From Dante’s Inferno to Erasmus’s In Praise of Folly: Papal Magisterium in Support of Satire and Invective Against Popes

We thank Fr. Romano Tommasi, the pen name of a theologian, for this guest article.

Writers on this site often inveigh against hyper-papalism or ultramontanism, evaluated as vices. Pre- and post-Vatican II popes agree in principle and have even taught it magisterially in a way unfortunately overlooked.

EX ORIENTE LUX - Dominica Paschæ in Resurrectione Domini - A Meditation of Saint Alphonsus on Paradise

Osanna, Sanctus Deus Sabaoth,
superillustrans claritate tua
felices ignes horum malacoth!

L'anima d'ogne bruto e delle piante

di complession potenziata tira
lo raggio e il moto delle luci sante;

ma vostra vita sanza mezzo spira
la Somma Beninanza, e la innamora
di sé sì che poi sempre la disira.

E quinci puoi argomentare ancora
vostra resurrezion, se tu ripensi
come l'umana carne fessi allora

che li primi parenti intrambo fensi.*

Commedia, Paradiso (c. VII)

A VERY HAPPY AND HOLY EASTER TO ALL OUR READERS! 
Salve, Festa Dies: Hail, O Festive Day!

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A MEDITATION ON PARADISE

for the Paschal Festivity

The Joys of Heaven

I.

Oh, happy are we if we suffer with patience on earth the troubles of this present life! Distress of circumstances, fears, bodily infirmities, persecutions and crosses of every kind, will one day come to an end; and if we be saved, they will all become for us subjects of joy and glory in paradise: Your sorrow (says the Saviour, to encourage us) shall be turned into joy.

Sermon for the Last Sunday After Pentecost: Learning the Four Last Things with Dante

Father Richard Cipolla

From today’s Gospel: For as the lightning comes forth from the east and shines even to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man… And he will send forth his angels with a trumpet and a great sound, and they will gather His elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other. (Matthew 24:27 ff.)

Literary critics are a prickly and opinionated group, but they have always agreed that one of the greatest works of Western Literature is Dante’s Divine Comedy, both as poetry and as human epic. A few years ago a human rights organization called Gherush 92, which acts as a consultant to the United Nations body on racism and discrimination called for the banning of Dante’s Divine Comedy, specifically the first part called the Inferno, from the classroom.  Dante’s epic is “offensive and discriminatory” and has no place in a modern classroom, said Valentina Sereni, the group’s president.  She went on to say: “We do not advocate censorship or the burning of books, but we would like it acknowledged , clearly and unambiguously, that in the Divine Comedy there  is racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic content. Art cannot be above criticism”. She goes on to say that school children who studied the work lack the “filters” to appreciate its historical context and were being fed a poisonous diet of anti-Semitism and racism.

Leave the Valley of Death -- with the help of the Mater Dolorosa

Ma poi ch’i’ fui al piè d’un colle giunto,

là dove terminava quella valle

che m’avea di paura il cor compunto,

guardai in alto e vidi le sue spalle

vestite già de’ raggi del pianeta

che mena dritto altrui per ogne calle.

(Dante Alighieri, Inferno, Canto I)

***

Right in the beginning of the greatest poem ever written by a Christian, Dante's "Commedia", the reader is faced with a terrifying scene: a blighted valley, a wild and suffocating jungle so deep and impenetrable that the very rays of the Sun cannot reach within. We are, "nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita" ("halfway through the journey of our life"), so deep in sin we cannot even see our own selves, Light being nowhere.

Repost: Dante and the Last Sunday of the Liturgical Year

For over a thousand years the Holy Roman Church marked the continuity of her liturgical seasons by similar readings of the Holy Gospel in the Last Sunday after Pentecost and the First Sunday in Advent. The upcoming Sunday will once again bring to an end the yearly Sunday liturgical cycle, and Fr. Richard G. Cipolla, DPhil, brings us his words for the day:

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Last Sunday After Pentecost 

Saint Mary’s Norwalk (Conn.), Repost from 2013

From today’s Gospel: For as the lightning comes forth from the east and shines even to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man… And he will send forth his angels with a trumpet and a great sound, and they will gather His elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.

W.-A. Bouguereau
Dante and Virgil (detail)
Musée d'Orsay