Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - Every so often, at almost strangely 'regular' intervals, new books appear, some “against the tide” some “scandalistic”. The second type of book, just think, written, published and circulated mainly from within the Church itself, the first type, cunningly programmed, in keeping with editorials, carefully organised by external powers.
The second, which do not and will never succeed in uprooting the human sense of religion, now a firmly established and universal anthropological fact, attempt, with very few preambles, to insinuate attitudes of mistrust and suspicion, with the explicit purpose of de-legitimating the Institution, to which this religious sense, preponderantly refers.
Highly ideological this operation aims to weaken the Institution, also economically, in order to reduce the strength of its presence in the world! This is simply the “old Napoleonic game”, adapted to our modern democratic laws and present day means of communication and non occult persuasion.
The first contrary type of book going “against the tide” ab intra, from within the Church, propose, with almost obstinate repetition, almost like a mantra and as if a statement which is untrue, when often enough repeated could become authentic, as a remedy and panacea for every ill, ulterior secularisation of the Church, its “adaptation” to the world, optimistically understood, which, quite frankly, one fails to see any possible scripturalistic, theological or historical root it might claim.
The alternative between the Church and the world is radical and constitutive of the new People of God, that ethnic group “sui generis”, of which Paul VI spoke, which can never be reduced to the world and which, if reduced or self-reduced, loses all interest and becomes mute, incapable of announcing the alternative of the Gospel.
The real “Christian difference”, which we like to call “Catholic difference”, highlighting in this way its ecumenical and universal value, consists exactly in this “being in the world but not of the world ” of evangelical memory, ever vigilant to maintain conscience candid as doves, and action, prudent, as serpents.
Both editorial attempts, although with different methods, would appear to feed that secular “normalisation” of the Christian phenomenon which Power, since the times of the Roman Empire, has continually attempted, without ever succeeding. Both editorial attempts reduce, to as a 'longing' the first and as an 'accusation' the second, Christianity to a moral or moralistic outcome, averting and leading others to avert, the eyes from the “theocentric salvation ” which Christ brought to the world, winning it for mankind at the price of his blood. Salvation which, when freely accepted by the sinful human person, generates a new creature, far above anything known and lived before that moment.
Last of all, theologically the first and historically and socially the second, fail to realise that the real emergency of our times is loss of faith! Within the Church progressive weakening of the certainty that Jesus of Nazareth, the Lord and Christ, is the only universal Saviour of history (cf. Declaration Dominus Iesus, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 6 August 2000), and in the world, progressive voluntary exclusion of the public value of the faith, as a unifying and stabilising factor for society and a guarantee of that platform of shared values which alone can assure the permanence of an authentically democratic structure.
Hence the need to “resist” any editorial attempts, more or less effective, with the firm conviction that the real issue, the real emergency, ecclesial and social, is to retrieve faith! That simple honest, never intellectualised, faith of the man on the street, who has all our esteem, and who never excludes the supernatural intervention of God in the world. That faith which, despite everything, is always certain that the Lord is the God of history, Who, if he so wills , “shatters the cedars of Lebanon”. (Agenzia Fides 28/5/2009; righe 46, parole 614)
