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Father Ivano

Ivano Liguori
Of the Order of the Capuchin Friars Minor
Presbyter and Theologian

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Latest posts by Father Ivano (see all)

• The last devotion of Christ: the Sacred Heart is not devotionism but a gateway to the mysteries of God - 29 February 2024
• The Mother of Jesus, the treasure hidden in the Gospels - 5 February 2024
• From the doctrinal disorientation of the Church to the sin of priests and the recycling of lay people. Prospect of an intransigent culture which while condemning sanctifies and condemns by sanctifying - 27 November 2023

A COUNTRY IS NOT SAVED WITH PROTEST VOTES. WHICH CATHOLIC ELECTORATE FOR THE UPCOMING ELECTIONS THAT RISK TO BE THE NTH "BELLY VOTE"?

We are left with hilarious bitterness of our local politics boutade of some farce characters, iconic phrases more worthy of a walker than a statesman called to guard the good and the beautiful of a country: “We will open the Parliament like a can of tuna […] We're not here to spot the jaguars ". And between a can of tuna and a jaguar the 25 September is approaching and what Catholics are doing, what they think, where am I?

- Church news -

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Author
Ivano Liguori, Ofm. Capp.

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I am afraid that even the political elections the 25 September will no longer be the expression of a vote tummy that not of a real democratic feeling that takes the good of our country into due account. Which is why I am undecided whether to vote or not. For a priest, the vow is a serious matter of moral conscience, not just a civic duty enshrined in the Constitution.

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A belly vote, how will that of the 25 September, we don't need it now, it has never and never will be used to build a balanced and sensible future. Anyone who still thinks that something could change from the next elections is very wrong, nothing will change, because politics - the real one, that of our Greek fathers - was designed not to change the system but to change man from within. As a presbyter I am allowed to say that man must be converted? Because this is the heart of the problem, the Pelagian effort of voluntarism is not enough. Man hardly educates himself, learning from their mistakes and its history, that most of the time he does not know and ignore. If it were that simple, we would have long ago stopped formulating and pursuing anti-human laws and policies, worthy of the most ruthless totalitarian policies that are repeated cyclically from time to time.

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If we had paid more attention to history, we would have understood that the realities that truly improve the world all have the note of gratuitousness and non-repayable investment. I think, eg, to public health, to school and the world of education. School and healthcare are those magnificent realities in which you have to invest in generosity without expecting anything in return, because the fruits are not immediately visible but over time and the reward will certainly not be quantifiable in monetary figures but in better men, compassionate and wise.

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We wanted to profit from hospitals transforming them into companies where it is good and nice to save on infirmities to increase the visibility of the manager on duty and where the pathologies are categorized according to a political and certainly not a clinical value. In the space of fifty years, schools have become the centers of an ideological tolerance in which students - less and less wise and proud of it - are not led to think with a critical sense and freedom. Indeed, it has been assumed that too much study was even deleterious, so it was necessary to introduce some alternation with work, in the illusion of planning a permanent job after high school. But even in this we have done worse, coming to conceive the mirifico income of citizenship that leads to the proof of facts to evaluate the study and work as disvalues ​​from which to beware of which it is possible to live only and only by claiming rights instead of getting busy in duties.

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It was the rights to constitute the hinge of the all-Italian policy of the last ten years. Rights, we focus on rights, only and only rights! Forgetting the fact that to grow well the seed of any right must meet with the soil of duties, hard ground to work that requires the sacrifice of everyone.

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For this reason I am convinced, both as a believer and as a presbyter, that the next elections will still displease most of Italy and that Catholic electorate that still remains there.

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The entire political management was emblematic during the Covid-19 pandemic of both the last Draghi government and the two Conte governments. It was well highlighted how deep the dark barrel of Italian politics is, wound and wounding, it is called to scrape. In the last two years we have really come close to the popular uprising, as for the events in Trieste - something that would certainly have happened in a more realistic country than Italy - but not in Italy, we have always been the champions in the separation with reality, so as to put a patch on everything and make us like it, up to connivance with evil.

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Even in the face of this important detachment from reality, I am convinced that there are still many good people in Italy: there are, they exist and will also exist in the future, but they are sufficiently sensible not to enter the vortex of politics that appears like that Count Ugolino who does not skimp on devouring his children. Well aware of the mechanisms of political power, they keep Socratically away from the lure of tyrants, who virtuously declaim examples of credibility, honesty and incorruptibility but which eventually become corrupted by the end of those famous mountain fifes that went to play and were played.

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Of our own politics we are left with hilarious bitterness boutade of some farce characters, iconic phrases more worthy of a walker than a statesman called to guard the good and the beautiful of a country: “We will open the Parliament like a can of tuna […] We're not here to spot the jaguars ". And between a can of tuna and a jaguar the 25 September is approaching and what Catholics are doing, what they think, where am I? Yup, where am I? Not in the sense of their political weight which is non-existent (there is no longer a true Catholic politician since the time of Giorgio La Pira) but at least as believers where they are? Which direction are they called to choose in order to avoid conniving with certain structures of sin? Unfortunately, we have already experienced this, there is a serious danger that politics, free from everything and everyone, can become corrupted into a structure of sin, enemy of God and man, and fall into that original sin in which truth and virtue are excluded. Faced with the obsessive concern to make politics secular (and politicians) we have come to forget the areté (virtue), the sacred virtue par excellence that every politician and politician should pursue.

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St. Thomas More, a Catholic politician too, was well aware of the danger for a believer of living in a corrupt state and of the need to resist as believers, as the evil of the rulers affects not only one part of the nation but all its members and what is objectively evil for one part is also evil for the other. Says St. Thomas More:

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“If we lived in a state where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us holy. But since we see that greed, anger, pride and stupidity commonly yield much more than charity, to modesty, justice and wisdom, maybe we need to keep a little steady, even at the cost of being heroes ".

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Avarice today, anger, pride and stupidity are the guidelines within which the plots of a belly vote will be woven that will end up creating discontented and deceived citizens. Let us not be under any illusions, today even those parties that are built around the cornerstones of alternative thought and the anti-system and that insist on the abolition of GreenPass, on the end of the vaccination obligation, on the reintegration of those suspended from work, on the position of the war in Ukraine, on expensive bills, they will stop in front of the non-negotiable values. And what should a Catholic do? Pinch your nose and choose between the worst and the slightly less worst? But even no!

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It is self-evident that no party that matters (not zero-point ones) will dare to say anything about non-negotiable values essential for a believer, because they are well aware of reducing their electorate. Faced with important issues such as abortion, the end of life, assisted suicide, the legalization of soft drugs, LGBT issues such as parties can be said to be truly anti-system? Which parties will marry charity, to modesty, justice and wisdom in their electoral program? Certainly not the current center-right whose current coalition is as embarrassing as that of the center-left. Just look at a few talk-show to hear how many male politicians, but above all women candidates in those parties that virtually would even refer to Christian values, they become as soft as butter in the sun on certain very sensitive subjects, they put their hands forward and promptly justify in a decisive and reassuring way that the Law 194 do not touch. Some even let slip that it is an "acquired right", implied: intangible! And these would be the parties and their respective candidates who would like to try to court the lost one, confused and disheartened Catholic electorate? And don't expect salvation even from the new coalitions that have sprung from the tormented gestation of a time of pandemic, where the Masaniellis went to waste, some years and they will be clones of the former Five Star Movement.

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As Christians there is nothing else left which makes sense to do if not to pray, with that same request that the blessed apostle Paul made to Timothy:

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«I recommend you therefore, first of all, asking questions, pleas, prayers and thanks for all men, for kings and for all those in power, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity " (1TM 2,1-2).

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We have to pray - as we do in the universal prayer of Good Friday - so that those who are called to govern the civil community may be enlightened by the Lord in their minds and hearts so that the common good is reached, to true freedom and peace. We have to pray, asking the Lord for the strength to promote a Christian policy that changes man from within and not the system. A politics of virtue, in which the beautiful, the good and the true inspire the rulers to something more than an armchair and an annuity. I don't know if it will be possible but we have already hit rock bottom, so what do you say, at least we try?

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Laconi, 12 September 2022

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