It is not often that one finds a member of Parliament, any Parliament, writing in praise of a Pope, any Pope. And a fairly young politician too. The writer, Luca Volonte (born 1966), a member of Comunione e Liberazione, has been a deputy in the Italian Parliament since 1996 as a member of the center-right Cristiani Democratici Uniti (CDU), formerly the People's Party, under Rocco Buttiglione.
Thanks to Lella and her blog
for pointing out the item.
Polemics against the Pope
are a proof of his power:
He is our only Wall
against relativism
by Luca Volonte
Translated from
Oct. 3, 2009
Thomas Jefferson, who was not exactly the most pious of the American Founding Fathers, loved to admonish his fellow citizens about the distortions of freedom.
"The freedoms of a nation are assured when they come from their only true foundation - the conviction in the minds of men that these freedoms are a gift of God, and that they cannot be violated without incurring his ire".
Therefore, it is not just a Catholic problem, nor one of this particular Pope, to once more view the life of individuals and nations as if God existed. The entire Christian challenge, not only in the 20th century, starts from this point and is fought from it.
That is why the acrimony towards the recent trip of Benedict XVI to Prague, to the heart of Europe, both brings on a smile as well as some concern.
A smile because it is taken for granted that a Christian, especially a Catholic, would know he will be opposed when he proposes the Truth. And concern over the irresponsible obstinacy of so many who with their petty polemics wish to minimize, taint or obscure the concerns of every averagely prudent European citizen.
The careful tillers of bad weeds have not stopped instrumentalizing, deprecating and ridiculing the Catholic faith and any benevolent signs from Providence.
Thus we go from the ridiculous accusations of superstition by (Corrado) Augias [co-author of two anti-God, anti-Catholic bestsellers in italy] to the deprecable infamies on the Pope's presumed prior knowledge of Williamson's negationism, from the banal claim that the Pope has no listeners but 'four cats' to the silence about the hundreds of thousands of persons that the Pope has visited around the world.
But from the time of the Apostles, it has been so - "Our only strength is Christ". The Pope repeats this with extraordinary passion and continuity, not held back by the limitations of the persons and socieities he encounters, and tireless in repeating it on every occasion.
Every week, his brilliance amazes and fascinates, seizes and
'involves' us in the familiarity he has with God. We are all a bit 'dumb' - dumbed down by the schizophrenias of the world in which we are immersed, and we may find it difficult to retain the Pope's clear words, and so he lovingly reminds us, shakes us up, wakes us up.
With his Wednesday audience on St. Anselm of Aosta, Benedict started paving the way for his trip to the heart of Europe, with, among others, an appeal to believers to "Love the Church and do not abandon nor betray her!"
And it was not surprising that on the Friday before he left, he recalled the wounds and sufferings in children and therefore in the future of nations by the selfishness of broken families.
The petty polemics in the media that followed this was a sign not only that the Pope had spoken rightly from the point of view of the faith, but also on the scientific, psychological and statistical levels.
In his three days in the Czech Republic, Benedict laid bare the positive experiences of that nation and the other peoples of Europe who had been slaves of Soviet totalitarianism until 20 years go.
But at the same time, he unmasked once again, by citing authentic historical experience, the tyranny not just of atheism but of
the present relativism - which is itself a terrible atheism that is simply based on self, what one might call egotheism.
He has not failed to follow through on his announcement of the struggle against the 'dictatorship of relativism' made just before he was elected Pope, and that is why, at the same time, he calls on the people to fidelity, to love of Christ, to the daily effort of conforming oneself to a conduct consistent with a Christian life.
In the struggle against the Soviet regimes, Havel, and before him, Berdaev, had carried out a concerned and careful scrutiny of the totalitarian consumerism of the West.
Then as now, 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the point on which to reflect and act is this: In the ailing societies of the West, only reopening man's horizons to God will allow human development that is integral and respectful of persons.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 05/10/2009 17:57]