Roberto de Mattei
RadioLiberaRoma
October 20,2020
In a television talk show (Stasera Italia, October 14th
2020), the progressive sociologist Marco Revelli, alarmed, denounced the
climate of collective anxiety sweeping across Italy and the West as a result of
the macabre dance of the Coronavirus. “Death
is circulating the West”, he said, evoking this specter.
Death, however, has never
stopped circulating. People die and continue to die every day in a thousand
different ways. Death is one of the few certainties, perhaps the very first
one, of our lives. We live, but the life
of our body has an inescapable limit.
Modern society has tried
to remove the thought of death, which infringes the law of pleasure and the
wellbeing of the masses.
Death is the consequence
of original sin and modern society denies original sin, it denies every sin,
presuming that it’s possible to defeat illness and death.
This presumption is a diabolical dream, since it is inspired by the One who inspired the first sin: the Prince of Darkness: he who continues repeating to men: “You will be like gods” and proposes that they arrive at this objective through science, and in particular, through genetic manipulation.
The prohibition against speaking about death, is always expressed in the
indignation generated against those priests who speak in their sermons about
what was once called exercises for a happy death: the preparation for that
fatal moment that awaits each one of us. St Alphonsus de’ Liguori, who wrote a
beautiful book entitled, Preparation for
Death, in his Massime eterne,
reminds us that death is the moment which eternity is contingent upon; a happy
eternity or forever unhappy, of joys or woes, of every good or every evil; an
eternity of a Paradise or a Hell (Massime
eterne, Roma 1910, pp. 11-12).
Yet if a Catholic speaks
about death he is accused of wanting to create terror and anguish and ostracized as a prophet of doom, almost as if
speaking about death meant desiring, or accelerating this hour. And silence
about death has been the dominant maxim up to now.
In a few short months
everything has changed. The Specter of Death with his Sickle has been imposed
on society and is evoked by those same scientists who should have defeated
illnesses and death but have proved
themselves impotent faced with the Coronavirus pandemic.
For those who know that
death is not the end of everything, but the beginning of another life, this
would be a golden opportunity to engage in the apostolate of a happy death. But
the priests are silent and the ones speaking about death are sociologists like
Revelli or scientists, like Massimo Galli, who claims publically he is an
atheist and thus incapable of casting a glance beyond death.
It is no surprise then
if contemporary society, incapable of
giving meaning to life, falls into anguish when faced with illness and
death. It is surprising, though, the silence of those who do have all the
weapons to defeat – not death – but the anguish that surrounds it: the
ministers of the Apostolic Roman Catholic Church, which holds all the truths
regarding the life and death of men and their otherworldly destiny and is the
sole possessor of words of eternal life.
(John, 6,88).
Our appeal is humble, but ardent. At this tragic and confusing time of our
history, Pastors, - speak to us – not about this earthly life – but of the
other: eternal life, the real life, upon
which we place all our hopes.
Translation: Contributor Francesca Romana
