From Il Giudizio Cattolico:
by Corrado Gnerre
by Corrado Gnerre
A typical error of the post-Conciliar Church is that of not
wanting to pay attention to the reality of things. The life of Grace diminishes…it does not
matter. The sense of sin diminishes…it does
not matter. The family breaks apart….it
does not matter. Civil marriage increases and in some regions of Italy are more
numerous than religious marriages…it does not matter. Young people have completely lost the
obligation and the value of pre-matrimonial chastity…it does not matter. The laws of the State reflect more and more
the dominant ethical relativism…it does not matter. All is well, and it is useless to be concerned.
This typical error manifests itself in two attitudes. The
first attitude, that of a minority, is to remain silent in the face of this
ruinous situation, and in a certain sense gives a positive value to these
developments, and hopes that the trend will continue along
these lines. Those who think in this
way—and let us speak frankly—are those Catholics who do not have a clean
conscience, who have a lot of disorder in their private lives. In this way they hope to silence their
consciences, while convincing themselves that what all this shows is that Catholic moral teaching cannot be completely respected and that the
moral teaching of the Church must be radically changed.
The majority attitude, on the other hand, that manifests
this error is more complex. It is the attitude of those who are aware that
things are not going well, but at the same time force themselves to show that
what is not going well must have to do with a sort of physiological crisis
of the Church. It is inevitable that
this should happen: to free herself from “historical encrustations” of
contamination by issues of power and certain conservative attitudes, the Church
must live through a crisis, a crisis that will bring her to a greater
“spiritualization” and to being more faithful to her commission. The arguments they invoke are complex, but
one understands well that underlying these arguments there lies another
question that is psychological.
If for the first attitude the question is “baser”, in a
certain sense a “matter of the stomach”, for the second attitude it is more a question “of the head”. And for this attitude it is ideology that
prevents understanding. Ideology, one
knows, is a hypertrophic condition of the intellect, that because it is an
enlarging of the intellect in size without an increase in perception and
understanding, results in a blind spot in the intellectual mind itself. When something grows too much it ends up by
destroying itself. Cancer is nothing but
a crazed growth of cells. A man who grows too tall would not be able to live
well, he could not easily walk through a door,
he could not easily get into his car, he would have trouble finding
clothes or shoes that fit. Ideology is
the intellect that is disproportionate and hypertrophied, that wills to not pay
attention to observation--- to see how things are as they are--- so that it can put
its faith in its own theoretical and intellectual constructions.
We hear often the present Pontiff speak against
“ideological” Christians, and many read this as referring to Christians of a
traditional mind-set, who are accustomed only to denounce the state of the
Faith and of the Church in terms that are never positive. Now this definition is not very useful,
because there is so much “ideological Catholicism” in our day. But let us ask ourselves: in whom is this attitude found? To whom should this verbal tag be
attached? To those who read things as
they are or to those who indulge in the illusion that things are going well
when they are not going well at all?
Many know the famous phrase of a well-known Soviet
theoretician: “If the facts do not agree
with us, all the worse for the facts”.
This maxim fits the attitude of all too many Catholics today. Faced with the obvious crisis in the life of
Grace, faced with the corresponding crisis in the Church, they insist that
there is no need to change pastoral directives, the direction in which things
have been moving, the specific initiatives of the last ten years. They would
say: the problem is not there, the problem cannot be there. Still, through the wisdom of the Gospels,
Christians should be absolutely convinced that a tree is known by its fruit.
Monsignor Giacomo Biffi,
Bishop-emeritus of Bologna, using his inimitable style, in his Fifth Gospel wrote in relation to this
widespread attitude: “The Reign of
Heaven is similar to a pastor who has one hundred sheep and having lost
ninety-nine of them, scolds that last sheep for his lack of initiative, sends
him away, closes the sheep-fold, and goes to the local osteria to discuss pastoral ministry.” It gives one pause when one remembers that
Biffi wrote these words as long ago as 1969:
a true prophecy.
Last Advent the Cardinal of Vienna, Monsignor Schonborn,
preached in the diocese of Milan, and, speaking of the Church of today, he
said: “(…)let us get rid of nostalgia
for the ‘50s, those of my childhood, in my village, when the church was filled
with people three times every Sunday. Everyone went to church. Let us leave
behind nostalgia for the vitality of our places of prayer in the ‘50s and
‘60s.” This is an example of the real
“Christian ideology”. It is one thing to
say that, recognizing the difference between the past and the present, the
Catholic should not lose heart. It is another thing to say that the longing for
another time should be abandoned. When
one loses something beautiful, this longing is more than appropriate, and it is
the only response that is human and reasonable.
Of course, one should not get depressed.
On the contrary, it is necessary to do what has to be done, to roll up
one’s sleeves, and to act, convinced that the fortunes of history are not in
our hands but in the hands of God and of his most holy Mother. But an
undertaking, a commitment like this, can be motivated only by an intelligent
assessment of the situation: things are not going well, so it is necessary to
act to change them. To speak of “letting
go of nostalgia” is the most an ideologue can say in this type of situation…at
least if he does not want to “apostasize”, something we do not consider as
possible, able to imagine or be thought of in a cardinal of the Holy Roman
Church.
There is a fear of seeing reality as it is, but that is not
a truly Christian way of looking at things, because the Christian is first of
all a person who looks, who sees, who observes, and he uses this as a basis, with
the virtue of prudence, to make his own judgments and to determine how to live
his own life.
Translated by Father Richard G. Cipolla
Second photo from Huffington Post
Second photo from Huffington Post
