95). Muslims must also “surround them and put them to death wherever you find them, kill them wherever you find them, seek the enemies of Islam relentlessly " (Sura 4:90). To follow with a peremptory order: "Fight them until Islam reigns supreme" (Sura 2:193). Means are also indicated, as it were, effective: "Cut off their hands and the tips of their fingers" (Sura 8:12). And for those who have any doubts it is promptly clarified: "Muslims must make war on the infidels who live around them" (Sura 9:123). But if the whole was not yet clear, in this case it should be borne in mind that Muslims must be "brutal with infidels" (Sura 48:29). Again as further proof that Islam is a religion of peace, suffice it to add that a Muslim "must rejoice in the good things he has earned by fighting" (Sura 8:69). Numerous other exhortations to peace follow, more or less of this kind: anyone who fights against Allah or renounces Islam to embrace another religion, that he is "put to death or crucified or hands and feet amputated on opposite sides" (Sura 5:34). It's still: «Assassinate idolaters wherever you find them, take them prisoner and besiege them and wait for them in every ambush " (Sura 9:5). Who wonders why the Islamists slaughter and behead the so-called infidels, however, without finding an answer to this question, could draw illumination from this exhortation: “I will instill terror in the hearts of non-believers, hit on their neck and cut off the tips of all their fingers " (Sura 8:12). To further confirm that Islam is a religion of peace, it is enough to add: «When you meet the infidels, kill them with great bloodshed and tighten the prisoners' chains ". (Sura 47:4). To conclude with a touch of poetic mysticism that never hurts: "Know that Heaven lies under the shadow of swords" (Sahlih al-Bukhari Vol 4 p55).

I hope I have clarified why I feel genuine Erasmian tenderness for this young woman made the object of the worst exploitation of a certain blind ideology, to which the doors of the great publishing industry were instantly opened, rather than intelligent and realistic books, decided to sell morphine to relieve pain from a tumor with widespread metastases, reassuring at the same time that, the death, does not exist.

No thinking and rational mind can argue that all Muslims are potential terrorists, such a statement would be truly aberrant. However, we must ask ourselves: Why, right from Islam, violent extremist streams have been generated, which do not constitute minority phenomena or groups of so-called mavericks? Those of the Islamist terrorists are numerous and organized associations that benefit from enormous economic resources, not a few of which come under the table from rich Arab oil countries. The same countries that at every terrorist attack offer condolences to the West for the dead killed by the hands of those Islamist terrorists that they themselves have financed. And someone perhaps intends to take offense, when one dares to speak of that duplicity and hypocrisy that characterizes certain Arab cultures?

In the book that is about to be distributed I tried to explain with scientific rigor that defining Islam as a "religion of peace and love" is an insult to common sense and human intelligence, a real shop of hallucinogenic acids. Islam comes to life precisely from the violence and war with which it has imposed itself since the time that its founder Mohammed was always alive.

La tenera Chaimaa Fatihi is simply one of those figures that our problematic Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner would have counted among the army of those "anonymous Christians" who, without knowing it, are in fact Christians. Tender girl all peace and love who in concrete facts turns out to be a confused Muslim, unknowingly assimilated to the Christian roots of European culture. Enough to generate such confusion in her as to push her to attribute to Islam what are the founding characteristics of Christianity: a religion of peace and love.

Similar figures of surreal Muslims they are the nothing intended to reassure the Godless European secularists, that for the cross of Christ they have replaced the rainbows and the marches of Gay Pride, who punctually desecrate all the most precious symbols of Christianity on the streets of the capitals of Europe. And no longer knowing who they are and where they come from, here dense armies of Europeans without memory and roots finally draw illusory reassurance from the words of a confused young woman like the "anonymous Christian" Chaimaa Fatihi, who does not know what Islam is, but which makes up for this lack of knowledge with a completely false emotional reassurance: "Islam is a religion of peace". A mantra that goes from bombing to bombing, from beheading to beheading we hear repeated in total disregard for history and logic, as if the refusal of reality could save us.

"We need to dialogue with moderate Islam", recites another mantra that has been around for thirty years now. But even the latter is an illogical assertion split from reality, because it is equivalent to saying: "You have to enter a brothel and try to talk to virgin prostitutes". E qSome believe it is really possible to find a virgin prostitute inside a brothel? A question which Europe sick with destructive hatred of its Christian roots should answer.

This letter in which Europe heard what it wanted to hear about the corpses of the dead killed by the Islamists at the Bataclan in Paris and all the others that followed, it is first and foremost a mess of illogical content, even before fake, destined to injure human intelligence. Contents denied by fifteen centuries of past and present history, it would be enough just to ask the girlish author: women and children locked up in Nigerian churches and burned alive, Christians persecuted and killed in Pakistan, Christian women raped and Christian men mutilated in Afghanistan, Christians who in almost all Arab countries and those governed by Islamic religious theocracies are deprived of civil rights and freedom of worship, they are perhaps the victims of a small Islamist minority culture, while the totality of Islam lives on the universal sign of peace and love? The sad reality is that these Christians, persecuted everywhere Muslims hold the power of government, they are victims of the violence inherent in that Islam that a Muslim assimilates to European culture, as well as "anonymous Christian", he painted us as a "religion of peace" on the corpses of the slain dead.

In the capital of Italy, (c)hand historically it is also the world capital of Christianity, the largest mosque in Europe was built. Paid by King Faisal, Sovereign of Saudi Arabia since 1964 al 1975, built on a project by the famous architect Paolo Portoghesi and cost at the time - so they say - about 200 billions of old lire. The then reigning Pontiff Paul VI, Bishop of Rome, he raised no protest, nor any reservations, indeed he sent his best wishes to the Islamic Community present on the Italian territory.

In Arabia Saudita, where is the "holy city" of Mecca, there is not even a twenty square meter chapel. Preserving a Gospel or Christian religious symbols is considered by the Islamic criminal law of that, as of other countries, a serious crime punishable severely. The only two Catholic liturgies that take place in that area for Christmas and Easter are celebrated in the extra territorial spaces of the embassies of Italy and France. Said this, perhaps more needs to be added?

La tenera Chaimaa Fatihi, whose book was crowned by the Casato Prime Donne di Montalcino Award, awarded to women, symbol of female courage and talent, in addition to the mantra that "his" dream Islam "is a religion of peace", he has nothing to say to us, about that? Because as far as I'm concerned, I will have a lot to say instead, strictly based on the world of reality, certainly not about the imaginative world of the surreal adolescent dreams of an "anonymous Christian" Muslim.

Per summarize the spirit and attitude of this tender surreal young woman dedicated to the sale of morphine, I would like to use a phrase extrapolated from the XXXIII Canto del Paradiso by Dante Alighieri: "The high imagination was missing here". Phrase that sounds in today's Italian: "The greatest imagination lacked the capacity". That means: we are just beyond the capabilities of human imagination itself.

In fact, the difference between Christianity and Islam is abysmal, though the morphine dealers don't intend to catch it: if in the name of Christianity someone gave birth to forms of violence, would betray the essence of his message and his actions would be denied and condemned by the contents of our Sacred Scriptures. If in the name of the false prophet Muhammad, groups that are anything but minority, instead they give rise to forms of dangerous violence, in doing so they fulfill what is contained and enclosed in the Koran, who commands to attack, to subdue and subdue the infidels, even indicating how to kill those who refuse to undergo forced conversion. Violent practice that has always been practiced by Islam "religion of peace", which in a very urban and liberal way leaves you two choices if necessary: either you get converted or I'll kill you.

La tenera Chaimaa Fatihi, which Quran he read? And if he read it, he thinks he has understood? Or more simply: he really thinks he can easily make fun of Christians, without taking into account that we, behind, we don't have a shrewd camel driver born in the Arabian peninsula who became a great prophet, but the Word of God made man? To this must then be added twenty centuries of history and culture, in addition to how we treasured, also preserved and developed the heritage of Jewish wisdom, Greek and Roman.

Santa Claus, alla tenera Chaimaa Fatihi, he has already brought another decapitated head as a gift, this time inside the sacred spaces of the Basilica of Notre Dame of Nice, on which he can return to reassure us that Islam "is a religion of peace", while for my part I wish good morphine to Europe affected by widespread metastases and relentless hatred and rejection of its Christian roots.

the Island of Patmos, 29 October 2020

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Homosexuals and that cardinal virtue of prudence that the Supreme Pontiff should exercise, being on earth the Successor of the Apostle Peter, not the Successor of Christ

24 October 2020/40 Comments/in Actuality/by Father Ivano

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HOMOSEXUALS AND THE CARDINAL VIRTUE OF PRUDENCE THAT THE GREAT PONTIFF SHOULD EXERCISE, BEING ON EARTH THE SUCCESSOR OF THE APOSTLE PETER, NOT THE SUCCESSOR OF CHRIST

The Roman Pontiff is indeed the Vicar of Christ, but it is not Christ, he is his vicar on earth, not his Successor on earth. The Supreme Pontiff is the Successor of Peter, not the Successor of Christ. Therefore it cannot be more "open" and "good" than Christ himself. Nor can it abolish what Christ established also through the creation of man and woman, created through him and for him (cf.. With the 1,16).

Author
Ivano Liguori, Ofm. Capp.

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"Children don't buy themselves" – If the bill against homotrasophobia will be converted into state law, for an image like this one will risk prison.

For days I have been listeningO troubled Christian faithful from the recent statements by the Roman Pontiff on civil unions between people with homosexual tendencies. I add to them several priest confreres who found themselves confused and embarrassed by these private utterances of the Pope. We priests, faithful to every Successor of Peter, we know, how certain affirmations produce precedents in the common feeling which then make pastoral practice problematic and difficult, sacramental and moral. As happened in the past with the post-synodal apostolic exhortation love joy. Qhis due to an intrinsic formative weakness of people who are no longer able to distinguish between a magisterial pronouncement of the Church and ecclesial gossip. Said in other terms: for the men of today - including many Christians - there is no difference between an off-the-cuff interview of the Pope with Eugenio Scalfari or with Antonio Spadaro, an encyclical and a own motion Popes.

For this I do not intend to dwell on purpose on the analysis of the ambiguous words present in that documentary by Evgeny Afineevsky shown at the Rome Film Fest a few days ago. The work of the Russian director, it has been defined by many as «a good product, able to outline the profile of a Pontiff who is reaching out to the suburbs, in listening to the whole community, especially to the last and the distant " [cf.. WHO].

A bold assessment, this, which could also have a merit for the purposes of cinematographic art, but which appears totally detrimental to the authority and dignity of the Pope who cannot be compared and subjected to any man by virtue of his spiritual and moral role that he plays for all of catholicity. In the documentary film project the Pope would have affirmed inclusiveness:

«Homosexual people have the right to be in a family. They are children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out or made unhappy about it. What we need to create is a law on civil unions. This way they are legally covered. I fought for this " [cf.. WHO].

Faced with this statement, we can include the testimony of the Chilean activist Juan Carlos Cruz, also present at the Rome film event, which he stated:

“When I met Pope Francis he told me how sorry he was for what had happened. Juan, it's God who made you gay and still loves you. God loves you and the Pope loves you too ".

Combining the documentary of the Russian director the testimony of the Chilean activist thus creates a very precise intentionality with which to read the figure of the Pontiff, reducing him to a faction leader. Unfortunately, such an attempt is useless, because the figure of the Pope does not stand on the strength of subjective reviews or evaluations, on the contrary, the figure of the Pope is authentic on the basis of what Christ himself established for him, constituting him his vicar and representative on earth. This is why it is not necessary to analyze the interview with the Pope and try to reconstruct a complex exegesis with the sole purpose of exonerating or blaming the Roman Pontiff. Much less need an interpretation in a good part of certain theologians who have the sole purpose of saving what can be saved and making the Pope say what perhaps he never thought, said or simply hypothesized. Because we must also deal with this other type of subject: those who for seven years have now specialized in making the Supreme Pontiff say what he did not say, finding in his words what is not there.

The Pope's voice is that of the Church, which is expressed through official organs and channels of the Holy See and through a solid magisterium, precise and punctual, not through improvised and inappropriate private chatter. His, like it or not like it, it must be a clear and scrupulously protected voice, it cannot be used in documentaries, off-the-cuff interviews o live your Facebook or your Instagram. The Pope doesn't have to be influence him of God.

The Pope's voice should not give rise to official denials as it is guarantee of that cardinal virtue of prudence which is indispensable for every pastor of the Church. A voice that should be heard wisely, avoiding those disputes of speech with the world that the Seraphic Father Francis advised against to his friars.

That's why I consider these scoop so sensational, harmful to the figure of the Supreme Pontiff and not binding for the Catholic faithful who have no obligation to assent of faith. We know well how today every statement can be wisely manipulated and used properly. The print, i social media e i media I'm able to sew a makeover to any statement when, extrapolating the original context, it is turned over so many times that it assumes a contradictory value, with the result of changing into white what is black and into good what is evil.

Such ploy are obvious to all, but some turn out to be more useful than others when they facilitate, eg, very specific and very specific purposes. And the purpose in this case coincides with the law against homotransphobia and LGBT rights that is being approved in Italy. If we think about it, this interview with the Pope had the merit of perfect timing, in fact which better sponsor of the Pontiff to present the open-minded requests of the rainbow community in the Italian media and social context that has always been Catholic?

He is sure in the face of such utterances, everyone will feel compelled to say naively: «If the Pope says so, it's a good thing, it's an urgent and just law ", so you have to let it pass. Caution, Examples such as this lead very quickly to the consequence of the supremacy of juridical positivism over natural law and natural morality. With the consequence that a law becomes right only because it was implemented and approved by a human legislator or because the human legislator considers this law to be just by virtue of its very existence. We know well that this is not the case, indeed, many laws that claim the title of just and civil have proved to be the most deleterious and dangerous.

For St. Thomas Aquinas, human right proceeds from natural law, therefore a law that conflicts with natural law can not only be harmful but also morally inhuman and unseemly as it opposes God as the supreme good and legislator. Clarified this, let us return to papal outbursts and contingent problems.

It must be clear to everyone that any Pope it cannot go against the deposit of the Catholic faith and the perennial doctrine of the Church. The Church has already been clear enough about people with homosexual tendencies, both through scriptural revelation, both through magisterial pronouncements, and in the pastoral practice of directors of souls. The Pope can only reiterate and confirm what is already in the teaching of the Church and in case he wants to further clarify his thoughts on particular issues, he can do so without however leaving the bed of the two thousand year old magisterium.

Hence the Pope, as such, will never tell that it is necessary for same-sex couples to marry, having children and equating their marriage to the natural one between a man and a woman. This will never happen, but this should not necessarily be seen as a hateful stance, indeed, it is necessary to clearly reiterate that in the Church any person predisposed to homosexuality will never be mocked or condemned but if anything accompanied with concern towards a path of truth that cannot, however, deny itself.

My analysis appears correct and makes sense if we compare it with the evidence of the facts and with the reactions that arose after the release of the documentary on the Pope. In Italy, the Honorable Zan, main signatory of the law against homotransphobia, writes on Twitter:

"The words of @Pontifex_it on #UnioniCivili recognize the right of #lgbt people to family life and help fight hatred and discrimination. It is the duty of the legislator to combat these violent phenomena: now let's speed up the law against #omotransphobia " [cf.. WHO].

Public answers like these they have multiplied throughout the international political world and in all circles that support LGBT lobbies, so much so as to raise a victory song and bring the Pope in triumph as the one who finally put an end to Catholic obscurantism of medieval origin, racist, fascist and male chauvinist.

It is clear that these gentlemen are profoundly ignorant of what the Roman Pontiff is and what its role is within the Catholic Church. Yes, he is the Vicar of Christ but he is not Christ, he is precisely his vicar on earth, certainly not his Successor on earth. The Supreme Pontiff, to further clarify, It is the successor of Peter, he is not the Successor of Christ. Nor can he be more "open" and "good" than Christ himself. With this it is easy to say that it cannot abolish what Christ established also through the creation of man and woman, created through him and for him (cf.. With the 1,16). So the man and the woman, male and female, unique and complementary, they are part of a natural purpose that is achieved not only through a physiologically correct act but also by respecting the purpose for which this act intrinsically aims, that is, to live a unitive and procreative sexuality oriented and redeemed by the one and highest good that is God.

And the awareness of being a Servant of the servants of God it constitutes precisely the way of redemption of the Blessed Apostle Peter. He in Cesarèa di Filippo, although constituted by Christ as a stone on which to build the Church (cf.. Mt 16,18), he had to be converted through a new following. After having scandalized the Master with an alternative salvation proposal to the cross and obedience to the Father (cf.. Mt 16,21-23), he understood that Christ is the only path that man can take. Pietro, therefore every Pontiff of all times, he realizes that his office is in the hands of Christ and produces salvation only and only when Christ is allowed to save the world through the sacrifice of the cross and obedience to God (cf.. GV 21,15-19).

As we well know, today speaking of the cross and obedience means being taken for fanatics, these are realities not liked by the world. For this reason it is better to seek realities of salvation alien to Christ, showing a substitute in the Vicar of Christ, through which to show more exciting new ways, or better to say, obviously proceeding by absurd paradox: “If Christ remained behind, his Vicar on earth can update, or rather, revolutionize everything ".

This is the real demonic cunning which rages in our contemporaneity and which still tries to use the figure of the head of Christianity to confuse men and disunite the Church. Pietro, which in the past was sifted as good wheat by Satan (LC 22,31-34), still suffers from the attacks of God's monkey, than from inside and outside the Church, subjects the successors of the apostle to a continuous temptation that can only be resisted through the prayer of Christ and to a continuous and humble repentance after the error: «Simone, Simon behold satan has sought you to sift you like wheat; but I prayed for you, that thy faith fail not:; and you, turned again, confirm your brothers " (LC 22,31-32).

Laconi, 24 October 2020

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The Fathers of the Island of Patmos are working for you, meanwhile Thursday 8 October Father Ariel returns to Mediaset to the Dritto e Rovescio su Rete program 4

7 October 2020/3 Comments/in Actuality/by Drafting

FATHERS DE THE ISLAND OF PATMOS THEY ARE WORKING FOR YOU, MEANWHILE THURSDAY 8 OCTOBER FATHER ARIEL RETURNS TO MEDIASET TO THE PROGRAM STRAIGHT AND REVERSE ON THE NET 4

Author
Editors of The Island of Patmos

Dear Readers,

Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo, television season 2019-2020

Over the past two weeks we have reduced the publication of articles because we are in hyperactivity. We are in the process of publishing and distributing five books:

a non-fiction work signed by Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo - Ivano Liguori - Gabriele Giordano M. Scardocci: The Church and the coronavirus - Between supercazzole and tests of faith. The apostolate of the Fathers of the Island of Patmos in a time of pandemic.
A work of fiction by Emilio Biagini: The New Earth.
A work of fiction by Maria Antonietta Novara: Grandma didn't tell fairy tales.
A work of fiction by Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo: The path of the three keys.
A non-fiction work by Ester Maria Ledda: Acts and misdeeds of apostates.

Meanwhile Father Ariel come back Thursday 8 October in Mediaset to the program Straight and Reverse conducted to Paolo Del Debbio on the Net 4, where he was a guest at 12 bet in the season 2019/2020.

We take this opportunity to thank profoundly the readers who with their offers have helped us to pay the annual management costs of the site that hosts this magazine. We are slowly responding to everyone with some’ of delay, given the amount of work to which we are subjected in these days. Unfortunately, we will not be able to reply to some who, along with their donation, did not send us an email address. We are very sorry not to be able to send them a message and for this we thank them in these lines.

the Island of Patmos, 7 October 2020

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With the truth and our apostolate we will always protect the People of the faithful whom Jesus Christ has entrusted to us from snipers

21 September 2020/3 Comments/in Actuality/by Drafting

WITH THE TRUTH AND OUR APOSTOLATE WE WILL ALWAYS PROTECT THE PEOPLE OF THE FAITHFUL THAT JESUS CHRIST HAS ENTRUSTED TO US FROM SNIPERS

Venezuela, civil war, a priest protects a young soldier from sniper shots

Dear Readers,

four days ago we asked for your help to pay the server provider which hosts the site of this magazine.

We thank all those who in just three days have sent us offers for a total amount of 2.020 €

We have not reached the necessary amount until between server provider [2.500 €] and subscriptions for editorial services [2.700 €], amounts to 5.200 euro per year.

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To all the benefactors to whom we could not write, our most sincere and grateful thanks.

the Island of Patmos, 21 September 2020

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he coronavirus, the virus of ignorance and the failure of dementocratic democracy: we will vote in a popular referendum based on demagogy and social envy?

17 September 2020/19 Comments/in Actuality/by father ariel

- The lessons teachers from L'Isola di Patmos -

HE CORONAVIRUS, THE VIRUS OF IGNORANCE AND THE BANKRUPTCY OF DEEMOCRATIC DEMOCRACY: WE WILL VOTE A POPULAR REFERENDUM BASED ON DEMAGOGY E ON ENVY SOCIAL?

For those who are not clear, I give an example: In the 1497 the young Michelangelo Buonarroti sculpted just 22 years "La Pietà", which still represents the masterpieces of Italian art in the world. Five centuries later, In the 2019, just 33 years the young Luigi Di Maio is appointed foreign minister. Nobody makes strange conjectures, type: from Buonarroti della Pietà to Di Maio who makes pity. Indeed we clarify: it's me, than being stupid and limited, I am unable to grasp the five star genius of this young minister who today represents the history and dignity of our country in international relations with other states.

Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo

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Luigi Di Maio and “the peasant tan”

What does "democracy" mean? As I have often explained, it is necessary to clarify the meaning of the words to avoid the risk of incommunicability, as happens when words are used for what they mean, but addressing those who use them for what they do not mean.

This lemma of Greek derivation is composed of δῆμος (demos), what does "popolo" mean? (krazìa) derivative of the state (short) which means "power". Democracy literally means "power of the people" and indicates a form of government in which the people exercise their sovereignty through elected representatives.

The first hints on the notion of democracy we find them in the philosophy of Plato [Athens 348 about - Athens 428 circa a.C.] which illustrates the four government regimes in descending order: aristocracy, timocracy, monarchy, democracy.

The Greek scholars, of democracy, they had the great esteem that many authors of legal texts tell today? No, starting with Plato who warns how democracy can lead to tyranny by demagogues.

It is the same Plato which he defines in his works [State (Politico), drafted between 360-390 a.C. Laws (Read), work remained unfinished and completed by disciple Filippo di Opunte] the term demagogy, which derives from the terms δῆμος (demos) "People" and ἄγω (ago), “I drag”. The demagogue is therefore the politician who relies on the more or less irrational moods of the people, he tries to win their favor in order to establish and maintain his power.

No less critical Aristotle [Stagira 384 - Chalcis 322 a.C.] which indicates the three forms of government that are highly prone to corruption: the government of the individual, namely the monarchy; the government of elites, namely the aristocracy; the government of the classes of those entitled to it, namely the timocracy. All forms that could degenerate into oligarchic despotism. Again we clarify: oligarchy, which derives from ὀλίγοι, (oligoi) few, ed ἀρχή (arches) command, indicates a form of government run by a few. Among the various forms of government Aristotle considered democracy one of the worst, as a privileged tool for those who, in order to have the favor of the masses, played on the emotionality of the people through demagogy to win their favors.

So that the ignorant do not feel offended during this exhibition, I clarify that the word "ignorant" comes from the Latin unknowingly–duck, present participle of ignore "ignore", what does it mean: the one who does not know a certain subject. For example, I am ignorant of subjects like mathematics, physics, astronomy and many others, as I ignore them, that is, I don't know them. However, not being an arrogant ignoramus like the army of those who populate the social media, I would never dare to argue with a physicist, to a mathematician to an astronomer, precisely because I am totally ignorant. Throughout this exposition the term "ignorant" will be used for what it really means, not for what it doesn't mean.

Those in ancient Greece they aimed to establish a system based on criteria that today we will define as freedom, they did not use the term "democracy", they made use of other words, for instance “isonomically”, which indicates the concept of equality of laws for all citizens; or "isegorìa", which indicates the concept of equality with the attached right of citizens to speak in the assembly, all based on the principle of eleutherìa and parresìa, which indicate, respectively, the concept of freedom in general and the concept of free speech.

The great thinkers of that season, they never conceived the possibility that arrogant ignoramuses could speak in the assembly. Historical sources offer as an example the speech given by the Blessed Apostle Paul at the Athens areopag [Acts of the Apostles: 17, 22-34], because this was the level of those who were allowed to speak. In the same way, in ancient Greece, always the real one, it would not have been conceivable that the ignorant could benefit from what is now called "right to vote". In that case it would have fallen into democracy, i.e. in the dictatorship of the people driven by small groups of politicians who needed the need of the ignorant to establish their own personal power.

The ancient Greek scholars had understood everything, it is we who have not understood, to the point of making the Greeks think what they never thought and making them say what they never said.

POLITICIANS ARE CORRUPT BECAUSE THE PEOPLE IS CORRUPT. THE CORONAVIRUS EMERGENCY HAS LEADED TO THE DISCOVERY OF THE FRAGILITY OF OUR SYSTEM ALSO BASED ON MALAFFA AND CORRUPTION

Democracy, understood in the modern sense, it is the most fragile form of government and requires a great deal of maturity on the part of the populations to sustain itself. Otherwise there is the risk of giving life to the most degenerate form of democracy: Democracy without freedom, as we will see below.

To understand this risk, we must start by analyzing three elements: democracy, demagogy and ignorance. The most fragile and risky element on which democracies are based is the right to vote extended to all. The various democratic constitutions built on criteria of direct democracy, they state the principle of the sovereignty of the people: all citizens participate in government decisions by voting in which they grant or revoke the mandate to politicians chosen as representatives and administrators.

As you understand, this is a very high form of government, before which we should ask ourselves: what can happen, in a democratic system, if an army of arrogant ignoramuses yields to the manipulations of the demagogues? I will try to explain this by taking our country as an example in which this dissociation has crystallized: a people periodically rushes to the polls to vote for even the worst corrupt, to then gain from them "rights" to illegality, except to complain about the corruption of politics and politicians, which, however, does not arise from itself, but it is generated by the people. Obviously the people are also made up of excellent people, whereas, however, the elections are won by whoever gets the most votes, It is obvious: if a person known to all for being close to the 'Ndrangheta is elected as representative in parliament or local administrator, it is evident that the majority of Calabrians with the right to vote have expressed what they think, what they want and what the people are in their majority. I'm not saying that, the votes given on the ballot papers say so.

It is known that part of our country is in the hands of three mafia associations: the Camorra, the 'Ndrangheta and Cosa Nostra. What if someone denies it, I think he should first of all give an account to the relatives of the dead killed under the blows of these mafias, starting with numerous servants of the state.

On what these mafias are based we have always known this: on the exchange vote. If in fact these mafias are sharks, democracy is the ocean water in which they thrive. And in some areas no one gets a majority without the votes driven by the mafias. So is obvious, the corrupt politician is not an autonomous mushroom, it is the fruit generated by the corruption of the people who then obtain many things in exchange for the vote: eyes closed on tax evasion, on illegal work, on building abuses, procurement concessions, public money squandered, bogus disability pensions, grants for the most unlikely projects provided through fraud against the state and so on ...

It is possible to bring certain powerful mafias to their knees and defeat? And, we have always known the way: suspend political and administrative elections for ten years in about half of our country, entrusting the management of administrations to government commissioners. But this is impossible to do, because the democratic system changed into a dementocratic regime would never allow it, even if the mafias use a collapsed democracy to impose their control over entire territories of the country.

Today that due to the Coronavirus emergency we find ourselves in a serious economic crisis, perhaps we pretend that Europe rains rains of money on us? Let's be serious: if we know the games of interest and the selfishness of the various countries of the European Union, who are not angels, at the head of all Germany, France and Holland, they know us just as well and they know what ingenuity we are capable of putting in when there is money to be wasted. In case I wasn't clear then I'll be clearer: During the years, Calabria and Sicily have returned tens of millions of euros to Europe that have not been used to enhance the territories, tourism, local crafts and small businesses. Come May? But because Europe wants concrete projects, reports and works performed, it does not intend to finance either the 'Ndrangheta or the Cosa Nostra. A quel point, not being able to scam, the funds were not used, then returned. Because this is the mafia logic: if I can't steal the money, then I don't want them.

THE BIGGEST VOTE PURCHASE MADE WITH THE MONEY OF PUBLIC CONTRIBUTORS: THE CITIZENSHIP INCOME. IT IS POSSIBLE TO DEFEAT THE MAFIES? AND, WE ALWAYS KNOW HOW TO DO IT

One of the largest purchases of votes made with public money in the history of our country has been the citizenship income, with which votes were reaped throughout the South of Italy, with the consequent intrigues that from time to time jump to the headlines. All thanks to the work of a handful of improvised young politicians who emerged from the demagogic protests of a schizophrenic comedian who incited the people by playing on the moods of the masses. All this confirms the wisdom of the Greek theater, in which it is known how, after the tragedy, we passed to the grotesque farce and then to satire.

The law provides that this "electoral income", is withdrawn if the beneficiary rejects a suitable job offer twice. I ask: how many jobs are there for which Southern Italian companies and artisans are obliged to make use of foreign labor? And if I go back to call me back to the South, it is not for anti-southernism, but because it has the highest number of unemployed and illegal workers who then take unemployment checks and various benefits. Someone, to these benefited from "electoral income", has ever offered jobs in the agricultural sector, while fruit and vegetables rotted in the fields for lack of foreign labor, prevented from arriving in Italy due to the Coronavirus emergency which had closed the borders? Someone has offered jobs on construction sites, restaurants or hotels, where on the work scaffolding, inside the kitchens and as room cleaners, they provide almost exclusively African workers, or workers from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka? I can testify to you that during this summer I have been to several coastal locations, not for vacation, but to bring various people together. These are the scenes that presented themselves to my eyes in a coastal area, in one of those corners of our country where the ritual crying over unemployment has almost the flavor of a ritual: inside restaurants, bar, hotels, the service personnel were almost entirely North Africans, Oriental and Latin Americans, while on the promenade they walked for the well-deserved move beneficiaries of citizenship income. If the beneficiaries of this “electoral income” were offered the jobs carried out by willing foreign citizens, upon withdrawal of income after the second refusal, in the next elections, they would vote again for the dream children of the schizophrenic comedian, that repeat: the votes were bought at the expense of the public taxpayers of the Italian Republic through the citizenship income?

THE STATE INTENDED AS AN ABSTRACT ENTITY THAT "MUST". THE CITIZEN INSTEAD, THE STATE DOES NOT HAVE TO NOTHING? WHO EVENTS THE TAX ROBS THE ENTIRE NATIONAL COLLECTIVITY

As we saw on the occasion of the Coronavirus emergency, from the mouths of the "spotless victims" who make up the body of the sovereign people, the cry went up: “The state must!”. Yup, why to over 150 years since the unification of Italy, It has not yet been understood that the state is not an abstract entity, the state is all of us. Even more so, to the army of tax evaders, of illegal workers and various traffickers, it should have been answered… yes, "The state must", but you, At the state, which I repeat are all of us, in duties, you don't owe anything? In short: it is not that for many, this abstract entity of the state, risks being a cash cow, but at the same time to be defrauded when one has to fulfill the duty to pay taxes? Obviously, the thief or the scammer will never admit to being such, indeed it will look for plausible justifications, for example by stating that he does not pay taxes because he is horrified at the idea that with his money salaries and reimbursements are paid to the parasitic class of those politicians who among other things, the evader, voted and elected. Thieves and scammers always try to justify themselves, ignoring that in the state budget, the expenses for the payment of salaries and reimbursements of politicians, they are completely derisory. On the other hand, a lot is the money needed to guarantee free education for all, health care, assistance for the elderly and disabled, the public security system to protect the community and individual citizens, for scientific research centers and so on … And whoever evades the taxman does not cheat an unspecified abstract entity called the State, but it robs the entire national community.

Add to all this that tax evaders are the main culprits for the increase in the tax burden. Let's clarify the extent of everything in figures: In the 2019, the ministry of finance, has calculated that in our country tax evasion is around one hundred billion euros per year [Report drawn up in 2019 by the Ministry of Economy and Finance]. I can trust you that, being ignorant in mathematics and beyond, I am not able to write this figure, because I don't even know how many zeros it must be composed of?

To avoid unnecessary controversy I omit the name of the city, limiting myself to saying that in the official statistics in 2019 by the ministry of finance, this province of our South was among the last in terms of per capita income and tax revenue, with an estimated youth unemployment at 32%. But, at the same time, this province was among the first nationally for the registration of large cars and the consumption of luxury goods. To this was added another data: the second owned houses were superior in number to those of the richer provinces of Lombardy.

How come in the face of such evidence the army of tax evaders at all difficult to identify was not sanctioned? Simple: certain politicians, they would never run the risk of compromising their precious electoral reservoir? And with this it is reiterated that bad politics and corrupt politicians are not mushrooms that arise spontaneously, but the product of the corruption of the people who live in the underworld and who declare themselves immaculate, then blaming the abstract entity of the state and the politicians they elected themselves.

The Coronavirus epidemic was unexpected which highlighted how dangerous our economy is based also on tax evasion and illegal work. Some years ago, in times of economic crisis, thousands of small businesses unsubscribed from the records, while opposition politicians roamed the televisions complaining about this situation. However, it appears that many companies have complained, after having unsubscribed from the registers, they had continued to work illegally without paying taxes, thus favoring the undeclared and illegal work? No, who have not complained, because this other great electoral reservoir, no one could touch him.

POLITICIANS AND JOURNALISTS WITH NO COMMON SENSE OF THE RIDICLE COMPARE THE ITALIAN SYSTEM AND ITS CITIZENS TO THAT OF GERMANY AND SWITZERLAND AND TO ITS CITIZENS. ITALIANS, THEY REALLY ARE A GREAT PEOPLE?

Following the Coronavirus emergency which had serious repercussions on consumption, on the economy and the labor market, many of those who give life to this submerged found themselves in enormous difficulties. And often, precisely these, they complained about the "absence of the state" which they say "must ... must and only must".

And the demagogic speeches of certain politicians joined by those of several journalists who tried absurd comparisons, up to affirming that: … In Italy they have promised subsidies for people and companies in difficulty that have not yet reached the great part, while in Germany and Switzerland, in a few days they deposited the money in the citizens' accounts.

I remain with a doubt: the politicians who use the tool of demagogy and the journalists who support them, they are excusable for lack of intellect, or they are in bad faith? Because comparing Germany or Switzerland to Italy is worthy of the most hilarious comedy. It would be enough just to wonder: how many in Germany pay taxes and how many, the same taxes, they pay them in Italy? As regards Switzerland, I would like to remind you that when a referendum was held to abolish the television license, the Swiss voted against the majority, because they thought it right to pay for this public service performed by state television. Having said this reminder to the forgetful: in Italy, to be able to charge the television license, they had to include it in their electricity bills, because in certain regions of our country the payments processed reached a percentage of 70% about of users.

Always in those moments of great Coronavirus emergency, day after day, politicians and commentators followed one another who reaffirmed how much we are a great people ... I'm sorry, but it is not true: we are a people with a low sense of national and collective dignity that cannot compare to a people with a sense of belonging, of nation and civic responsibility as the French are. We are a people who possess historical riches, artistic and environmental unique in the world, but we don't know how to exploit them, enhance and change in rich economy. From Naples down, to the extreme tip of Sicily, we have an open-air industry that does not produce toxic fumes and pollution and which is called climate, sea and extraordinary landscape beauties. And despite the most frightening building horrors practiced, the devastated historical centers and the ruined coasts with mostly illegal pouring of concrete, beauty manages to predominate over the ugliness created by our incivility. Unfortunately, this slice of our country which is the most beautiful and rich in resources of all, it is not managed by the state, but by three powerful mafia associations that are convenient for large pockets of politics and for this reason they are not beheaded, thus making every speech on the revival of the splendid and potentially very rich South of Italy pure rhetoric.

I would also like to dismantle another false myth: we are not even a people of genius people, because we got used to living in intrigue, it doesn't make us geniuses, but skilled traffickers. And we are not even the people of intellectuals that we play and sing on ourselves, quite the opposite: we are a people of narrow ignorant people. The proof regarding such harsh words? Just take an Italian high school or university student and compare them to a German or French student. The result will be more tragic if we compare the Italian teachers with the French and German ones, because nobody like us, starting from post sixty-eight, he managed to give birth to a class of teachers with an embarrassing ignorance.

We are truly a people rich in excellence in the various fields of science and knowledge? Imagine! We have excellence, but all are the product of their natural gifts, of their intellect and the often immense pain with which they managed to move forward and finally emerge after long years of struggles against academic systems, scientific and professional corrupt and corrupt in the hands of politics, to the great academic barons and to the Masonic lodges that tangle with politics and with the barons.

We are not a great people, nor a people of geniuses, nor a people of excellence, we are shrewd selfish individualists specializing in the art of fooling others. And if we want to talk about genius, it consists in the fact that between gimmicks and intrigues we have always managed to stay afloat in the great ocean of our underworld. It is in this, that we are a brilliant people.

It is useless to make the crocodile cry on the flight of the most beautiful heads from Italy, because the real problem is that the worst turnip heads remain in our country and different, after the last elections, we found them in parliament.

IGNORANCE AND EGOISM MAKE DEMOCRACY DEEMOCRATIC, WHILE WHAT ONLY MATTERS SEEMS TO BE THE FEAR OF DICTATURES THAT WILL NEVER COME BACK

We come now to the relationship between democracy, ignorance and selfishness, because ignorance and selfishness make democracy dementocratic. Request: it is right that everyone can benefit from the right to vote? Let me explain with two examples: under certain conditions dictated by law, it is possible to have a firearm license and a firearm supplied. Let's ask ourselves: How come, the electoral certificate, it is granted to all, including the mentally ill and overt idiots, while the gun license is not? It can do more harm to a madman with a firearm in hand, or 10.000 freaks who go to the polls to vote?

To get a driving license, it is necessary to pass tests. I ask: Why, to similar suitability test, people are not submitted before receiving the electoral certificate? A reckless madman driving a car can cause more damage to the national community, or 10.000 deranged fools who go to the polls to vote?

They have the right to vote people without the elementary awareness of what the Italian republican system is, from what the Constitution was born, what are the functions of Parliament and the prerogatives and powers of the President of the Republic. People who say that to fix our country we must abolish parliament and send home deputies and senators have the electoral certificate; and they don't say it as a joke, but with conviction.

A corrupt and immature people who has in his hands the sovereignty that he delegates to the rulers, it can only generate a corrupt system and corrupt politicians. Then lacking in these subjects the sense of responsibility and the basic civic sense, at that point they will react by declaring themselves victims of corrupt politics, their own, the people who are the creator and supporter of corruption!

We now come to the word taboo: "dictatorship". It is right to categorically state that dictatorship is always absolute evil and democracy always absolute good, even if history shows that some dictatorships have partly avoided worse dictatorships, partly civil wars that could have jeopardized the security of the world? Here are two different examples, I took one from the right and one from the left: if after the civil war of 1937, in Spain the de regime had not been established the Generalissimo Francisco Franco, what regime would be established? What would have been the assets of Europe today, if the Iberian Peninsula had become a satellite regime of Stalin's Soviet Union? I can ask this question, without running the risk of being accused of being a pro-fascist?

View from the left instead: if the communist regime of the People's Republic of China collapsed as in 1991 the former Soviet Union fell suddenly, what a disaster for China and the whole world? China is not the unified country that many believe, to keep it united is a communist dictatorship. Inside China live hundreds of different ethnic groups who hate each other from ancient times. If this regime collapsed, the possibility of an internal civil war would be a huge risk, considered the power of China in terms of numbers of inhabitants, economically, at the level of war potential. I can ask this question, without running the risk of being accused of being a pro-communist?

Another element that deserves to be analyzed these are the fate reserved for all those countries that have woken up as democrats overnight, after being subjugated for centuries, first to absolute monarchies, then to dictatorships set up by communist regimes. We want to assess at what disturbing levels, in these countries, powerful mafias have developed, high numbers of poor people, forms of savage capitalism devoid of any ethical glimmer? but yet, in those same countries previously ruled by communist dictatorships, two families lived in three rooms with a shared bathroom for the apartments on the whole floor, but they all had a roof over their heads and what to eat. Education and health care were guaranteed for all. Today, in the same countries, happen to see elderly people living in shacks under the bridges, people who cannot afford health care, young people who cannot support themselves in their studies. At the same time there are groups of people who live in opulent wealth. What to say: they had democracy. Yup, but in the face of this reality, some supporters of democracy at all costs, he feels like saying “… even democracy has its own taxes to pay!”?

For fear of dictatorships that will never return, we have fallen into the worst dictatorship: on the one hand politicians who promise dreams in the election campaign, on the other, ignorant voters who put a blank check in their hands.

Let me be clear, I have never been a fan of dictatorships, no more for family history: my great grandfather ended up in exile in France in 1927 and my grandfather left Rome in the late thirties because it too was not liked by the regime.

THE LORD DEMENTOCRATIC DOESN'T KNOW THAT THE SALARY OF PARLIAMENTARIES IS BORN TO PROTECT FULL DEMOCRATIC REPRESENTATION

In the nineteenth century, with the birth of the liberal state, we had a half democracy based on a Statute promulgated by King Carlo Alberto in 1848. With this Statute which remained in force until the Republican Constitution came into force on January 1st 1948, the members of the aristocracy were running the country, the large landowners and the new industrial bourgeoisie. Only certain social classes could rise to political office and be elected to the Royal Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, serving the interests of their social strata and power groups. Simply said,: today's ignorant pentastellato who rants about social media on the salary of parliamentarians, calling for its abolition, he does not know the history of his country. At the time that certain political positions were not remunerated and the parliamentarians did not even benefit from the reimbursement of travel expenses to go to Rome for the sessions of the chamber or the senate, who could bear the expenses that involved rising to certain positions? If an expense reimbursement was established first, then an adequate salary for parliamentarians, this was done to ensure democratic representation, because having the means of sustenance, even a peasant or a worker could have applied, be voted on and end up in parliament to protect the interests of peasants and workers, something that the parliamentarians exponents of the great families of industrialists and landowners could not have done.

The ignorant dementocrats - those that the schizophrenic comedian called together as "the great people of the network" - who claimed on social media that parliamentarians would have to go to work and support themselves and then carry out their office for free, they basically said a surgeon, if he wants to pursue his profession, to go to work, support and then be a surgeon, because that of the doctor - the ignorant dementocrat always maintains - must not be a profession but a mission. I repeat: subjects so ignorant of the basic rudiments of our republican system, it is right to have an electoral certificate, while to have a firearms permit or a driving license you must have the eligibility requirements?

After the Fascist period and the tragedy of the Second World War, we have become a democratic republic, without taking care, in the space of one hundred and fifty years, from the unity of Italy to follow, to create a people. And today, like yesterday, the Italian is the one who elbowed, trying to get ahead of the other in the row, who drops the garbage on the street because he is convinced that that space belongs to nobody, while in reality it is the most precious space, that is everyone's space. The Italian is the one who always gets along, between one expedient and another. The Italian is the one who feels sympathy towards the subject who manages to score a colossal scam, not infrequently even envy, provided the scammer does not strike him in his personal interests, because in this case he would be able to invoke the sentence of life imprisonment, if the scammer has only stolen fifty euros from his precious wallet.

AS A PRIEST I DO NOT DO POLITICS BUT SOCIAL DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH, REMEMBERING THAT THE TRUE CHRISTIAN MUST GIVE CAESAR WHAT IS CAESAR AND TO GOD WHAT. IT IS OF GOD

We are a people in the sun unable to exploit the wealth of the sun. We believe we live in a democracy, instead we live in a state of controlled anarchy, without realizing that for some time an occult Big Brother has been working on us who lives on our stupidity and our selfishness that he forages in a scientific way. And after unexpected crises or emergencies, we find that the rich have become richer and the poor poorer.

To experience a true democracy a spirit of deep respect for the other is needed, treating the nothing public, the public thing, better than how we would treat our private property. Otherwise you end up living in a democracy without freedom, satisfied by the spirit of anarchy granted to us by Big Brother, but not for our benefit, but only his and those behind him.

in September 1870 Rome was taken, last missing territory. Since then, Italy was united in its geographical order, but no one has bothered to form Italians as a people, passed through the centuries from one ruler to another. Today they think they are free, the Italians are in the hands of the worst tyrant, other than the specter of the old dictatorships that will never return! If indeed in the past, to keep the masses sedated, at the time that we were a great empire, the emperors of Rome gave the people bread and circus, today, a master as much worse as it is occult, he sedated the people with bread and anarchy. And mind you: a selfish anarchy strictly under control, run by a democracy without freedom, in which the great puppeteer allows us to be anarchoids, but it does not allow us to be free.

In the sixth century BC. Pittàco, considered one of the seven great Greek scholars, he taught: "Don't do to your neighbor what would offend you if it were done by him to you" [Pittàco, Fragment: 10.3]. Ancient biblical wisdom so urges us: "Desire for your neighbor what you desire for yourself" [Book of Leviticus: 19, 18]. Several decades before the incarnation of the Word of God, Great Rabbi Hillel taught the disciples in this way: “Don't do to others what you don't want them to do to you: this is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary " [Babylonian Talmud, Shabbath 31.a]. In Christian wisdom, the concept of "desire" and "respect" is translated into the Christological imperative: "... love one another as I have loved you" [The Gospel of St. John: 15, 12]. And when Christ God was asked by the Pharisees if it was right to pay taxes to Caesar, he got a coin, pointed to the effigy of Caesar on it and answered: "Give the Emperor what belongs to the Emperor and God what belongs to God" [Gospel of St. Matthew: 22, 17-21]. Christ himself paid the tax collectors for the Temple, commanding Peter to give them a silver coin "for you and for me" [Gospel of St. Matthew: 17,27].

Give in to forms of dangerous demagogy and vote for the decrease in the number of parliamentarians of the Italian Republic, driven not least by intimate social envy, in my free and humble opinion it could amount to further impoverishing and limiting a fragile democracy that in many ways has already failed and collapsed.

I hope no one dares to accuse me of being political, first because I am a citizen of the Italian Republic and even if I had done so I have all the rights recognized. Second, because I have not done politics, I only did the social doctrine of the Church.

God bless Italy and its people.

the Island of Patmos, 17 September 2020

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The island of Patmos urgently needs the support of its readers

17 September 2020/in Actuality/by Drafting

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Faith and tattoos: possible combination? It is permissible for a believer to tattoo his body? But most of all: it is appropriate to scream “to satanism!” in front of a tattoo on the body?

16 September 2020/26 Comments/in Actuality/by Father Ivano

- ecclesial news -

FAITH AND TATTOOS: POSSIBLE COMBINATION? IT IS LAWFUL FOR A BELIEVER TO TATTOO THE BODY? BUT MOST OF ALL: JUST THE CASE OF SCREAMING “TO SATANISM!” FOR A BODY TATTOO?

Catholic Christianity knows a very clear theology of corporeality that does not find parallels in other religions or faiths. Marked by the baptismal seal, the physical body is immersed in the mystery of passion, death and resurrection of Jesus which is true the symbol that grace impresses on the soul. However, I want to recognize satanic elements in the tattoo, not only is it likely to be an exaggeration, but to reduce the question to a minimum, or perhaps worse in terms of closed banality, until you see evil everywhere, except not seeing it where it really is.

Author
Ivano Liguori, Ofm. Capp.

PDF print format article

Jorge Facio Lynx
President of Editions The island of Patmos

For some time to the Fathers de The Island of Patmos they came both from young people and from parents, questions about tattoos imprinted on the body. Our Capuchin columnist took care to answer, Father Ivano Liguori, who is working on a short essay on this subject that will be published and distributed in our own shortly Editions The island of Patmos. Meanwhile, we offer you some advances.

“Don't be afraid of tattoos. The Eritreans, already many years ago, they made the cross on their foreheads ".

Francis I.

image of the Supreme Pontiff Francis tattooed on his arm

These are the words of the Holy Father [1] in response to a question from a young seminarian from Lviv, Yulian Vendzilovych, which posed the problem of the current pastoral challenges of the Church within the universe and the world of youth.

One of the issues addressed, in that interview it's the tattoo, now become the status symbol more common than young people Post-Millennials [2] who thus emulate their favorites from the world of sport and music, far more than was the case with the generation of their fathers.

tattoo on arm: crucifixion on Calvary surmounted by two hands holding a rosary crown

It is certainly not a trivial question the one submitted by the seminarian to the Pope, much less does the argument appear superficial as it might be considered at first sight. On the contrary, such a provocation can certainly favor a sincere and enlightening dialogue on the status of the problem of the boundless world of tattooing and tattooing.

It's not just the youth world who wants to get tattooed, according to a certain estimate they would be about 20 millions of people around the world want to have a tattoo [3]. Among the Italians - according to data from the National Institute of Health [ISS [4]] updated to 17 October 2019 and disseminated by the Epicentro site - il 12,8% of the population has at least one tattoo, percentage that rises to 13,2% if we also consider the ex-tattooed.

The people of the tattooed includes all age groups: teenagers, young people and adults of both sexes and belonging to the most disparate social and religious contexts.

Saint Pio of Pietrelcina tattooed on a shoulder

Although this topic seems in some ways niche - so much so as not to interest the hottest fashion or costume tabloids - relegating the entire field to specialized magazines, the story is not without its charm, disputes and prejudices, together with those hasty analyzes that suffer from simplistic and often misplaced generalizations. All things from a Christian faith point of view, they demand a clear explanation, adequate and satisfactory to avoid the risk of becoming an impediment to a free and liberating faith.

The tattoo issue, placed in such terms, may allow us to reformulate the seminarian's question to the Pope so as to recall an echo in that ethical question that the rich young man addressed to Jesus [cf. MC 10,17]: “Perhaps we future priests may not even be interested in tattoos. But since our peers who attend the church, who are baptized as we show it off, a clarification is required: it is good for a Christian to have them?”.

Santa Rosalia patroness of Palermo tattooed on a calf

The question, as I took the liberty of rephrasing, it is obviously of a moral nature and the answer must be sought in that eternal good that is also hidden within areas of shadow and human frailty. Intimate and daring places where only God can work and where a good spiritual director can put his hand to it. Let's clear the field of any misunderstanding: it is not the tattoo as an entity in itself that is the subject of dispute but the fundamental option that pushes these body decorations to be made within a discourse of human physicality that is already perfectly harmonious because it reflects the work of God the creator.

Indeed, if Isaiah can speak for the Lord testifying how Yahweh knows man so intimately that he uses the image "I drew you on the palms of my hands" [Is 49,16], that goal seems to be accomplished that identifies the body as a place of writing in which "the skin is a surface on which it is possible to write one's own story" [5], also the one with God and that others can read.

tattoo of the Cross of St. Benedict of Nursia with the dove depicting the Holy Spirit

As happened in the story of the illness of the young Ségolène affected by sclerosis started on the left arm:

"Man needs symbols, I needed a symbol, of a physical sign, visible, of Christ near me. When my arm isn't working properly, this cross gives me the hope and strength to move forward in life, despite everything " [6].

I challenge anyone to judge a sick young woman for his hopeful choice that, acceptable or not, it challenges us precisely in that field which is witness and martyrdom in which so many men and women find themselves living, Christians of our time.

That's why the questions about the tattoo made on a Christian question the baptismal choice which is also totalizing of an already redeemed human physicality. So these are the unspoken doubts to the question put by the seminarian to the Pope: the tattoo brings me closer or away from Christ? It brings me closer or distances me from the ecclesial community? These are the questions to be resolved, without being afraid to go looking for the answers.

image of the passion of Christ crowned with thorns tattooed on a back

We already know from history than Orthodox Christians, Armenia, baked [7], Eritreans practiced the tattoo as a sign of testimony of faith, of participation in the sufferings of Christ and as certification of a pilgrimage [8] happened in the holy places.

Who claims that the tattoo theme is just a legacy of stereotypes of past civilizations, of criminal environments bordering on legality or of a religious world whose guidelines are represented by the simple dualism allowed / forbidden or innocence / sin, would make an embezzlement in the area of intellectual honesty. The tattoo can also be all of this, but it certainly is much more. This world is very vast, so much so that we cannot expect an immediately univocal reading of the problem. It is necessary to define the areas of study, create links, chasing temporal connections, understand the symbols, the archetypes and the subculture of the ancient world that determined the birthplace of tattooing and its practice.

On one thing, however, it is better to agree with Pope Francis: the Christian must not fear anything, much less the tattoo. Because it is Christ who commanded his disciples not to fear [cf. Mt 10,31; 10,28; 14,27; MC 4, 40 GV 6, 20 To 18, 9] and the Church never generates fearful and fearful children from her womb.

Archangel Michael tattoo on one arm

The following study seeks to dwell on history and tattoo culture as well as necessary introductory argument, then going to analyze some aspects concerning the moral and religious legitimacy of the pictorial mark on the skin in the light of the Magisterium of the Church. Some particular themes will conclude the study, like the relationship between faith and tattoos and the debate, still open, among exorcist priests about a certain demonic influence of the tattoo and its spiritual effects. The conclusions of the study will seek to combine theological perspectives with pastoral guidelines. In this sense, I tend to clarify any possible perplexities right away. These pages cannot and should not be taken as a kind of Christian apology for tattooing. Expenses, after reading them, wanted to support such a thesis would be manifestly in bad faith and misleading.

As a Catholic priest and theologian, But, I have a duty to investigate on the theological level even those questions that are found over the line, in those no-man's lands where it is easy to get lost or chase mirages, however tempting, only inconsistent evidence remains.

chest tattoo with Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary

Catholic Christianity he knows a very clear theology of corporeality that does not find parallels in other religions or faiths. Marked by the baptismal seal, the physical body, he is immersed in the mystery of passion, death and resurrection of Jesus which is true the symbol that grace impresses on the soul. An indelible identity seal - sfraghis - who as belonging to God identifies us in the Holy Spirit as beloved children (cf. MC 1,11). Understand this, already from its first developments and implications, it helps the discernment of the person who also comes to give up the charm of having a tattooed sign that, however beautiful and artistically valid, it always remains transitory and the work of human hands. However, I want to recognize satanic elements in the tattoo, not only is it likely to be an exaggeration, but to reduce the question to a minimum, or perhaps worse in terms of closed banality, until you see evil everywhere, except not seeing it where it really is.

Laconi, 15 September 2020

NOTE

[1] CF. HTTPS://www.agensir.it/quotidiano/2018/3/19/papa-francesco-ai-giovani-non-spaventarsi-dei-tatuaggi/

^[2] With this label we refer to that generation of young people born after that of the Millennials (1980-1995), therefore from 1996 on.

^[3] CF. Francesco Bungaro, Piercings and tattoos: the body readjusted. In Studia Bioethica - vol. 3 (2010) n ° 3 pp. 39-49.

^[4] CF. HTTPS://www.epicentro.iss.it/tatuaggi/aggiornamenti

[5] CF. B. Andrieu - C. Children, "The Decorated Body" in Mind and Brain, 37 (January 2008).

[6] HTTPS://it.aleteia.org/2019/02/28/tatuaggi-copti-wassim-razzouk/

[7] CF. HTTPS://it.aleteia.org/2019/02/28/tatuaggi-copti-wassim-razzouk/

[8] CF. https://www.tatuaggistyle.it/razzouk/8752

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