Bergoglio and the Ultimate Questions

Bergoglio and the Ultimate Questions | Catholic World Report - Global Church news and views

The Mike Wallace Interview with Margaret Sanger

Watch this disturbing 1957 interview with Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger:

The Mike Wallace Interview

It's a Girl! The Three Deadliest Words in the World

A must-see documentary that will be released in 2012.



This is a synopsis from the official website:
"In India, China and many other parts of the world today, girls are killed, aborted and abandoned simply because they are girls. The United Nations estimates as many as 200 million girls are missing in the world today because of this so-called “gendercide”.

Girls who survive infancy are often subject to neglect, and many grow up to face extreme violence and even death at the hands of their own husbands or other family members.

The war against girls is rooted in centuries-old tradition and sustained by deeply ingrained cultural dynamics which, in combination with government policies, accelerate the elimination of girls.

Shot on location in India and China, It’s a Girl! explores the issue. It asks why this is happening, and why so little is being done to save girls and women.

The film tells the stories of abandoned and trafficked girls, of women who suffer extreme dowry-related violence, of brave mothers fighting to save their daughters’ lives, and of other mothers who would kill for a son. Global experts and grassroots activists put the stories in context and advocate different paths towards change, while collectively lamenting the lack of any truly effective action against this injustice."

Faith Is Culture

First, we must state that faith itself is culture. There is no such thing as naked faith or mere religion. Simply stated, insofar as faith tells man who he is and how he should begin being human, faith creates culture; faith is itself culture. Faith's word is not an abstraction; it is one which has matured through a long history and through intercultural mingling in which it formed an entire structure of life, the interaction of man with himself, his neighbor, the world and God.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger -1993 Talk in Hong Kong Titled "CHRIST, FAITH AND THE CHALLENGE OF CULTURES"

François Mauriac: Paris Review Interview

"No, the crisis of the novel, in my opinion, is of a metaphysical nature, and is connected with a certain conception of man. The argument against the psychological novel derives essentially from the conception of man held by the present generation, a conception that is totally negative…. Today, along with nonrepresentational art, we have the nonrepresentational novel—the characters simply have no distinguishing features…. I believe that the crisis of the novel, if it exists, is right there, essentially, in the domain of technique. The novel has lost its purpose. That is the most serious difficulty, and it is from there that we must begin. The younger generation believes, after Joyce and Proust, that it has discovered the “purpose” of the old novel to have been prefabricated and unrelated to reality."

“The crisis of the novel, then, is metaphysical. The generation that preceded ours was no longer Christian, but it believed in the individual, which comes to the same thing as believing in the soul. What each of us understands by the word soul is different; but in any case it is the fixed point around which the individual is constructed. Faith in God was lost for many, but not the values this faith postulates. The good was not bad, and the bad was not good. The collapse of the novel is due to the destruction of this fundamental concept: the awareness of good and evil. The language itself has been devalued and emptied of its meaning by this attack on conscience. Observe that for the novelist who has remained Christian, like myself, man is someone creating himself or destroying himself. He is not an immobile being, fixed, cast in a mold once and for all. This is what makes the traditional psychological novel so different from what I did or thought I was doing. The human being as I conceive him in the novel is a being caught up in the drama of salvation, even if he doesn't know it.”

Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No. 2, François Mauriac

See Also: Evelyn Waugh & Graham Greene

Writer's Great Danger...

The writer’s great danger, from which his profession always separates him only by a hair's breath, is the vice of vices, the essence of original sin, which is also the cause for the downfall of Cenabre, Ganse, and Ouine—the Sin of Eve in paradise and of all her guilty children: curiosity, or, expressed in a more theological way, knowledge without love, the kind of knowledge that is not paid and vouched for with one’s existence and suffering, the forced anticipation of the vision God wants to bestow through grace but into which impatient man bites as he bit into the forbidden apple.

-Bernanos

Three Signs of Cultural Decay: The Anthropological Crisis

A friend relayed a story of a meeting at the school where he teaches that covered changes in the library. Surprisingly, the focus was on introducing and adding new technology that would serve to entertain the students. It was as though books were forgotten as a relic of the past. I have heard similar rumors at the university where I teach that the library would stop collecting physical books and focus on adding electronic copies that students can check-out electronically and read on their computers. It may be a less expensive option for administrators, but it will make it harder for an education to be an introduction to reality and work as a tool for our freedom. This is a sign of a crisis where we fail to understand our needs and desires.

A Country Without Libraries by Charles Simic | NYRBlog | The New York Review of Books

The proposal to make search engines neutral may sound good at first glance, but it gives the government the ability to determine the results you see when you conduct a search on Google or Bing. Although the searches online are biased and work to increase the revenue for Google or Microsoft, allowing the government to make these decisions is a dangerous precedent that would further increase the cultural power that prevents us from understanding our humanity.

SHEFFIELD: Google gets hammered by monsters it created - Washington Times

David Foster Wallace has some interesting thoughts on what is wrong in our cultural environment, but he does not understand the answer. His thoughts are similar to Walker Percy in his understanding of where we are moving as a country.
‘A Frightening Time in America’: An Interview with David Foster Wallace by Ostap Karmodi | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books

Popes on C-SPAN

John Paul II Addressing Italian Parliament



Pope John Paul II Addresses Italian Parliament Nov 13, 2002


Pope Benedict's talk at Westminster Hall in London

Dostoevsky

"In the same way, if he had decided that God and immorality did not exist, he would at once have become an atheist and socialist. For socialism is not merely the labor question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the question of the form taken by atheism to-day. The question of the tower of Babel built without God, not to mount to Heaven from earth but to set up Heaven on earth."

"The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular."

The Brothers Karamazov

Faulty Towers: The Crisis in Higher Education

Although I do not agree with all the recommendations of this article, this is a good summary of the problems we are experiencing at American universities. Perhaps this is one result originating in the movements of the 1960s that sought to destroy classical education and replace it with a utilitarian system. The idea was that the university should be a vocational school and nothing more. It is unrelated to human happiness and the desire to know and understand. The difficulty is that we are unable to see the problem. As a culture, we tend to evaluate everything through short-term lenses and are unable to see how these decisions lead to later problems. Perhaps this is one of the results of the dictatorship of relativism. In any case, it is a crisis that hurts our young.

Once the university sought to sell itself by emphasizing its non-academic features there was a problem. Do we want to let today's young determine what is an essential feature of higher education. Perhaps this is why universities compete over the size of their student unions or over the stores where students can shop on campus. Why do American colleges need massive athletic centers with pools and student centers when we do not have enough faculty to teach basic classes? Did anyone ask whether we should be modeling our universities after shopping malls?

At the university where I work, we have recently heard the administration refer to our students as clients, as though we were simply a business. Maybe that is what they wish us to be. I do not know. All I know is that the American university has ceased to propose something and our students are left to the popular culture and video games to introduce them to reality. Where have we come and where are we going?

Faulty Towers: The Crisis in Higher Education | The Nation

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See Also:
Tuition Skyrockets -- While Learning Plummets

Communion and Liberation Easter Poster

""If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain" (1 Cor 15:14-15). The Christian faith stands or falls with the truth of the testimony that Christ is risen from the dead. If this were taken away, it would still be possible to piece together from the Christian tradition a series of interesting ideas about God and men, about man's being and his obligations, a kind of religious world view: but the Christian faith itself would be dead. Jesus would no longer be a criterion: the only criterion left would be our own judgment in selecting from His heritage what strikes us as helpful. In other words, we would be alone. Our own judgment would be in the highest instance. Only if Jesus is risen has anything really new occurred that changes the world and the situation of mankind. Then He becomes the criterion on which we can rely. For then God has truly revealed himself."
Benedict XVI

"The 'event' does not indicate merely something that happened and with which it all started, but what awakens the present, defines the present, gives content to the present. What we know or what we have becomes experience if what we know or have is something that is given to us now-there is a hand that offers it to us now, there is a face that comes forward now, there is blood that flows now, there is a resurrection that happenes now. Nothing exists outside this 'now'! Our 'I' cannot be moved, aroused, that is, changed, if not by something contemporaneous - an event. Christ is something that is happening to me. Now, in order that we know - Christ, the whole question of Christ - be an experience, there has to be a present that provokes us and arouses us. It is a presence as it was a presence for Andrew and John. Christianity, Christ, is exactly what He was for Andrew and John when they followed him. Imagine when He turned around, how they were struck! And when they went home with Him...It has been just like this up to now, up to this moment."
Luigi Giussani

Way of the Cross in the Heart of the City

As for many years, this Good Friday hundreds of people around the world will walk through the hearts of their cities commemorating our Lord's passion and death in Ways of the Cross organized by the lay Catholic Movement Communion and Liberation.
Millions of people carry their daily cross, but most of the time they are dreadfully alone: if God exists, He has nothing to do with their daily life. This is the real cross of every day, the cross of a person abandoned to himself, to his innermost need for genuine love, truth, beauty and justice. We need the presence of “God with us”, Jesus every day. And Jesus, because of the sacrifice of His cross and His resurrection, dwells among us, every day.

The Way of the Cross wants to help us follow Jesus and fix our gaze on the event of His passion in preparation for the joyous celebration of His resurrection.

In the United States, Ways of the Cross will be held in the following cities: Boston, Broomfield, CO, Chicago, Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Montgomery, AL, New Bedford, MA, New York City, Oklahoma City, Rochester, MN, Sacramento, Salem, OR, San Joseph, MO, San Diego, St. Louis, Washington,D.C.

For more information on locations and times visit the website www.clonline.us

Southern Writer: Walker Percy

Walker Percy is a Catholic novelist and philosopher who devoted his life to examining how assumptions concerning application of the scientific method have led to an increased alienation. He also saw how this reduction of reason provides the foundations for the modern culture of death. In the Thanatos Syndrome, he wrote "Do you know where tenderness leads? ...it leads to the gas chamber.... More people have been killed in this century by tenderhearted souls than by cruel barbarians in all other centuries put together." This statement is very similar to Flannery O'Connor's "When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced labor camps and the fumes of the gas chamber." These two Southern writers published almost identical observations independently of each other. Percy is very different from O'Connor and he did not publish his first novel until he was in his forties. He was a medical doctor educated at Columbia and came from a family with a rich Southern heritage. His work is valuable as Percy saw the dangers that were created by the modern cultural transformation: the reduction of what it means to be a person. We were less able to recognize the uniqueness and unrepeatability of each person and the consequence was alienation. Percy's strength was that he spent years considering the cultural change that led to our current reality. As a novelist, his work is worthy of attention.

Here is a very brief collection of four interviews with Percy available online, a lecture he gave, and a lecture about one of his works.


(Self-interview) From "Questions They Never Asked Me" by Walker Percy

Q: Do you regard yourself as a Catholic novelist?
A: Since I am a Catholic and a novelist, it would seem to follow that I am a Catholic novelist.
Q: What kind of Catholic are you?
A: Bad.
Q: No, I mean are you liberal or conservative?
A: I no longer know what those words mean.
Q: Are you a dogmatic Catholic or an open-minded Catholic?
A: I don't know what that means, either. Do you mean, do I believe the dogma that the Catholic Church proposes for belief?
Q: Yes.
A: Yes.
Q. How is such a belief possible in this day and age?
A: What else is there?
Q: What do you mean, what else is there? There is humanism, atheism, agnosticism, Marxism, behaviorism, materialism, Buddhism, Muhammadism, Sufism, astrology, occultism, theosophy.
A: That's what I mean.
Q: To say nothing of Judaism and Protestantism.
A: Well, I would include them along with the Catholic Church in the whole peculiar Jewish-Christian thing.
Q: I don't understand. Would you exclude, for example, scientific humanism as a rational and honorable alternative?
A: Yes.
Q: Why?
A: It's not good enough.
Q: Why not?
A: This life is much too much trouble, far too strange, to arrive at the end of it and then to be asked what you make of it and have to answer "Scientific Humanism." That won't do. A poor show. Life is a mystery, love is a delight. Therefore I take it as axiomatic that one should settle for nothing less than the infinite mystery and the infinite delight, i.e. God. In fact, I demand it. I refuse to settle for anything less. I don't see why anyone should settle for less than Jacob, who actually grabbed aholt of God and wouldn't let go until God identified himself and blessed him.
Q: Grabbed aholt?
A: Louisiana expression.

(Thanks, Fr Carucci for showing me this interview)

C-SPAN has Percy's lecture "The San Andreas Fault in the Modern Mind" which was given May 3, 1989 is available online in its entirety.


Four Interviews with Percy:
1 Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No. 97, Walker Percy "Probably the fear of seeing America, with all its great strength and beauty and freedom—“Now in these dread latter days of the old violent beloved U.S.A.,” and so on—gradually subside into decay through default and be defeated, not by the communist movement, demonstrably a bankrupt system, but from within by weariness, boredom, cynicism, greed, and in the end helplessness before its great problems."
2 The Modern Prognosis: An Interview with Walker Percy "The trouble is the sciences for the last two hundred years have been spectacularly successful in dealing with subhuman reality, subhuman creatures, chemistry and physics of matter, and with extraordinary progress in learning about the cosmos; but also an extraordinary lack of success in dealing with man as man, man qua man. I think it's very curious--here the scientists know a tremendous amount about everything except what he or she is. Despite the extraordinary successes of science, we do not presently have even the rudiments of a coherent science of man."
3Doubletake Interview "Also: writers are the "Protestants" of art, with nothing but their Scripto pencils and Blue-Horse tablets; painters are the "Catholics," with concrete intermediaries, clay, paint, models, fruit, landscape, etc. This is why writers drink more and painters live longer."
4 Orthodoxy Today Interview "The nihilism of some scientists in the name of ideology or sentimentality and the consequent devaluation of individual human life lead straight to the gas chamber."





Peter Kreeft presents a 7-part (70 minute) lecture on Walker Percy's Lost in the Cosmos.

The King's Speech

The Italian weekly newsletter ClanDestino Zoom, published a very good commentary on the recent Academy Award Winner Picture The King's Speech.

Below is a translation in English:

THE KING'S SPEECH by TOM HOOPER
W Colin Firth who, in a wonderful movie, make us love the father of Queen Elizabeth and with him an important piece of European History.

The duke of York, second son of George V, King of the United Kingdom, unsucessfully consults many specialists for the stammer that has been affecting him since childhood, until he meets Lionel Logue, an Australian speech therapist. The relationship between the two is not easy and immediate. "Stammer is not a physical problem, " sustains Lionel, pressing the duke to know its causes. Despite this and with great fear, after the death of his father and the abdication of his older brother, he becomes King George VI. He cannot refrain from talking to the people and radio has become the most effice means of communication. "Forget everything else, just say it to me, a friend." These are the words Lionel tells the King before the beginning of the speech in which he announces to the English people that England has declared war to nazi Germany.

What makes it possible to face everything, the impossible, the scary, the bitter delusions, the rightful fears, the anguish, the weaknesses, limits, and anxieties? King George encountered and chose, first with rebelliousness but then with tenaciousness, a friend, someone who showed him that behind the huge microphone of the 1930s there wasn't an enemy from which to run away.

You can find the Italian text by clicking here.

Aesop: The Wolf and the Shepherd

Aesop and a Parable for Today

A WOLF followed a flock of sheep for a long time and did not attempt to injure one of them. The Shepherd at first stood on his guard against him, as against an enemy, and kept a strict watch over his movements. But when the Wolf, day after day, kept in the company of the sheep and did not make the slightest effort to seize them, the Shepherd began to look upon him as a guardian of his flock rather than as a plotter of evil against it; and when occasion called him one day into the city, he left the sheep entirely in his charge. The Wolf, now that he had the opportunity, fell upon the sheep, and destroyed the greater part of the flock. When the Shepherd returned to find his flock destroyed, he exclaimed: "I have been rightly served; why did I trust my sheep to a Wolf?"

(Aesop's Fables are public domain and available free online)

Review: Lapsed Agnostic

It is rare to find a book that presents a personal account describing the misunderstanding and suffering caused by the Irish Church's failure to understand today's cultural reality. John Waters, a columnist with The Irish Times, describes a journey that originated in a Catholic childhood, following the promise of freedom in the pop culture that led to his rejection of the faith, and his long and difficult return to the Church. Waters offers Lapsed Agnostic as a long voyage that addresses the cultural reality in Ireland where the Church leadership failed to respond to the challenges modernity presented and reduced the Christian message to morality and political dominance. The Irish Church never developed a coherent response to the Enlightenment and after independence was satisfied merely preserving external political realities. The local church dominated society in a way similar to the British colonial experience where it sought legal positions and moralistic behavior and was unable to show how Christ mattered to daily life. The dualistic tendencies that weakened the entire West were particularly destructive in Ireland and the life proposed by the Church was unattractive compared to the freedom promised by rock musicians and the wider pop culture. Waters followed the road where he thought he would find happiness and left the faith to embrace a life of 'freedom,' but this promise failed and ultimately led him to alcohol as a means to survive. He lived through the destruction of traditional culture and had nothing but superficial ideas to replace what was lost. His human needs were present but unfulfilled and he drowned his heart in drunkenness. Eventually he found his way to AA and rediscovered his faith through a long and difficult process that required him re-think his relationship with Christ and re-enter the Church. This process was particularly painful as it required him to discover where the Irish Church had reduced the faith and had failed to propose Christ. The cultural problems are still present in Ireland and Waters tells how he has difficulty talking to people who ask him questions about what he believes because they normally come from ideological positions that are unable to comprehend his responses.
This is a beautiful work where the author places before us the reality of his childhood and the consequences of a faith that is unable to generate a culture. “The Irish Church has not yet woken up to the scale of the anthropological and existential crisis that besets Irish society precisely because of the particular nature of its historical faith experience and its recent rejection of this.” The outcome was the people leaving the Church and embracing a shallow culture that left them unable to deal with the problems of life. Yet, the answer for Ireland remains Christ and Waters own experience shows why this return is the only response that corresponds with the human heart. Ireland has suffered a loss of its tradition and is hungry for something that can address our reality now. This can only come from an encounter with a Presence that is able to generate a culture.



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John Water's recent column in The Irish Times: Freedom at Last to Think for Yourself

Only a beautiful theology...

There is in the time of the Church no historically influential theology which is not itself a reflection of the glory of God; only beautiful theology, that is, only theology which, grasped by the glory of God, is able itself to transmit its rays, has the chance of making any impact in human history by conviction and transformation.

Hans Urs Von Balthasar

Global Food Prices and "Church and Economy"

As global food prices have risen to record levels, Cardinal Ratizinger's short 1986 article on the "Church and the Economy" in Communio is worth reading.

On the neutrality of technology

Adrian Walker offers a short article that examines the consequences technology has for bodily life in the West.

Handmade with Love: support local craftspeople!

As my husband and I are trying to avoid buying things made in China whenever possible (and it's becoming harder and harder but we are doing our best!!) we are discovering a universe of people, mostly stay-home moms, who love to use their artistic talents to make personalized and one-of-a-kind gifts. These gifts might be more expensive than what you find in the stores, but they are so much better and much more beautiful than any mass produced item that is sold all over America (and the world). It's absolutely worth it! We are happy to spend some extra money, get a wonderful gift, and support an individual family. In this way, we allow mothers to make some money while staying home with their children, something that in our society today seems very hard to do because one income is often not enough.

My husband and I were looking for a special gift for our goddaughter's first birthday and I thought about a friend of mine from college, a stay-home mother of two who paints, sews, and does many other wonderful crafts. We ended up commissioning her an icon of our goddaughter's patron saint. It was the best gift ever! You can see this and other works on her blog "Santi Amici" (Saints friends).

Another crafts-mother I recently got to know and appreciate makes the cutest girls' dresses from adult t-shirts bought at thrift stores. You can see some of her creations at Kristi Bee.

I suggest that you look around, ask your friends, and do some internet searches and see what people around you (or faraway as my friend in Italy) are doing, you will be surprised! Please support local craftspeople and their families!

St Theresa of Avila

"For it is strange what a difference there is between understanding a thing and subsequently knowing it by experience."
-St Theresa of Avila (Autobiography CH XIII)

Pope Benedict devoted this Wednesday's audience to St Theresa of Avila. It is the first of several audiences focusing on doctors of the Church. (Italian)

Recommendation: Waiting for Superman

This documentary addresses an uncomfortable subject: the difficulty (or, at times, the impossibility) of poor Americans to give their children a good education. This movie looks at several families where the parents or guardians, who love and desire the best for their children, wish to obtain a quality education. It shows that public education is not reliable for many Americans because individual student needs are easily dismissed in the bureaucratic structures that manage our schools.

It also captures the strength of the national teachers union which has changed public education from something that benefits children to something that provides guaranteed income to tenured teachers no matter how poorly they do their jobs. While the Church defends unions and teachers should have job and income security, these benefits cannot endanger the educative process or eliminate the possibility of the poor to get a good education. I am strongly in favor of unions (especially in our era where preventing labor from organizing has made it impossible for most workers to earn a living wage {where they can support a family with one income}), but unions exist to serve the common good. While the teachers union has not succeeded in gaining greater wages, it has succeeded in keeping poor educators in the classroom and working to end efforts to improve education opportunities for the poor. This documentary shows the tragic consequences for families who desire to give their children an education and the overwhelming and sometimes impossible challenges they must confront on this path.

The cultural problems in education are deeper than those presented in this film. Nonetheless, this film offers a valuable contribution in exposing the reality of American public education today.

Polish Composer: Henryk Gorecki

The Polish contribution to Western culture and civilization is underestimated and little known. Few know the story of the the Lublin University school of philosophy where an ontological critique of Marxism originated that provided a tool to discredit communism at the cultural level. The human encounter with repressive socialist ideology led to many artistic works that point to something deeper that could not be explained with the dominant materialist ideology. Poland’s thought is valuable today because our culture is adopting a new form of materialism that has a more subtle and comprehensive grasp on our culture.

This is the first of several posts that will examine the cultural contribution of Poland that can help us address the reality we face in the West today.

Henryk Gorecki was a Polish composer that provided a response to the oppressive ideology by provided musical works that pointed toward another reality. His second symphony was commissioned by Cardinal Karol Wojtyla and he dedicated two works to Pope John Paul II: Beautis Vir (Opus 38 ) and Totus Tuus (Op 60). He also quit his university teaching post in 1979 to protest the government’s refusal to allow Pope John Paul II to visit. His most famous work is his third symphony, the Symphony of the Sorrowful Songs (Op 36).

Elogio cristiano del Natale consumistico

Scusate il ritardo ma sembrava interessante...

21 DICEMBRE 2010 / IN NEWS

Natale è alle porte. E ci toccherà sorbirci le solite lagnose recriminazioni moralistiche contro il “Natale consumistico”.

E’ un uggioso “refrain” in cui si sono specializzati molti ecclesiastici, ma anche tanti laici, non credenti, che – per esempio dalle pagine di Repubblica, del Corriere della sera o della Stampa – biasimano il presunto paganesimo della “corsa ai regali” (e lo fanno, ovviamente, mentre i loro stessi giornali vivono di pubblicità e i loro editori prosperano sui consumi).

Oltretutto i “consumi natalizi” sono pure un beneficio per la nostra economia che soffre di un Pil stentato, per cui è irritante vedere gli stessi che scagliano anatemi sul consumismo, strillare poi – il mese dopo – per le aziende che chiudono, per l’economia che ristagna e il deficit che cresce (come pure il debito essendo rapportati al pil).

Dunque mi appello ai parroci: per favore, quest’anno, evitateci queste geremiadi anticonsumistiche.Perché non c’è cosa più insopportabile (e acristiana) del sentire sacerdoti alla Messa di Natale che – proprio mentre nasce Gesù, il nostro salvatore, la gioia della vita – invece di parlarci di lui, invece di invitarci a rallegrarci, invece di consolare le nostre sofferenze, si mettono a strapazzare i fedeli che si sono scambiati dei doni.

A volte si ha quasi la sgradevole sensazione che a Natale tuonino contro il consumismo perché non hanno nulla da dire su Gesù, perché non si stupiscono più del suo venire al mondo, perché non ne conoscono la meraviglia.“Expertus potest credere quid sit Jesum diligere”.Come si può – quando si è sperimentata l’amicizia del Salvatore e se n’è scorta la bellezza ineffabile – mettersi a tuonare contro le luminarie, i pranzi e i regali, invece di parlare di lui?Non somigliamo a quei farisei che – davanti a ll’uomo misterioso che con un solo gesto guariva un paralitico – si mettevano a polemizzare perché lo aveva fatto di sabato?Quasi che fosse ovvio e normale che uno potesse stendere la mano e guarire un uomo paralizzato. Si facevano a tal punto violenza da non restare stupiti neanche da un fatto del genere.E voi sacerdoti di oggi avete da dare la notizia più grande di tutti i tempi, la più commovente, inimmaginabile, consolante, cioè che Dio si fa uomo e viene ad abitare fra noi, che viene a guarirci, a salvarci, avete la notizia che nulla sarà più triste e disperato come prima, e invece di gridarcela, di scoppiare voi stessi in lacrime di letizia e di commozione (perché davvero se non fossimo così tragicamente distratti dovremmo piangerne di gioia), invece di gridarla dai tetti, vi mettete a rompere le scatole sui regali? Quasi indispettiti dalla gioia della gente?Questa sì che è un’empietà! Oltretutto, se proprio vogliamo essere evangelici, dobbiamo riconoscere che il primo Natale dei regali è stato precisamente quello di duemila anni fa: sono stati i pastori e i Magi a viverlo così.E il Vangelo li esalta per questa spontanea gratuità. Del resto era un’umile risposta a un immenso dono.Perché in realtà è Dio stesso che inaugura il “Natale dei regali”. Il “Grande Consumista” è Colui che ci ha regalato il cielo e la terra, l’universo intero, con tutto quello che contiene.Nessuno ha dissipato e regalato così tanto i suoi beni come quel Dio che ha voluto letteralmente svenarsi per noi.Natale non è altro che questo: la follia di Dio.E’ la sua irraggiungibile umiltà, avendo voluto spogliarsi della sua maestà e della sua gloria per abbassarsi fino a farsi un piccolo bambino povero e potersi donare a noi senza umiliarci, ma anzi mendicando il nostro amore.Si può immaginare una follia d’amore pari a questa?Riflettiamoci. C’è un Re così grande, ricco e potente che possiede tutto. E dunque ti regala non solo pietre preziose e perle, ma il mondo intero con tutte le sue meraviglie. Però non gli basta, perché noi siamo insoddisfatti e infelici, e allora vuole donarti di più.Potrebbe regalarti la felicità (per cos’altro tutti ci agitiamo se non per la felicità?) oppure potrebbe regalarti la bellezza, o la pace del cuore o l’amore o il calore dell’amicizia e potrebbe perfino regalarti tutto questo per l’eternità, senza più la tristezza della fine e della morte.Ma ha deciso di farti un dono ancora più grande dove tutto questo è contenuto: se stesso, il suo unico e meraviglioso Figlio che letteralmente “è” tutto questo. Infatti Gesù è la vera felicità, la pace, l’amore, la gioia, la vita e lo è per sempre.E allora come si fa – davanti a un tale Re che ti dona se stesso e tutto il suo regno, senza che tu lo meriti neanche lontanamente – come si fa a non essere strafelici e a non essere mossi spontaneamente, anche noi, a donare?Ci sono passi bellissimi di Benedetto XVI sul “dono” nell’enciclica “Caritas in veritate”. Egli vede nella cultura del dono addirittura una immensa risorsa sociale.Ma allora i sacerdoti dall’altare di Natale dovrebbero dire esattamente l’opposto della geremiade contro il consumismo: dovrebbero anzi esortare a donare ancora di più, a donare non solo ad amici, figli o parenti, ma a riempire di doni e di amore anche tutti coloro che sono stati più sfortunati, coloro che vivono in povertà, coloro che soffrono, perché anche loro possano rallegrarsi nel giorno della gioia.Il papa san Leone Magno, nella sua celebre omelia natalizia, secoli fa, annunciava e quasi gridava: “Il nostro Salvatore, carissimi, oggi è nato: rallegriamoci! Non c’è spazio per la tristezza nel giorno in cui nasce la vita, una vita che distrugge la paura della morte e dona la gioia delle promesse eterne”.Vorremmo sentire i parroci o i vescovi che ci ripetono queste parole, che incitano a non fermarsi a pochi regali, a Natale, ma a donare più possibile. A donare perfino se stessi.E soprattutto a fare a se stessi il regalo più bello: l’amicizia di Cristo.Mi sembra di sentire qualche amico prete che obietta: “va bene, dici belle cose, ma come si può tacere davanti a chi pensa solo ai regali, alla settimana bianca o alla vacanza alle Maldive o sul Mar Rosso e neanche va alla messa di Natale?”.Amico sacerdote, perché tu, come loro, pensi che la settimana bianca o le Maldive o il Mar Rosso siano in competizione con il Figlio di Dio che si fa uomo?Chi ha fatto le maestose montagne e il loro cielo di azzurro purissimo? E chi dà consistenza ai miliardi di cristalli di neve che accecano di luce? E i fondali o i coralli del Mar Rosso? E la luna e le stelle?“Tutto è stato creato per mezzo di Lui e in vista di Lui e tutto in Lui consiste”. E allora come privarsi di lui? Dovresti dire a coloro che si contentano di così poco (una settimana alle Maldive), a coloro che si rassegnano alla settimana bianca, che possono avere molto di più.Perché a Natale ci si dona colui in cui c’è la bellezza degli oceani e delle montagne innevate, il refrigerio della brezza d’estate, i colori dei boschi d’autunno, la dolcezza dell’amicizia, lo struggimento dell’amore dei figli, l’ardore dell’amore delle madri e perfino il gusto dei frutti succulenti della terra, la purezza dell’acqua e il sapore del vino. In lui c’è il gusto stesso della vita, il senso dell’esistenza.Così nella Messa ci sono tutte le montagne innevate e i mari più azzurri, tutte le bellezze dell’universo. Non a caso la liturgia coinvolge tutti i cinque sensi nell’adorazione, perché Dio si è fatto carne ed è venuto a salvare tutto l’uomo, è venuto a portargli una felicità che passa anche attraverso i sensi umani, i sentimenti umani. E’ venuto a divinizzare tutto l’uomo.“Infatti il Figlio di Dio si è fatto uomo per farci Dio” afferma sant’Atanasio di Alessandria (De Incarnatione, 54, 3: PG 25, 192).E chi – ditemi – chi, sapendo tuttociò, può essere così masochista da rifiutare questo stupefacente regalo: essere trasformati in dèi, essere divinizzati, partecipare alla signoria di Dio sull’universo, partecipare alla gioia di Dio?

Antonio Socci

Liberal Fascism: A Brief Review

A short time ago, I had a discussion with my department head who was thoroughly depressed that the republicans were going to win the midterm elections and stifle Obama's plans for the country. Since he is a liberal, he was frustrated that his hopes for political change were going to be unrealized. His ultimate complaint was that the American system was itself to blame and the solution was to give the president full governmental power and dissolve the legislative branch. His argument was based Robert Kaplan and Fareed Zakaria's observations that authoritarian capitalist states are outperforming democratic states and, to stay competitive economically, we needed a smart president who would have unlimited power to create policies that would address our country's weaknesses. Ironically, my department head teaches American National Government and believes himself to be a progressive who is willing to destroy democracy to make the U.S. competitive internationally. He would never desire this transformation if there were a republican president; he believes that an intelligent liberal should be empowered to save our country.

I was surprised at this encounter, but this suggestion is consistent with the patterns in U.S. and world history. My department head wanted a liberal authoritarian leader who would dissolve our government and gain power to create a new system where one person is empowered to make all decisions for our state. The transition to an authoritarian government would be guided by ideology and use liberal, progressive principles to justify it. Every time a fascist regime has emerged in the past, it has come from the political left and, conveniently, the right has received the historical blame. Conservatives have no historical legacy in Europe of destroying democratic governments and establishing authoritarian or fascist ones.

One common misunderstanding is that fascism arose through right-wing political groups, but anyone examining the historical record would see that fascist regimes emerge from the left in the name of progress. Jonah Goldberg published Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning (2008) to examine this historical record and show that fascism emerged from left-wing political groups that sought to modernize and de-Christianize society in the name of progress. Goldberg traces the emergence of these authoritarian governments and shows that the first fascist regime did not emerge in Europe but in the United States under the Wilson administration. The Espionage and Sedition Laws of 1917-8 curtailed free speech and made it a crime to oppose the administration and this justified the arrest of thousands, the expulsion of aliens without due process, and gave scores of local brown shirts the legal protection to beat up and intimidate anyone who apposed the government. The idea that links Wilson to the Italian and German manifestation was the tie to pragmatic transformation and a shared political understanding of the world. In fact, it was Wilson who created the first propaganda ministry. Ironically, Mussolini learned much from Wilson and made several gestures to acknowledge that he was continuing the progressive policies he inherited from the United States. This movement lasted only through WWI in the United States as the public was much less tolerant of fascist policies during peace time. There was a brief re-emergence under FDR, but again this was a temporary curtailment of political liberty during a major war. The U.S. public seems to recover and defend their freedom after a war ends.

A secondary strength of Goldberg's book is the examination of policies endorsed by fascist regimes. The policies seek to expand governmental power in all areas of public life and to further secularize or move towards paganism as the state assumes responsibilities that require businesses, families, and religious communities to defer to the favored ideological program. Fascist regimes move governmental structures in ways favored by the political left and these changes are clear evidence for Goldberg's thesis that fascism is a leftist phenomenon. In its attempt to help children, these regimes destroy families. As fascist regimes seek to establish tolerance, Christianity is silenced and then attempts are made to destroy faith in everything but the state and its ideology. Fascists adopt a progressive ideology that re-makes society but destroys its most vital elements: the Church, the family, and businesses. These policy programs are inherently linked to the left and it is a mistake to identify fascist regimes with conservatives.

Jonah Goldberg provides a convincing historical account of the rise of fascist regimes in Europe and North America but he fails to explain the authoritarian right-wing regimes that emerged in Latin America in the 1980s. While the political positions of these repressive regimes cannot be linked to the progressive ideology, there is an institutional connection between fascist regimes of Spain, Italy, and Germany and authoritarian governments of Latin America. The University of Chicago actually sent economists to Chile to advise the military government on its policies toward businesses and unions. These regimes did not emerge in Europe, but it is difficult to dismiss them as unimportant in the literature of fascism. Unfortunately, authoritarian governments evolve and can take elements from the right or left. In either case, state power grows and the end result is more governmental intervention in citizens' daily lives.

Liberal Fascism does not explain the policies of the Bush administration after September 11th where freedom of speech declined and governmental power grew. Hannah Arendt has observed in The Origins of Totalitarianism that foreign military engagements, such as the intervention in Iraq, eventually result in a changed political reality in the invading country. Although the Iraq War has spanned republican and democratic administrations, one constant component is the decreasing freedom we see domestically in the United States. If Arendt is correct, the Iraq War would increase governmental power regardless of which party is in control. To suggest that the growth of governmental power took place at a time of leftist governments in the past does not preclude the possibility of equally repressive regimes originating at the hands of the political right. One confounding element was that the United States had democratic presidents during WWI and WWII, but does this mean that republican presidents would have been less willing to deepen state power? As one examines the Bush administration policies, it is difficult to imagine that the right would have been much different. Although Wilson and FDR were progressive, it was a great war that gave them the ability to remove political power. A Republican president would likely have acted in a similar manner, but may have justified his action through different language. In other words, the reality Goldberg describes is historically accurate but ultimately rests on evidence that occurred at a specific moment in history. I believe that his warning about fascism as a historically leftist movement is correct, but this position does not adequately describe the equal threat to liberty originating at the hands of the political right.

Liberalism’s Greatest Failure? - By Jonah Goldberg - The Corner - National Review Online