Best ecclesial comment on the so-called "Peace Movement"

[Radio announcer:] Citizens, listen to the voice of your conscience: remember, in the secret of the voting booth, God can see you -

[Don Camillo:] But Stalin can't!

...

[Helper:] Reverendo, it's 5 PM, it's time to shut down the speaker.

[Don Camillo:] It's 5, Moscow time; it's 10 to 5 in Rome!

...

[Don Camillo:] Fellow citizens, do not forget it: the Peppone party is the Baffone [Stalin] party. Chi vota colomba, si scava la tomba. [Whoever votes for the dove digs his own grave.]

Don Camillo e l'onorevole Peppone (1955)

Script: G. Guareschi

When Don Camillo prevented the removal of an Altar

Giovannino Guareschi spent the last two decades of his life dedicated to his bestselling novels on life in the Little World of Don Camillo. Yet Guareschi continued his intense work as a journalist and as a polemicist (including harsh criticism of clerics who wished to subvert the Church in the Conciliar and post-Conciliar years).

This was the case in several of his last books in the series, such as "Don Camillo e i giovani d'oggi", published soon after Guareschi's death.

...two days later, the Bishop's secretary plunged into Don Camillo's office. The young priest, like all the progressive priests of the Aggiornamento, despised and detested all parish priests...

"Reverend Father!" he ranted. "Is it possible that you lie in wait for opportunities to show your obtuseness as regards political and social matters involving the Church? What is the meaning of this latest sideshow of yours? Quite rightly Mayor Botazzi intends to encourage tourism and adapt the town to the needs of the motorized times --- and to do this he wants to create an ample parking lot here in the square. How can you have the arrogance to oppose this project?"

"No arrogance at all: I'm simply preventing the destruction of Church property."

"What Church property! You can't clutter half a town square with useless columns. Don't you understand what an advantage it will be to you? Aren't you aware that many people don't come to Mass because they can't find a place to park their cars?"

"Certainly I know that," Don Camillo answered calmly. "However, I don't believe the mission of a pastor of souls should be to organize parking lots and rock Masses to provide the public with a religion complete with all the modern conveniences. The Christian religion is not, and should not be, either comfortable or amusing."

His point of view was a bit hackneyed and it caused the Bishop's priest to explode. "My dear Father, you appear not to have grasped that the Church must attempt to bring itself up to date, and it should be helping progress, not blocking it!"
...
There was no point in arguing with such an old fossil, so the secretary wound up the discussion. "Don Camillo, are you saying that you refuse to obey?"

"No, if his excellency the Bishop orders us to transform the colonnade into a parking lot, we will do so, even though the Council has reasserted that the Church of Christ is the Church of the poor people and consequently should not have to worry about the cars of the faithful."
...
"Comrade Mayor," the priest explained humbly, "we have noted that for quite a few years now your Party has involved itself with enormous love and devotion in the major and minor problems of the Church. We would simply like to request that you and several of your comrades be present at the farewell ceremony for our precious crucifix, which after three hundred and fifty years of honorable service to our town is being moved to the city to a fine new home in the Bishop's palace."

Peppone leapt out of his chair. "You're out of your mind, Father! That crucifix is a work of art, and it belongs to this town! And it stays in this town!"

Don Camillo spread out his arms. "I know, Mr. Mayor. The problem is, however, that I have to answer to my Bishop, and not to your Party. Therefore I will have to hand the crucifix and altar over to the Bishop's secretary. I'm well aware that the Christ is a major part of the artistic and spiritual heritage of the town and that it's place should always be the one it's occupied for the last three hundred and fifty years --- on top of that altar in front of which you and so many others took Holy Communion and were united in Holy Matrimony, in front of which your mother prayed while you were fighting in the war --- your poor old parish priest understands all this, but all h can do is obey orders. And he will obey them unless of course he is threatened with violence. Because threatened with violence, what can a poor old parish priest do? Comrade Mayor, I beg of you, explain my plight to your superiors, and remember my position yourself, and realize that nobody could be more distressed at what I must do than I am."

"Father," Peppone shouted, "if you think I'm going to sit still for this, you're out of your mind!"

Peppone was serious and the next morning the town walls were papered with mammoth posters denouncing the planned abduction and ending in two lines of big, bold lettering:

THE CHRIST IS OURS
NOBODY TOUCHES OUR CHRIST

Towards midday Don Camillo, who wasn't the slightest bit disturbed by the position Peppone had taken, calmly pedaled off to the private chapel in the old manor house lost in the countryside --- and there a rude surprise awaited him. The toughest of Peppone's thugs were camping out in his garden full of weeds, passing the time pulling them up.

"You realize this is private property and I could have you prosecuted for trespassing?" Don Camillo said... .

"Oh yes, father."

"May I go inside to wrap up the Christ and the pieces of the altar?" Don Camillo asked.

"You can go inside, but you're not wrapping up anything. You're a priest, not a freight despatcher."

"Well, I certainly don't want to break union rules," said Don Camillo, bicycling off towards town.
...
A committee comprised of representatives from all the political parties and associations traveled to the city and made the Bishop give them an audience, during which Peppone voiced the respectful but adamant protest of the town's citizens. The Bishop heard all he had to say and then held out his hands smiling.

"But this is all a misunderstanding," he said. "There is nothing to prevent the altar returning to the place it has always been. The Mass can be celebrated in the new way in front of it, and the townspeople will have the additional inspiration of its exceptional artistic and spiritual merits. That is, provided that the parish priest has no valid reasons to oppose the restitution of the altar. The decision rests entirely with him."

When the committee went to tell Don Camillo what the Bishop had decreed, Don Camillo answered humbly: "We are fully prepared to carry out the wishes of our Bishop."

(Transl. L. K. Conrad)

'I will not die even if they kill me'

One of the most significant Italian writers of the 20th Century - and certainly one of the most underrated - was Giovanni Guareschi, better known as "Giovannino" Guareschi, born on May 1, 1908, 100 years ago.

Few contemporary European writers had so much authentic Catholic sensibility embedded in their works as Guareschi, whose masterpiece was the series of works, the Mondo Piccolo (Little World), in which the great struggle of his and of our age - the war between Faith and Reason (Logos), on one side, and Socialist barbarianism and relativism, of either "left" or "right", on the other, with many indifferent or lukewarm spectators in the middle - played itself out in a small village in the Italian countryside.

Don Camillo Tarocci, a parish priest in a village of Emilia, was the literary expression of that Church which would not yield, the Church of Pius IX, of Pius X, of Pius XI, of Pius XII - but also the Church of Humanae Vitae, of Evangelium Vitae, of Summorum Pontificum. A Church which is the ardent bearer of all the goods of Civilization, and Reason, and Morals, both in the real world, and in the Little World of Don Camillo.

Giovannino Guareschi, a proud son of the Church, described himself and his world in his introduction to the seventh edition of "Mondo Piccolo: Don Camillo", first released in 1948:

_______________________________

My life began on the 1st of May 1908, and between one thing and another, it still goes on.

When I was born my mother had been teaching in the elementary school for nine years and she continued to teach until the end of 1949. In recognition of her work, the parish priest of the village presented her with an alarm clock in the name of all the people, and after fifty years of teaching in schools where there was no electric light or water but, in compensation, an abundant supply of cockroaches, flies, and mosquitoes, my mother now passes her time waiting for the government to consider her request for a pension and listening to the tick-tock of the alarm clock given her by the village.

At the time when I was born, my father was interested in all kinds of machines, from harvesters to gramophones, and he possessed an enormous moustache, very similar to the one I wear under my nose. He still has the splendid moustache, but for some time he has not been interested in much of anything, and he passes his time reading the newspapers. He also reads what I write, but he does not like my way of writing and thinking.
...
For reasons entirely beyond my control, the war broke out and one day in 1942 I went on a terrible bout of drinking because my brother was lost in Russia and I couldn't find anything about him. That night I went up and down the streets of Milan shouting things which filled several sheets of legal-sized paper - as I found out the next day when I was arrested by the political police. Then a lot of people worried about me and they finally got me released. However, the political police wanted me out of circulation and so had me called into the army, and on the 9th of September 1943, with the fall of Fascism, I was taken prisoner again, this time at Alessandria, in Northern Italy, by the Germans. Since I did not want to work for the Germans, I was sent to a Polish concentration camp. I was in various concentration camps until April 1945, when my camp was taken over by the English and after five months I was sent back to Italy.

The period I spent in prison was the most intensely active of my life. In fact I had to do everything to stay alive and succeeded almost completely by dedicating myself to a precise programme which is summarized in my slogan 'I will not die even if they kill me'.
...

A few months ago the leader of the Italian Communists, Mr. Palmiro Togliatti, made a speech in which he lost his temper and called the Milanese journalist who invented the character with the triple nostrils 'a triple idiot'. The threefold idiot is me and this was for me the most prized recognition of my work as a political journalist. The man with three nostrils is now famous in Italy, and it was I who created him. I must admit that I am proud because to succeed in characterizing a Communist with a stroke of the pen (that is, putting under the nose three, instead of two, nostrils) is not a bad idea, and it worked very well.

And why should I be modest? The other things that I wrote and drew during the days before the election [of 1948, in which the Italian Communist Party was unexpectedly defeated] also worked very well; to prove it I have in my attic a sack full of newspaper clippings which malign me; whoever wants to know more can come and read them.

The stories in The Little World of Don Camillo were very successful in Italy, and this book, which collects the first series of these stories, is already in its seventh edition. Many people people have written long articles on The Little World of Don Camillo and many people have written me letters about this or that story, and so now I am a little confused, and I would find myself rather embarrassed if I had to make any judgement of The Little World of Don Camillo. The background of these stories is my home, Parma, the Emilian Plain along the Po where political passion often reaches a disturbing intensity, and yet these people are attractive and hospitable and generous and have a highly developed sense of humor. It must be the sun, a terrible sun which beats on their brains during the summer, or perhaps it is the fog, a heavy fog which oppresses them during the winter.

The people in these stories are true to life and the stories are so true that more that once, after I had written a story, the thing actually happened and one read it in the news.

In fact the truth surpasses the imagination. I once wrote a story about the Communist, Peppone, who was annoyed during a political meeting by an airplane which threw down pamphlets of the opposition. Peppone took up a machine-gun, but he could not bring himself to fire on the plane. When I wrote this I said to myself, 'This is too fantastic.' Some months later, at Spilimbergo [Northern Italy], not only did the Communists fire on an airplane that distributed anti-Communist pamphlets, but they shot it down.

I have nothing more to say about The Little World of Don Camillo. You can't expect that, after a poor fellow has written a book, he should also understand it.

I am 5 feet 10 inches high and I have written eight books in all. I have also done a movie which is called People Like This, now being distributed throughout Italy. Many people like the movie; others do not like it. As far as I am concerned, the movie leaves me indifferent. Many things in life me indifferent now, but that is not my fault. It is the fault of the war. The war destroyed a lot of things we had within us. We have seen too many dead and too many living. In addition to 5 feet 10 inches, I have all my hair.

(Introduction to the Seventh Italian Edition; Transl. by Una Vincenzo Troubridge, with minor corrections)