Are Church Authorities morally obliged to publicly beg for forgiveness for the sins committed by our ancestors in the Faith?
To ask for forgiveness for sins committed centuries ago is definitely open to misunderstandings and misinterpretations. But all Catholics of good faith should agree on two facts: first, that not only individual Catholics, but Catholics in positions of authority have, in the course of history, sinned gravely against Justice and Charity. To refuse to admit this sad fact is not a valid Catholic stance: Truth must be faced. But it must also be said emphatically that this in no way impugns the Holiness of the Church as Bride of Christ, for every sin committed by members of the Church is explicitly condemned by the Gospel that the Saviour gave us. The worst enemy of Christ will never find a single word in His teaching advocating violence, injustice and brutality. In other words, those who have sinned against their ‘enemies’ (atheists, heretics, etc.) have branded themselves as bad Catholics.
Secondly, can one obtain forgiveness by confessing to descendants of victims the sins committed by our ancestors against theirs? Can one objectively ask and obtain forgiveness for the sins of others, even if these others are related to us by Faith, or by blood? A sin is always an individual offense, There is only one case in which all of us are guilty of the same sin: the Crucifixion of our Saviour, the King of the Jews. In this unique case, nostra culpa (our fault) is also very specifically mea culpa (my fault). There is only one exception: His Holy mother, a young Jewish Virgin.
But is it not true that when grave evils have been committed by people close to us, it should affect us more deeply than if they were committed by people of other faiths, other countries, or different blood? The answer is ‘yes’. Granted that there should be a feeling of solidarity with people related to us – however, we should make a clear distinction between asking publicly for forgiveness for the faults committed by our ancestors and officially condemning their actions. These should be publicly anathematized, denounced, rejected, detested. By officially condemning horrors committed in the past, the Church exonerates Herself from the sins of her unworthy children, whose evil deeds are condemned by the Gospel. In other words, the Church – while condemning the sins of Her children – should publicly de solidarize Herself from sinners who betray her Holy Teaching.
We all know or have heard about fathers who declare that ‘he is no longer my son’, ‘I disown him because of what he has done’. But to disown him (that is to condemn his evil deeds) does not free a parent from the obligation to pray for him and to love him in Christ, in spite of his sinfulness.
This public condemnation would achieve what ‘asking for forgiveness’ intends to do – and at the same time it eschews possible misunderstandings, that is, the misinterpretation given by the news media that ‘the Church now finally acknowledges Her sins and therefore She cannot claim to be Holy and to have the fullness of Truth’!
It is the strict duty of the teaching Church to condemn heresies. This cannot be repeated enough in an age of ‘dictatorial relativism’ where every error is viewed as a legitimate ‘point of view’, an age in which Truth is viewed as ‘divisive’ and ‘opinions’ as a bridge of peace between people. The word anathema sit has rightly been used by St. Paul and in Councils, and I do not hesitate to write that these condemnations were ‘charitable anathemas’. They intended to warn God’s children of the poison of heresy. But has this justified condemnation always been coupled with charity for the person whose views have been rightly condemned? Charity and Truth essentially belong together. Some people can be ‘ferocious’ in their defence of truth. Fanatics are always Pharisaical, and unfortunately this danger is still very much alive. To proclaim Truth without love is to inject a subtle poison into its message. This is why Christ forbade a devil to proclaim that He was ‘the Christ, the Son of the Living God’ – the devil had spoken the Truth with hatred in his heart.
Should we expect Jews today to ask Christians for forgiveness for having persecuted them at the beginning of Christianity as related in the Acts of the Apostles? Are Anglicans to beg us for forgiveness for the murders of St. John Fisher, St. Thomas More, Edmund Campion and hundreds of others?
Moses transmitted to the Chosen people the Divine Message. He could not prevent them from adoring the golden calf. Let us not forget that one can only ask for forgiveness for the harm done to oneself – directly or indirectly, but one cannot repent for sins one has not committed and obtain absolution from men. God alone can forgive sins – hence the scandal that the words of Jesus triggered in the Jews when He declared: ‘Thy sins are forgiven thee’ – He was, in fact, declaring his Divinity.





























Secularists have always taken delight in suppressing as many visible traces of religious expression as possible. Proof is the recent order by the European Court of Human Rights to ban crucifixes from the walls of Italy’s classrooms. According to the court, the practice of hanging crucifixes on classrooms walls violates the right of parents to educate their children as they see fit. In addition, the practice contravenes children’s right to freedom of religion.
For example, why do we refer to levels of a building as ‘stories’? In Romanesque and Gothic archi-tecture (both of which developed in a Catholic milieu) it was not uncommon for allegorical reliefs and sculptures to adorn the facades of churches or municipal buildings. Each of them told a story. Since by extension several strata of allegorical represen-tations told several stories, it became custom to indicate the height of a building by how many stories it had.
How about the origins of sign language? It was the French priest and abbot Charles-Michel d’Epeè who made a most profound contribution in developing the natural sign language of the deaf into a systematic and conven-tional language to be used as a medium of instruction.
Since sin is difficult to overcome, the piñata danced on a rope in order to elude being hit, and since sin is difficult to recognize for what it is, the piñata hitter would be blind-folded. Evil, however, can be defeated by good, and so the hitter had several aids at his disposal. The first was Virtue, symbolized by his stick or bat. The hitter also had the three theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity. Faith helped him trust the directions shouted out by the crowd, Hope kept him persevering and directed his actions heavenward, while Charity materialized once he broke the piñata and the treats, representing divine gifts and blessings, cascaded out.
The healthy physique that came from practicing on these dumbbells proved so popular that even men who were not bell-ringers began to use them. Eventually the term was applied to exercise weights.
Se pretendi ricambio d’amore, allora il tuo amore non è vero, non è totale, perché l’amore dà senza nulla chiedere in cambio. Anch’io tante volte sono rimasta delusa da amicizie che credevo vere, ma che alla minima difficoltà o sacrificio hanno mostrato la loro faccia contraria a quella che credevo di aver visto – è bastato un graffio, una puntura, per strappare un legame che credevo leale, fedele, sincero. E allora che fare?
Nuccia assiste sua figlia da oltre 38 anni, non sa se vede, se sente, se prova emozioni, se capisce, ma è sicura che sente l’amore di mamma e papà – Luciana da oltre 23 anni segue Annamaria una bella giovane ora intubata, che ama la musica tanto che la mamma le ha fissato sul cuscino accanto al suo orecchio una radiolina che trasmette musica e preghiere. Annamaria sa solo sorridere, bisogna vederla quando riceve con fatica la comunione e la mamma le spinge l’ostia in bocca – ha un sorriso che non sembra di questa terra eppure non dice una parola: chissà nella sua testa cosa pensa, si legge la gioia nei suoi occhi, si vede che si sente amata! Quante realtà simili intorno a tutti noi. Molti hanno in casa nonni, mogli, mariti, figli che non hanno bisogno d’altro che di sentirsi amati. La loro vita dipende tutta dall’amore che gli si dona.
Quanta pena ho provato. E pensare che uscivano dalla chiesa! A che saranno servite le loro preghiere? Saranno state una lode a Dio o un insulto alla sua Provvidenza? Perché chi non ama, non loda Dio, anzi, l’offende.
On the inside of the front cover was a drawing of a man with a long beard and horn-like shafts coming from or penetrating into his forehead. The man was climbing down a mountain. He was carrying big tablets of stone, that began “I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt not have strange gods before Me”. I did have an inkling, even then, of what that meant: a childlike intimation of the Being beyond beings, of the God who made all and rules all, who Himself was strange because He was God, while all the ‘strange gods’ were not gods at all, as strange as they might be. On the inside of the back cover was a similar drawing of Jesus standing on a hillside, preaching to people below. This time the caption began “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven” . I’m still working on that one.
I remember reading “In the beginning God created heaven and earth, and the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved over the waters”. I didn’t even know what “waters” meant. I imagined darkness like a sea, and God brooding upon the sea. I found it strange that the “earth” was there but wasn’t there. But the words that fixed their wonder in my mind were those first three: “In the beginning.” Then came the words that flooded my mind, strange words that no storyteller I’ve known would conceive: “Then God said, “Let there be light”, and there was light”.
I didn’t stop there. I read on. I read about Adam and Eve and the serpent. I read about Cain and Abel. My eyes were dazed by the great lists of begats, of unpronounceable names, living prodigiously long lives, and occasionally inventing metalwork or settling in the land of Edom, named after a cheese. My child’s mind was fascinated. I read about Abram and Sara, and how hard it was for her to get a child, though I had no idea why she couldn’t get one from the same place where other people got them.
I read about concubines, and had no clue what they were, though they all seemed to be women, like secretaries. I read about Lot and Mrs. Lot, and their visitors, and the rain of fire from heaven. Moses in the wicker basket, the burning bush, the staff of Aaron, the gnats and locusts and boils (what are boils?), the frogs and the angel of death – then the ten commandments, the golden calf … finally I stalled at the law of purity in Leviticus. “What does the word is-sue mean?” I asked my mother. “Let me see” she said, taking the book and considering. She paused, and gave me an odd look. “I don’t know” She said.
After that I stopped reading in order, but bounced around the book – reading about Gideon, about Samson and the honeycomb in the carcass of the lion (the business with Delilah I found pretty dull and incomprehensible but a lion carcass and a honeycomb, that was another story entirely), about Tobias and the fish and I remember how sad I felt when the prophet Elisha was mocked by a gang of rotten boys and he cursed them and they were eaten up by some bears. 
La tecnologia è promossa all’onore degli altari, o almeno ci è arrivata molto vicino. Mai consultato un catalogo per cose di chiesa? Proviamo a sfogliarlo cominciando dal banale: i candelieri. C’era la cera, una volta; oggi ci sono i “candelieri elettrici ed elettronici, accensione a pulsante, spegnimento con timer regolabile da 7 minuti a 2 ore. Bassa tensione, basso consumo, prezzo speciale”. Del resto, la cera sporca e poi costa: Sant’Antonio capirà, se gli accendiamo davanti una lampadina anzichè il sorpassato lumino. In certi battesimi ormai è falsa
persino la veste candida: anziché un vero camicino, si usano ritagli di stoffa inamidata che non si possono nemmeno indossare. Siamo al simbolo del simbolo, insomma: chissà, presto ci daranno una fotografia invece dell’acquasanta …
anatomico (ma la confessione non si chiama anche penitenza?), pulsantiera dei comandi nonché, udite, udite, la grata con filtro igienico incorporato: per non farsi contaminare dai peccati, ooops! Forse dall’alito, dei fedeli. Con un abitacolo tanto confortevole, resta solo da chiedersi perché i confessori non si trovino mai e i penitenti non si confessino tre volte al giorno.
suggeriamo ai produttori liturgici il modello color carne da appendere direttamente all’orecchio, come si vede in TV. Esiste già, invece, il “processoniere”: in sostanza, il pronipote dei vecchi megafoni a tromba, posti sul tetto di un’automobile e usati per recitare le litanie durante le processioni – questo “amplificatore radioconnesso” invece si porta ritto come un candelabro e funziona a batteria. C’è da scommettere che, con un aggeggio del genere, non sarà più un problema farsi sentire nemmeno dai mitici “lontani”. Eh si, il terzo millennio ha davvero introdotto meraviglie nella Chiesa!
C’è anche, per esempio, l’ambone col cruscotto: un orologio-sveglia che indica discretamente se ci si dilunga nella predica. Ci sono le lampade votive a celle solari, c’è il rosario elettronico modello videogioco. Inoltre, è in vendita la cassetta per le offerte blindata, mentre in molti santuari funziona già il distributore automatico di immaginette plastificate (il cosiddetto santino a gettone).
Ma l’oggetto che m’intriga di più è il turibolo ad accensione elettronica: “l’incenso brucia al semplice tocco di un pulsante e niente più ‘odore’ d’incenso”, esalta la pubblicità sulla stampa ecclesiastica. Basta carboncini sporchevoli che fanno le bizze, non più fiammiferi dunque – è sufficiente cambiare la pila ogni tanto.
Although the above simple answer may more than please and satisfy the truly pious, it is most unlikely, however, that it will satisfy the Greek scholars. These are the people who whenever they are confronted by some Protestant biblical innovation, immediately rush off to consult their Greek versions of the Scriptures. For them, as indeed for all, therefore, there is a more systematic explanation of Our Lady being called full of grace, based on the Greek Bible.
Could anything be clearer? Could anyone who call themselves Catholic and claims the love of Our Lady, continue to disparage Her as only highly favoured whom God has honoured with the unique title full of grace (our Blessed Lord excepted)?
Full of grace means, in other words, that She had, from the moment of Her Immaculate Conception, a participation in God’s Own Divine Nature, sufficiently full to be the Mother of God. This, though not infinite, was greater than the rest of creation put together! The false Protestant claim that God called her only highly favoured, would reduce this exalted dignity of the Mother of God to that of other ordinary women: highly favoured, but not full of grace.
Thus the Solemn Definition of the Council of Trent (1545-63) confirmed infallibly that 
Queste realtà devono essere santificate, e non dobbiamo pensare che si è santi solo se si prendono i voti.
Nazaret è la vita d’un uomo, d’una famiglia in tutta l’ampiezza dell’at-tività umana – è la maniera di vivere per trent’anni, quindi per il più lungo tempo a disposizione per realtà umane destinate a passare nel crogiolo della fede, della speranza e della carità.
In the Traditional liturgy, Sacred Scripture is omnipresent in memorable lines, short enough to be remembered, pondered, and woven into one’s prayer life: the Introit, the Gradual and Alleluia, the Offertory, the Communion … the Word of God is prayed and prayed deeply in the Mass of All Times, as befits a rite bequeathed to us by a monastic culture of lectio divina. In the best of circumstances the Word of God is sung, with tones exquisitely matching the poetry of the Latin language.
In the new liturgy, by contrast, the Bible is nearly always merely read out, usually by people who could not declaim a text if their lives depended on it. There is no love affair – it is a sedate meeting where a certain amount of business has to be gone through, and I reckon not one in ten people could tell you, after Mass, what any of the readings were about.
Contrary to official propaganda, the Ordinary Form also offers the faithful less Scripture, qualitatively speaking, as the almost universal abandonment of the ‘Propers’ of the Mass and their replacement by hymns demonstrates.
For example, even though the Gospel of the Mass is reached in five to ten minutes in both the Extraordinary form (when recited) and the Ordinary one, with the former one feels as though one has been prepared for it: one’s soul has been tilled by Psalm 42, by the Confiteor, by the exchange Ostende nobis, by the ascent of the altar with its two beautiful prayers, and by the multi-faceted Collect that says so much in so few words. In the ordinary form, however, this portion is rapid and disjointed: sign of the Cross,
greeting, Kyrie (often without a Confiteor, which has, in any case, been severely crippled), and lightweight Collect. There is little sense of a natural motion, an organic whole – it’s more like going through an agenda … then, wham, the reading – always done by a layman, usually a woman, who is dressed so as to be obviously non-ministerial, as if to represent that the readings are not part of the rational worship that has its pinnacle in the offering to God of the Word made flesh through the ministry of the priesthood.
Domani la Chiesa festeggia la sua dignità di “madre dei santi, immagine della città superna” (A. Manzoni), e manifesta la sua bellezza di sposa immacolata di Cristo, sorgente e modello di ogni santità. Non le mancano certo figli riottosi e addirittura ribelli, ma è nei santi che essa riconosce i suoi tratti caratteristici, e proprio in loro assapora la sua gioia più profonda. L’autore del libro dell’Apocalisse li descrive come “una moltitudine immensa, che nessuno poteva contare, di ogni nazione, razza, popolo e lingua” (Ap 7,9). Questo popolo comprende i santi dell’Antico Testamento, a partire dal giusto Abele e dal fedele Patriarca Abramo, quelli del Nuovo Testamento, i numerosi martiri dell’inizio del cristianesimo e i beati e i santi dei secoli successivi, sino ai testimoni di Cristo di questa nostra epoca. Li accomuna tutti la volontà di incarnare nella loro esistenza il Vangelo, sotto l’impulso dell’eterno animatore del Popolo di Dio che è lo Spirito Santo.
Festeggiamo quindi tutti i santi domani … e il 2 novembre ricordiamo i nostri defunti. Questo giorno è anche un’occasione per pensare religiosamente, cioè con fede e speranza, alla propria morte e spezzare la congiura del silenzio riguardo a essa.
Every now and then I browse through a large religious book shop which carries both Catholic and Protestant titles together with a number of oriental contributions. In a recent visit to the shop I made a point of noticing content from the particular vantage point of disagre-ement among authors. Conflict abounds. Secularist tendencies oppose funda-mentalist, and vice versa. Liberation theologians reject the work of non liberationists, and again vice versa. Feminists are at odds with non feminists. Christology from above differs from Christology from below as does a ‘creation-centred spirituality’ from Trinitarian centred.
Scripture studies are beset with the mutually contra-dictory positions of extreme critics on the left to evangelical critics in the middle and fundamentalist writers on the right. Papalist forces contend with anti-papalist. There are hundreds of shades of Protestant thought, many of them incompatible with one another as well as with Catholic theology. In the area of concrete gospel living there is activism as opposed to mysticism and individualistic tendencies at odds with communitarian.
Christopher Derrick is plain: “There has been a widespread loss of faith among the Catholic scholars; many of those concerned are unwilling to face the fact of their loss and therefore desire most urgently (and at any cost in intellectual absurdity) that Roman Catholicism should somehow trans-mogrify itself into something in which they still do believe – into a vague pan-Anglican Christianity, perhaps, or some kind of social welfare humanism, garnished with a topping of Catholic terminology”.








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