THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

If you wish to understand Salvini’s Lega,
read Benedict XVI’s latest book
Full of wisdom and political reflections, the emeritus pope’s
thoughts underlie most of Salvini’s major positions
Translated from

May 12, 2018

A couple of years ago, Matteo Salvini [leader of the Lega political party which was one of the three major winners in Italy’s last elections] proudly wore a T-shirt that read ‘IL MIO PAPA E BENEDETTO XVI’ which he did as an implicit objection to Bergoglio’s migrationism.



At a political rally, Salvini recalled the teachings of Papa Ratzinger and John Paul II who said that before the right to emigrate, the right not to emigrate ought to be asserted first. And that the identity of peoples (with distinct cultures) must be defended.

But far vaster than this particular issue is the super-imposition of the Lega’s political battles with the teachings of Benedict XVI and John Paul II.

This is very apparent from the Emeritus Pope’s recently published new book, Liberare la libertà. Fede e politica nel terzo millennio (Cantagalli). One need not say that the book is very rich in reflections and food for thought that remind us of the fascination and vastness of Ratzinger’s thinking.

Thinking that becomes even more impressive if compared with the relative poverty and conformist superficiality of the limping Bergoglian foreword to the book which does not go beyond politically correct slogans dear to those who patronize hot air.

I will not even try to summarize the many marvelous pages of Benedict XVI that go from Kant to Solzhenitzyn, from the primacy of conscience to Sakharov, from Sartre to Popper, from meditating on Bach’s Passion music to write about "The Good Friday of the 20th century”, to the concept of the state by the early Christians, from Gruenewald’s Crucifix (in the famous Isenheim Altar) to Marx and Lenin.

Everyone can delight in these Ratzingerian pages which are luminous and vast like a beautiful valley in the Tuscan countryside.

Instead, I would like here to consider this book as if it were a true and proper intervention on politics today, especially in Italy, and to single out the themes and thoughts that – although they represent powerful suggestions to every reader – constitute for Matteo Salvini and his Lega an authoritative contribution to some of their major causes.

Above all, the Muslim question. This volume does not include the legendary Regensburg lecture (it is found in another volume of the series), but Benedict XVI has a precious dialog with Marcello Pera in which he defines human rights as “a force recognized by universal reason in all the world against dictatorships of any kind”. If in the 20th century, this statement referred only to the atheist totalitarian systems of the past century, today, the pope says, the issue concerns above all “the states founded on the basis of a religious justification, such as we find most of all in the Islamic world”.

This entire volume of some of Benedict XVI’s collected writings on faith and politics – like the Regensburg lecture – is an apologia for reason and for authentic secularity born out of Christianity (in opposition to the divinization of imperial power in the ancient world).

Another theme that enriches the political persperctive of Salvini and his party is Benedict XVI’s continuous opposition to the European Union whose technocracy has been seeking to impose a positivist ‘one thought’ on the continent, and he sees in this the suicide of Europe.

Because, the pope recalls, “the cultural patrimony of Europe” is much vaster, and because, historically, it was precisely “on the basis of Christian conviction about a Creator God that the ideas of human rights, the equality of all men before the law, acknowledgment of the inviolability of human dignity in every single person, and awareness of man’s self-responsibility for his own actions, developed. These acknowledgements of reason constitute our cultural memory. To ignore them or to consider them as mere things of the past would be to amputate our culture… The culture of Europe was born from the encounter between Jerusalem, Athens and Rome – the encounter between Israel’s faith in God, the philosophical reasoning of the Greeks and the juridical thought of Rome. This threefold encounter make up the innermost identity of Europe”.

This gives rise to our responsibility to fight “for the inviolable dignity of man”. The threefold encounter “established the criteria for the law, and in this historical moment, it is our task to defend it”.

But beyond countering the ideological myth of a relativist Europe according to the Treaty of Maastricht [the 1992 Treaty on European Union signed in Maastrcht to further the integration of Europe. Along with the 1957 Treaty of Rome (Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union), it forms the constitutional basis of the European Union], Benedict XVI also demolishes the other great divinity of our time: the markets. A divinity that has been hossanized and adored, to which States and peoples have been sacrificed.

Against the religion of global marketing, the book re-proposes Benedict’s World Day of Peace message on January 1, 2013, in which, with the growing rampancy of the global economic crisis, he proposes ‘a new economic model’ in which ‘the maximization of profits’ gives way to the primacy of the common good.

He therefore asks of States to take back the initiative in the economic sector with “policies of industrial and agricultural development”(thereby harking back to Keynes, but Keynesian economics has been made impossible because of the single European currency). [I really do not understand what that means, without having to look up Keynesian economics!], and calls for the “fundamental and indispensable ethical structuring of monetary, financial and commercial ethics in ways that will not cause damage to the poorest people”.

Which means that States and people must reassert their primacy over the markets. Which is today a revolutionary thought. But Benedict XVI is so anti-conformist and therefore indigestible to the global powers-that-be that in his last interview book “Last Conversations” with Peter Seewald, he allowed himself an elegant putdown of Obama and a significant appreciation for Putin:

---

“With Putin, our conversation was in German, which he speaks perfectly. We did not talk about profound matters, but I believe that he – as a man of power – has realized the need for faith.He is a realist. He sees that Russia suffers from the destruction of morals. As a patriot, and as someone who wants to bring Russia back to a role of great power, he understands that the destruction of Christianity would threaten Russia’s own destruction. He realizes that man needs God, and he certainly seems to have been intimately touched by this. Even recently, when he presented Pope Francis with an icon, he first made the sign of the Cross and kissed it”.

---

One can say that, together with the Italian Constitution and the Gospel, at his next political rally, Salvini can well hold up Benedict XVI’s book to shore up his positions. A book of great political reflection.

And here is one of the lectures given at the formal presentation of the book last Friday in Rome. I must, however, precede my translation with a disclaimer:

I have this very bad habit of proceeding to translate a piece which I believe worth sharing after only cursory reading of it and then realizing as I go forward that it is not what I thought it was supposed to be. This is the unfortunate case with this essay -that I hastened to start translating because it was the first and only material I could find about the May 11 presentation of the new book on Benedict XVI’s writings on faith and politics.

It was with shock and disillusion that I realized the major fault with this essay by Mons. Crepaldi who, as director of the Cardinal Van Thuanh International Observatory on the Social Doctrine of the Church, has made many significant contributions to a discussion of that doctrine. He has written this essay on a patently false and obviously forced premise – that the book represents a convergence of three popes. The cursory foreword ‘signed’ by Pope Francis, with its generic and commonplace statements, probably not even read by him, does not in any way make him a participant in the content of the book.

And while I originally thought that the extravagant but unwarranted idea of convergence that Crepaldi mentions in his opening paragraph was merely a courteous grace note toward the reigning pope (although in striking contrast, he only makes one reference to John Paul II in the essay and does not then attribute anything else in the book to him), he then aggravates his pandering with the rather preposterous claim towards the end that Bergoglio, like Ratzinger and Wontyla, has been a passionate admirer of St. Augustine and Cardinal Newman! I find this to be a statement that is not just unnecessarily pandering to Bergoglio but plain and simply unnecessary in any context because it is not true. Nothing in the past five years or in Bergoglio’s previous life has ever indicated his love and admiration for Augustine or Newman! Why a serious and intelligent man like Mons. Crepaldi found it necessary to make such a statement is beyond me!

He could have omitted any of the statements about Bergoglio in the following essay without detracting in any way from what he has to say about politics, morality and faith. But he had to bring up Bergoglio's name whenever he could because of his ridiculous premise of considering the book as a 'convergence of three popes'.

'Freedom itself needs to be set free'
A presentation of a new book with
the political writings of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI
by Mons. Giampaolo Crepaldi
Archbishop of Trieste
Rome, May 11 2018
Translated from
The official site of the Diocese of Trieste


In the book that I have the honor to present today, three popes come together which makes it truly singular and of great interest. It contains some selected tests of the theologian Joseph Ratzinger, along with some his teachings during his Pontificate. There is a Preface by Pope Francis. And there are the frequent references to St. John Paul II.

Indeed, the book title 'Liberare la liberta’ comes from Pragrapgh 86 of Veritatis splendor and expresses the sense and the intentions of that entire encyclical on morality. This ‘convergence’ is, as I said, of great interest because it indicates continuity at the same time as it does novelty – a novelty in continuity, one might say – in the teachings of the Church on the relationship between faith and politics.

Politics, morality and faith – these are the three terms that frame the contents of the book and which, one must recognize, are also the framework for the entire social doctrine of the Church.

Politics needs morality. It is not directly morality because it has its own legitimate autonomy in its criteria and methods. But it cannot do without morality, as ordinary citizens demonstrate, who are often very rigorous in judging politics precisely from the ethical point of view, and as politicians themselves demonstrate, who always feel compelled to justify the choices they make according to the criteria of goodness and justice.

There is no politician who does not present as ‘good’ and ‘just’ any action which he means to undertake or has undertaken. Even to achieve goals that are material in order – for example, of an economic or productive character – politicians always invoke a justification based on the common good. Of course, they have different views about the common good, but this does not keep politicians, above all, from invoking it as justification for their choices. Which demonstrates that politics, although autonomous, is not self-established. It seeks its ultimate legitimacy not in the results it achieves, nor from electoral mandate, but in the common good, that, is the good of all and of everyone, which politicians are called on to realize.

Today we live in a context of ethical pluralism. But we all acknowledge some basic moral principles that are also present in the Constitution of the Italian Republic. It is an ‘uneasy’ pluralism, which, on the one hand, demands freedom, but at the same time, feels an attraction for the truth. It is not accidental that political discussion often touches on issues with great ethical significance, not just for individual morality but for public morality. Is this not a sign of ‘uneasy’ pluralism? A pluralism that demonstrates, despite the conflict of interpretations and assessments, that politics is never sufficient by itself and that politicians are in position for something other than politics. It is this – the fact of being of service to others – that ultimately gives politics its dignity.

It is at this point that faith comes into play, because it opens to politics as well as to morality windows that the latter would be unable to open by themselves. In human life, everyone needs to be rescued from inherent involution. If politics absolutizes itself, it becomes transformed into technology or ideology. If morality absolutizes itself, it becomes a series of legalistic prohibitions. But the breath of Christian faith can help one and the other – not by appropriating them, but, leaving each in its legitimate autonomy, it offers an ultimate goal, impelling an awareness of higher and vaster things, echoing a call from beyond and towards the beyond. Whereby no damage is done to politics or to morality, which are not negated but confirmed, and we might say, made to breathe better.

I have dwelt on these three aspects – politics, morality and the Chrisitna faith - because their relationship of reciprocal purification represents one of the most interesting points in the teachings of Benedict XVI that we find in this book and confirmed by Pope Francis. Indeed, it is not only faith that purifies politics and morality, but also vice-versa.

In his famous 2004 debate with German philosopher Jurgen Habermas, Cardinal Ratzinger noted that political nihilism needs the purification of faith just as terrorist fundamentalism needs the purification of reason. There is a circularity in faith and reason. The political life of the people’s representatives, the choices made by legislators elected by popular will to represent them, does not exempt them from problems of conscience because indeed these become even more central.

In the work we are presenting today, we also find St. Augustine and Cardinal Newman, authors much loved by all three of the popes involved in this publication. The two great thinkers, as we know, studied the human conscience profoundly, offering significant and hard-to-match food for thought even for politicians.

Conscience is the last tribunal for our actions but not the only one. Benedict XVI has taught us that conscience needs an authority that activates its anamnesis – the most profound recovery of an iondividual’s own history and his motivations. The ultimate authority is needed because it induces the process of continuous self-verification by conscience. That is why the Church has an ecclesiastical authority, and why politics and society have a higher authority which is the truth.

Benedict XVI explains that when conscience, even that of the politician, looks into itself and allows anamnesis, then it finds the truth which resides within each human being, the truth that unifies where mere opinion divides. Politics is activity and sometimes activism, but at the same time, it needs this interior examination of conscience because truth is recognized by the intellect as well as by the heart.

Pope Francis, in his foreword, cites many of these truths which even for politicians should remain truths: respect for life, safeguarding the family, searching justice for all. Individual conscience is able to see these, and even when, in political action, it is subject to jolts and tugs, the politician must realize that he is acting not just with his intellect but with his heart.

In his foreword, the pope insists on the importance of an outlook of love. In the end, one has to recognize the dignity of the human person, the value of family, of human life, the education of the young according to what is good, are acts of love, love for the truth that precedes Parliaments and Constitutions.

There is something that precedes politics, as I have said before, and if a politician takes this into account it does not mean it diminishes him; rather, it acknowledges his own personal honor and his true dignity. In his famous speech to the German Bundestag in 2011, Benedict XVI said that the best virtue for a politician is that which Solomon asked of God: the wisdom of knowing how to lead men for good, because politics is not the administration of things but the governance of men.

The book we are presenting also contains a previously unpublished text by Benedict XVI on the subject of human rights and their foundation, warning of the danger that the proliferation of human ‘rights’ carries in itself the destruction of the concept of law – a process which I believe is very evident in our day. Human rights belong to man as a subject of the law, but their legitimacy presupposes duties that derive from the natural order of things. But in many cases, new ‘rights’ are being absolutized and therefore infinitely multiplied and multipliable. Why does this happen?

The main answer given by Benedict XVI in his new essay is that the natural order cannot maintain itself as such and thereby achieve its natural ends, without a supernatural order. Without refernce to the Creator, the natural order is weakened and little by little becomes lost to view. It is something Pope Francis confirms in his foreword.

Benedict XVI establishes the public role of the Catholic faith which completely honors the natural exigencies of individuals and society since it is a ‘religion with a human face’, and he calls on politicians to acknowledge this role. It is really a demand – an exigent one – for religious freedom.

The book we are presenting is dense in content and must be read as such, but it is also a harbinger of hope and must be appreciated as such. In our present difficulties,[ which are probably not different from those in other times [???? Really???Does this tell us Crepaldi is a witness compromised to the Bergoglian regime?], but more present and vivid to us, politics can still be a source of hope.

It may seem temerary to say so, but faith is able to instill ‘Christian realism’ even in political life. It consists in not closing our eyes to reality, even in its rawest forms, and not to neglect pursing all the means that are concretely in our possession to resolve problems and find just solutions. But it also consists in never ceasing to trust in the help of God who is the lord of history.

Christianity is a religion of hope, as Benedict XVI illustrated very well in his encyclical Spe salvi. Hope is a theological virtue, but that does not mean it cannot extend to circles we may consider profane or secular. Political life needs prerequisites it cannot give itself. One of this is hope, which has helped so many brave politicians to make decisions against their own personal interests and compelled to make important sacrifices in order to be faithful to the good of the country and its people. And this is true not just for politicians who are believers but even for some who choose expressly not to express any religious faith (even if only the Lord knows what is in their hearts).

Hope is a Christian value and a human value. A human value that Christ elevated into a divine virtue. Religious faith gives social life many aids – and one of this is hope. The book we are presenting contains a comforting and encouraging message of hope for everyone. For this, we thank Benedict XVI.