It's not everyday that one witnesses the birth of a Catholic newspaper, albeit online, that has the specific objectives of BQ. But if only because of these objectives, and the eminence and proven Catholic bona fides of its editors and contributors - not the least that they are all Ratzingerians - it is quite an event. Vittorio Messori in his introductory editorial in the first issue launched on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, explains more broadly what it is about than the brief news item I posted yesterday on the preceding page of this thread... Perhaps its only analog in the conventional press is the Italian bishops' Avvenire.
A few reasons to
follow the 'Compass'
Editorial
by Vittorio Messori
Translated from
12-08-10
Today information gets updated by the minute and most of it is played out on the worldwide web. The conventional press, for which I continue to have affection and which has accompanied me all my life, is in evident decline.
That is why it is important to pay attention to this initiative which sets sail today;
La Bussola Quotidiano - an online newspaper, put out by a group of newsmen who wish to provide a Catholic outlook on daily news, and which has the collaboration of so many important bylines in Italian journalism and Catholic culture.
As someone involved in this adventure, I am happy to say some words here. I must say however that the rather high-sounding title of editorial director that my colleagues (and friends) have wanted to attribute to me, is - in all newspapers as in this one - an honorific title, without concrete tasks or direct responsibilities.
Not by chance, in this group of friends, the title is not in any official document and does not get any emmoluments. I wanted it that way to show how much this initiative is close to my heart, and at the same time, to give a free field to my excellent colleagues who must work here daily: managing editor Andrea Tornielli, chief editor Riccardo Cascioli, and desk editors Marco Respinti and Antonio Giuliano.
To whom I must add the distinguished ranks of collaborators that the reader may already know from
Il Timone, and to whom many others have been added. To all of them go my best wishes, my esteem and my appreciation for their commitment to something that will be both satisfying and demanding.
With the work that I have put together in the four volumes of my
Vivaio, I had sought to fill up why I considered and continue to consider a tragic void: the lack of a Catholic perspective on the daily news and on history, the lack of a
Katholische Weltanschauung, a Catholic world view.
Today, Catholic thought often seems reduced to a certain moralism or a bland denunciation of the inhumanity in today's society, but always within the ideological scheme that has hegemony in the world, and unfortunately, hegemony even in Catholicism.
I am old enough, alas, to have lived the phase of general pseudo-Marxist inebriation (in which even Catholics took part) and to know quite well the current phase, that of politically correct liberalism.
We Catholics who seek to react to the various 'isms' in succession, are aware that faith is not an accessory, it is not optional, it is not something detached from life nor from thought.
Therefore, to seek to give a faith-based reading of history as well as of current events, to seek to offer a judgment that comes from the perspective of faith, to rediscover an evangelical view of events, is a contribution that has to do directly with our task as communicators.
We do not want to add another ideology - even if Catholic - to other existing ideologies. We do not want to transform the faith into an intellectual scheme to apply to reality, because that would mean simply killing off Christianity.
Christianity is a life, a Person, an encounter. It is an encounter with the Person who changes our life. Therefore, to seek to give a key for a Catholic reading of events does not mean judging society and the world in which we live from an ideological scheme, but from the outlook generated by our encounter with Christ.
What is often lacking in the Catholicism of our day is the most important of the Christian virtues: prudence. We must learn to judge reality starting from a sincere adn healthy realism, which is the firstborn of prudence.
This means not looking at the world through the pink lenses of do-goodism, nor thinking that one can change reality with a utopia conceived at a desk by those who think that one can build a perfect world by acting only on structures and never on their own selves.
The Christian knows that mankind - and our humanity - is wounded by original sin, and utopias do not not take into account the reality of sin.
This awareness, and this realism, may not always lead to optimism, nor do they lead to pessimism either: We should do what we can, to act in history starting from changing ourselves, ever aware that God is the Lord of history, it is he who makes the calls, and that triumph over evil, at the end of times, will be his.
The task of the
Bussola, this small-great initiative that is setting sail, is to propose such an outlook on the daily news, perhaps seeking to oppose in real time the birth or relaunching of black legends about our faith or the Church. But with a logic that cannot be reduced to mere reaction or counterpoint.
Indeed, we also seek to propose those news items - and there are many - which escape the nets of information circuits and end up getting lost. We wish to be able to show that reality is not merely what is catastrophic, that Christians are not among those who lament how things are to be nothing more than
laudatores temporti acti, nostalgians of the past.
They are men and women who live their time, firmly convinced that there exists a providential plan in everything that happens, even if sometimes it is difficult to distinguish its traits: God writes straight on cooked lines and "everything is for the good to those who love God".
We hope to have you on board with us on this journey. May Christ, in whose Word and Presence we believe, watch over us that we may know how to discern and to communicate that Truth without which there is no freedom. In fact, without which there would be no possibility of a truly human life.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 09/12/2010 10:43]