I am taking a closer look at Italian MP Luca Volonte (born 1966 and first elected to the Italian Parliament in 1996), a C&L member, whose article on Benedict XVI as our 'only wall against relativism' I translated and posted on the preceding page of this thread last week.
From that article, I found a formulation that is quite original and worth remembering: "Relativism...is itself a terrible atheism that is simply based on self, what one might call egotheism".
Now, Volonte has written a commentary that he furnished Lella who promptly posted it on her blog
It may yet appear in one of the Italian dailies, but in any case, he has proven more 'alert' than the usual Vatican commentators in picking up the most memorable statement from the Holy Father's catechesis yesterday on St. Giovanni Leonardi:
Benedict XVI says:
'Reform must be within the Church,
not against the Church'
by LUCA VOLONTE
Member, Chamber of Deputies
Italian Parliament
Oct. 8, 2009
"Not against but within the Church' there is need for reform.
The crescendo of words from Pope Benedict XVI on the Catholic church, which he started with the Via Crucis meditation of 2005 and Culminated in his letter to the bishops of the world in March found an important confirmation yesterday, even as he spoke of a reform to make the Church 'more beautiful and more holy'.
Though we cannot know what official acts may be coming, we do know that the helmsman at the tiller is vigilant and impassioned.
Yesterday at the Wednesday audience, recalling the virtues of St. Giovanni Leonardi - who lived on the cusp of the 16th and 17th centuries - Pope Benedict XVI not only underscored the extraordinary actuality today but also the similarity in the cultural environment then and today: "an undue scission of faith and reason, the illusion of man's total autonomy to choose to live as if God did not exist", which today we call relativism.
Rightly, the Pope reaffirms a truth - too often turned upside down by Catholics professing 'adult faith' - that Christ is encountered in his Church, 'holy but fragile... sometimes obscured...where good wheat and weeds grow together".
The Pope calls on the faithful to have the same attitude as St. Giovanni Leonardi - "he was not scandalized by the weaknesses (in the Church), but to oppose the weeds, he chose to be the good grain, loving Christ in his Church and working with alacrity to purify her".
The reform that the Pope speaks of, a call on each of us, must go through "the reform of man's habits, starting with those who command" - a reform that should be carried out with the prudence and determination of a good doctor, namely, "first, a careful diagnosis of the ailments that beset the Church and then, to prescribe for each ill its most appropriate remedy".
Everyone, Benedict XVI says, as he often does, should aspire to holiness, to the high standard of Christian living, because "only those who are ready to make radical choices inspired by the Gospel" will be able to renew the Church.
This is another firm step, a confirmation of the Pope's passionate determination to move from naming these ills to action.
Benedict XVI, after having spoken on various occasions about this to different groups of bishops and clergy, now pushes the envelop farther: the good physician takes on St. Paul's words - to try and correct one on one first, then to do so before a friend, and finally, take the wrong to the entire community.
All Catholics must be grateful for the impassioned exhortations of the Pope, his obvious desire to correct and look after his sheep, to want them to be holy.
The Successor of Peter, despite the whispering campaigns and misunderstandings within the Church and out side it, has the tiller firmly in hand, and will continue to act with his own good example and with exemplary decisions.
And not because he is reacting to critics from the outside, but because he wants to reform the Church from within.
Benedict the Compassionate is at the helm, and he will not go back on the pace he has set.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 09/10/2009 04:27]