I have decided to write this brief note on the moment the Catholic Church, not impossible to revive a visceral anti-clericalism and uncritical, as an attempt to highlight the influence of the Vatican on the regression of civil society in Italy to the barbarism of social relations , The degradation of politics, the sexual phobia comes in gender relations and retching racist.
The persistence of the twenty-year Cardinal Ruini, the head of the CEI was a landmark in the dark history of the church, especially the determination with which Ruini and the church hierarchy in Italy have resisted and, in fact, cleared all the passages that the Second Vatican Council had opened in the theocratic Integralist vision of the relationship between the Church and sovereign state, the variation between the imperative of Catholic morality and standards of living (relatively) secular civil society.
In terms of relations with the State, the Vatican's secretariat in Italy have always considered outside and above the laws in our country. With the complicity of all governments that have followed since the end of World War II, the Vatican has built a vast business empire, from real estate (only in Rome it is believed that 22% of properties are owned by religious bodies Catholics), without considering that on this heritage, within which a substantial part is commercial, it was exempted from paying certain taxes, from ICI. But there are other privileges, particularly today, seem outrageous, such as that in the field of education, teachers of religion who are directly appointed by Curie and now they can also teach humanities supported without any public competition and observe any ranking. I have dwelt only on these examples because I seem to be particularly heinous in a moment like that cross, in which general taxation is in a state of suffering and unemployment is particularly high intellectual.
In the field of morality is no doubt that the Church has always deployed and continues to take sides, defending a vision rooted in the obtusely dark periods of the temporal power of the Popes (including black box on the second page), where every breath of freedom, any attempt to adapt to the natural evolution of time updating of the rules of civil life was sought, often brutally.
The case Englaro for example
Are sufficiently known rearguard battles that the Catholic hierarchy, supported - it is right to emphasize this - by a large, though not a majority, public opinion, has fought against laws that already exist in all the most advanced countries of the West, in defense of freedom of the woman (the equal dignity and the right to abortion), the liberalization of the couple relationship (divorce), the freedom of every person to decide to end their lives, especially when that life has become unbearable for physical suffering incurable brain function and regress when up to a vegetative state (the relatively recent case Englaro remained proverbial for the battle that the brave father Eluana continues to support because the sad fate of his daughter should not touch anyone else).
In this manifest insensitivity with respect to a rapidly changing environment, and certainly not in the direction indicated by the Pope Catholic, must be added what has never ceased to be the drone of the work of the Church: his distrust of the scientific research community, in particular, today, in stem cell research, which open horizons unimaginable on the treatment of widespread diseases in the modern world, such as diabetes, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, to mention only the main ones. Incredible and particularly odious is the prohibition of the investigation to identify possible prenatal genetic diseases and deformities in the unborn child. The tragedy is that these amazing places gags to scientific research are already or are being introduced into Italian legislation with the complicity of a government which manifestly devoid of any moral sense with regard to the public and private behavior of many of its components, thus attempts to woo Catholic voters.
In this climate of arrogance and doctrinal ravenous appetites, the Catholic hierarchy is discovered in further trouble in relations among its institutional apparatus and progressive isolation from the broad panorama of local churches and the Catholic laity.
The stress exerted on the single judge his papacy of Benedict XVI has created a further gap between the State Secretariat and the CEI.
Since its establishment Cardinal Bertone did not hide his plan, supported, if not imposed by the current pontiff, to limit the autonomy of local Churches with the obvious intent to claim for itself the relations with national governments. The evidence of this change was the different attitudes held by both sides in the case Boffo. As is known, the former editor of The Future resigned from office following the slanderous and despicable campaign of Berlusconi newspaper printing directly from Felt, a campaign based on false information by the police. The Future, organ of the Catholic Bishops' Conference, led by Cardinal Bagnasco, immediately took position in favor of Boffo but could not prevent the resignations were accepted by the hierarchy too quickly. Indeed, according to some observers, the Vatican's corridors was evident satisfaction with the sudden solution of the case.
The Secretary of State and Berlusconi
More obvious still is the rift between the two souls of the Vatican if you evaluate the behavior of the State Secretariat and the IEC in respect of Berlusconi and his government. Famiglia Cristiana is the future that are often stigmatized the vertical collapse of operation and image of the Italian government to support until his resignation, if not the entire executive (they had no right to do so) at least that Berlusconi, now deemed unsustainable both for his private behavior, both for high conflict that continues to create among the powers of the state and between the different factions of the Italian public.
Opposite has been and continues to be the attitude of the Secretary of State, who knows well that Berlusconi, blackmailed for the risk of an 'explicit distancing of the Vatican, is more inclined to accept the Vatican's claims, both floor privileges on that of civil rights legislation. It closed, then, more than one eye on the private vices of the character (pluridivorziato, corrupting minors, even cursed), just to get the full acquiescence.
But when his cloak is covered with a man of this kind and his government no less despicable than him, it means that you take the last bunker to defend what little remains of credibility, and it is clear that the hardening doctrinaire and curses are the conditioned reflexes of fear.
And, in fact, now the Vatican feels besieged by his own associates. Missionary work are often in conflict with the hierarchy. Understand less and less as men in sandals and silk robes with ermine, locked in their habitations fabulous, also only can guess the real needs of people far removed from their cohabitation also logistically swamp, men and women who inhabit the parched lands of Africa and the rugged highlands of Latin America. Understand less and less, these missionaries, as their hierarchical references can claim the right to prohibit or allow life practices dictated by the need to survive dramatic living conditions for both the hostile environment, both for the results of long colonization predatory.
An irreversible trend
But there are, symbolically lay siege to that bunker, the priests of the border, who, even in the civilized West, share the degradation of the suburbs of territory controlled by drug dealers and organized crime, populations are not of a resource , and desperate people who face long and dangerous journey to reach a fallacious and mythical promised land.
Finally, the relentless decline in vocations and the same vaunted popular religiosity indicates an irreversible trend. Italian in the basin is estimated that the output from the register of holders of the new parish is four times higher than that should replace them, so that a significant number of parishes was forced to close its doors due to lack of owners.
The same collapse is recorded in the attendance of religious rites. In surveys done in some Italian regions (I have seen no comprehensive study throughout the country), only 26% of Catholics attend churches in the states of festive occasions, but if we move from statements to actual counts, the percentage drops 12%.
There is then one wonders if even the papacy as an institution has not started an inexorable decline, a decline that will last a long time, but it will be irreversible.
anno
41 n. 361
Antonio Cardella