|
|
|
|
|
Di fatto ci si è dimenticati della difesa della peculiarità della dottrina cattolica, lasciando che nel mondo intero vi fosse un drammatica involuzione o si avviasse addirittura una gravissima “devangelizzazione”
Roberto Pepe
Sul Corriere, il fine Vittorio Messori, ricorda nel proprio articolo “I preti evangelizzatori e le insidie di Internet”, il mistico scrittore Andrè Frossard, ex ateo, figlio di un Segretario del Partito Comunista Francese dei tempi in cui quei materialisti erano ancora considerati scomunicati dalla Chiesa e non esistevano certo contaminazioni ideologiche di catto-comunismo. Ebbene, questo scrittore espresse uno dei più concisi e chiarificatori concetti teologici riguardanti il rapporto che Dio ha con l’uomo: “Il Dio Cristiano sa contare fino ad UNO”, nel senso che fondamentalmente c’è un contatto diretto “tété a tété”, unico, inscindibile e esclusivo tra l’individuo-uomo e l’Assoluto!
Questo è il Cattolicesimo che vuole ribadire e ricordare a tutto il mondo, il nostro grande Papa Ratzinger, fin da quando era professore e poi prefetto del S.Uffizio. Su questa base biunivoca, poi, si costruirà la comunità come la famiglia e la struttura sociale civile e religiosa. Se il primordiale e fondamentale Rapporto (Dio-uomo) funziona bene, anche tutto il resto, in cascata funzionerà ottimamente, venendo, questo vincolo, amplificato dal comune intendimento dell’umanità basato sull’amore reciproco universale, divenendo, in tal modo, ognuno il prossimo del proprio prossimo…
Questo pressante monito, il Papa continua a lanciarlo, credo, soprattutto in primis alla propria Comunità cattolica impegnata, la quale, molto spesso, tende a dimenticare il passaggio iniziale, puntando esclusivamente come obiettivo finale della Chiesa, alla risoluzione dei problemi sociali, alla parità dei diritti, a dar da mangiare ai poveri, a fornire loro assistenza, insomma di intendere quelle che sono le opere di carità come “il” fine cristiano della Chiesa, dimenticando che tutto ciò è esclusivamente il mezzo per poter essere un buon cristiano.
Questa esasperazione del concetto di universalizzazione sociale ed accettazione passiva di situazioni politiche aberranti nel nome del multiculturalismo riappacificante, ha portato, inoltre, purtroppo, a dimenticarsi di un altro ruolo “obbligatorio” per un cristiano che è l’evangelizzazione accompagnata dalla “apologetica” che è la disciplina teologica che si propone di dimostrare la verità della propria dottrina in difesa da tesi avverse.
Il Papa l’ha ribadito più volte: Il cristianesimo non è un partito o un movimento con scopi sociali.
Ha lanciato, infatti un chiarissimo allarme sulla islamizzazione violenta e persecutoria dell’intera Africa. Ha gridato per il dolore, ricordando le persecuzioni a cui ecclesiastici in tutto il mondo vengono sottoposti, essendo uccisi in quanto cattolici… Quando il Papa parla di aiutare i deboli, gli emarginati, gli immigranti, i poveri, svolge un basilare invito alla carità cristiana, ma succede invece che quei “cristiani” di matrice politicizzata con a capo qualche iperattivo prelato dalla battuta facile, prendano quella predica papale come una specie di invito ad allarmare la protezione civile o a rivoltarsi contro le disuguaglianze sociali statali…
La verità è che “oggi” si ha paura di dire che c’è bisogno di evangelizzare ancora… operazione forse dichiarata superflua o non in linea con i tempi, in quanto ora si insegna che basta esser buoni, volenterosi e tutti si salvano.
Non sono più necessari i riti riportati nei sacri manuali apologetici, bisogna adattarsi al tempo in cui si vive, come se questo scorresse ad una velocità differente da quella nostra individuale. Questo è l’altro punto nodale, denunciato da Benedetto XVI subito dopo l’elezione: il relativismo storico.
Ma forse vedrete che proprio l’ultra moderno Internet farà il miracolo di contribuire a ripristinare i valori dimenticati e se lo prevede il nostro Grande Papa Benedetto XVI, c’è da credergli!
'ECCLESIA DEI'
With thanks, as ever, to Lella and her diligent 'scouts' on her blog
This great Pope is just 'getting started' on his universal mission
No other Pope has dared to address so clearly and directly the spiritual, cultural and philosophical - and thus, religious - situation of an entire continent adrift.
by Roberto Pepe Translated from
for these two articles by two 'fearless' commentators who say what needs to be said at this time that others, perhaps more qualified than they are as Church obsevers, have not dared to make this early.... The first is written by a name I have not seen before, and I have been unsuccessful so far in trying to get any information via Google. But who will argue with his observations? (... in questi articoli, due commentatori "senza paura" dicono ciò che deve essere detto in questo momento, quando altri, forse molto più qualificati "osservatori" della Chiesa, non hanno osato fare così tempestivamente.... Il primo è scritto da un nome che non conosco, e finora non ho avuto successo ad ottenere notizie neanche tramite Google. Ma chi potrà argomentare con le sue osservazioni?)
I wrote Cardinal Martini, who has his own column now in Corriere della Sera last June:
"The human being carries in his own genome the profound imprint of the, God-Love", Pope Benedict XVI said before the Angelus prayers in St. Peter's Square.
This Pope, who I believe will be one of the greatest rebuilders of the Universal Catholic Church, is leading it through theological philosophy, the substantia rerum [substance of things], a concept super materiam [supra-material].
He has used scientia, namely, decidedly logical deductive reasoning to demonstrate the Trinity... following the argument of 'string theory' which purports to resolve the longstanding quest for the universal law that will unify all the laws on the forces of physical nature, from the smallest to the largest [from the submicroscopic to the cosmological].
With all due respect to his predecessors, Pope Benedict XVI is proposing a philosophically conceptual Church in the face of the relativistic impoverishment caused, surely, by constant conflicts (including those of religious nature), but also by the exponential development that scientific knowledge and its resulting materialistic progress have achieved.
To utilize such reasoning to demonstrate the presence of the Absolute is an epochal fact.
I have repeated several times, underscoring it, the sensation that I had from the start of Benedict's Pontificate: that we are in the presence of a true 'philosopher-priest' who speaks not from political primacy nor as a ruler, leader or chief executive of worldwide religious bureaucracy, but essentially, with the simple words of pure evangelical doctrine, far and above the miserable annoying terrain of human pettiness and misadventures of the basest order.
Recall the lectio magistralis on faith and reason that he gave at the Uiviersity of Regensburg - an intervention of major importance in cultural history and in Catholic theology - though it aroused violent reactions in the Muslim world because of a citation by a Byzantine emperor that denounced the imposition of Islam by the sword.
Recall his recent address to the second Synodal assembly for Africa: "A 'virus' threatens Africa: religious fundamentalism, embroiled with political and economic interests... Groups claiming various religious affiliations are spreading in the African continent - and they do so in the name of God, although they follow a logic opposed to the divine, teaching and practising, not love and respect for freedom, but intolerance and violence".
Where Europe is concerned, never has any other Pope dared to speak so clearly and directly of the spiritual, cultural-philosophical and therefore religious situation of a continent adrift.
And recall how he dealt with the problem of Avvenire and the unfortunate Dino Boffo - by simply telling Cardinal Bertone and the CEI, in effect: "Look here! I am in charge. Get done with the problem now, because there are other more important tasks!"
And now, we may be witnessing one of the greatest revolutions in Christianity in half a millennium. He has approved an Apostolic Constitution which will facilitate the reentry to the Church of Rome of Anglican bishops, priests and lay faithful who have decided to leave the Anglican Communion.
The Church of England split from Rome when, in 1534, King Henry VIII could not have his marriage annulled by the Pope.
This great Pope today is carrying on his battle against that 'historical relativism' in the Church's sister confessions, like the Anglican, which has brought it to support liberal attitudes towards homosexuals and the ordination of women and homosexuals.
This great Pope Benedict, like all who are pure of heart and feeling, acting in his simple unequivocal way, will manage to shake up the world order and to affect even those who pride themselves in being outside the Church's universal embrace. In time!
Oct. 21, 2009
The Vatican Press Office issued this statement in Italian and English:
COMMUNIQUE OF THE PONTIFICAL COMMISSION 'ECCLESIA DEI'
Sorry I still have no background information on Roberto Pepe - whose 10/21/09 article "This Pope is just getting started..." I translated and posted in the preceding page. But evidently, that excellent article was no fluke, as here is another one in which he gets back at the insufferably arrogant Eugenio Scalfari of La Repubblica and L'Espresso for his most recent insulting putdown of Benedict XVI. Scalfari's dismissiveness of Benedict XVI: It's the devil fearful of the Pope for his incisive work of evangelization
by Roberto Pepe
Translated from
But it's all logical and consequential! One shouldn't be surprised that a small bearded homunculus, weighted down by years and 'authorized' to say whatever comes to his mind - because as a younger man, he held the sacred title of journalist and as an older man, founded a newspaper - affirms that Papa Ratzinger is just 'a modest theologian who makes us lament his predecessors".
Because all he did was to classify the Pope according to the petty intellectual meter of Italian politics, where the words 'love and peace' mean ragtag association and pacifist chic.
Quite apart from the fact that his predecessor John Paul II specifically wanted Joseph Ratzinger to be the guardian of Catholic orthodoxy, at the head of the former Holy Office, precisely because of his theological eminence, Eugenio Scalfari should perhaps clarify - especially since his age may be playing his memory wrong - why in La Repubblica on February 5, 2006, in a Page 1 article on Deus caritas est, he called the present Pope 'the finest of theologians' in an article entited "Evil in the world and God's love", in which he wrote:
"No one can possibly miss the extreme political relevance of this theological text, in an era when (religious) fundamentalisms are on the rise, including those that are admittedly Christian and those who would use Christianity as an instrumentun regni [a tool to rule]."
Well then? Why suddenly come up now with this perverse judgment in a field - theology - in which everyone, admirers and atheist critics alike, consider Pope Benedict unassailable?
The Vatican Curia and all militant Catholics are naturally up in arms against Scalfari's latest dismissal of the Pope, ridiculing Scalfari's self-conferred stature as a super-theologian qualified to judge other theologians.
But this improvident judgment does have a more down-to-earth explanation. Far from expressing theological superiority, it is simply a conclusion reflecting our domestic petty politics.
And so, just as when the Great Pope Benedict spoke of 'universal love' some time earlier, Scalfari immediately referred it to multi-cultural, Marxist, anti-government [specifically anti-Berlusconi] universalism - as advocated by Catholic Marxists of dubious fame such as that Genoese dissident parish priest Don Farinella - so it was that when Cardinal Bagnasco called unacceptable the proposal to institute a Muslim religious hour in Italian public schools, our great journalist-theologian used the occasion to underscore the 'modesty' of Joseph Ratzinger's abilities in the divine sciences, and excluding him from the list of "great Popes (who) fought wars - not only religious ones - but wars for power". (You would think that the re-entry of traditional Anglicans into the Roman Church was no more than a bagatelle!)
Probably Scalfari never even read the preface to Caritas in veritate, where Pope benedict clearly states: "The Church has no technical solutions to offer and does not in the least intend to interfere in the policies of States", or he would have known that it is precisely the obvious oxymoron of 'a powerful modesty' - mystical, not political - which constitutes the winning weapon that makes Benedict XVI great.
I wrote, rather casually a few days ago, that one wonders how could it be that the many signals he laid out at the time of his election as Pope were not perceived as fully as they should have been by the major 'secular' media outlets.
Well, now one can very well say someone did understand those signals very well: the Devil in person, in the guise of a gray-haired newsman, saw at once that the humble actions of a modest priest who was now Pope would result in the most incisive work of evangelization for the Catholic Church this side of 500 years, by a Pope who does not hesitate to say that theology remains a vain dialectic exercise if it is not nourished by a relationship with the Transcendent. And the Devil is now gripped by fear!
|
|
|
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento