From today inaugurated "near and far: an observatory on the events that happen in other dioceses, particularly those that somehow have a connection with Piacenza-Bobbio, or for people or for the territories. We start with the proposal to pay the ICI to the Church. It comes from Modena, in a letter to Archbishop Antonio Lanfranchi Piacenza.
Dear Bishop Antonio,
are a group of Christians in the Church of Modena and am appealing to you because it is our shepherd. We know your role and his ministry is just to listen, to comfort, to keep the flock together, that Christian and help lead the people to live in faith, hope and charity. We want to express some of our major concerns, a simple but quite frankly.
We are worried because we see our country slipping deeper into a general crisis, and despair experienced by many with no way out, a crisis that threatens to undermine the unity of the nation, in its institutional aspects, political and social issues. And the despair is not a Christian virtue.
We are shocked because we see the politicians who rule this country sinking deeper more in the moral degradation, into attitude of impunity, in the pursuit of personal gain and their friends in the looting of public affairs and in the systematic destruction of the foundations of civil and democratic.
We are angry because this same political class, the government has misled and continues to deceive the poor with false promises, with liberal use of the media and perverse, with the ostentatious display of patterns of behavior radically contrary to the common sense of our moral people. Gradually they managed to corrupt the hearts and minds of the simplest. Woe to those who scandalize these little ...!
But the biggest concern, as believers, about our church and especially our bishops. Here are the thoughts that make us sick and we show an open heart.
know that the head of the CEI and those of the Vatican curia decided long ago to support the right-wing majority in the government today. It is generally more widespread, even among Catholic believers and practitioners, that this alliance is the result of arrangements of power, seeking privileges for the Church and legitimacy for the government. It is worth compromising the credibility of the Gospel image of the Church for a mess of pottage?
In the name of this agreement are in fact substantial political support, some of the mold typically xenophobic quite contrary not only to the Gospel but also to the social doctrine of the Church. To report this trend, many voices are raised in the Catholic world, always ignored or censored or minimized. Maybe they do not belong to the so-called "non-negotiable principles"?
Even now, when the moral abyss and the lifestyle of the unspeakable prime minister himself is under the eyes of the world, even now the leaders of the CEI are the strength and dignity to utter clear words, to get out of regrets, cover all generic and therefore no one, finally using the language of the Gospel of Yes, yes, no no.
In so many other ways he was treated the last Prodi government, weak but honest and capable of much higher moral profile, which was not only not supported but it was even opposed, perhaps because most free, certainly more secular and less willing to secret agreements. We want to strongly assert this fact: many of us, believing, practicing Catholics, have argued that experience political, sharing hardships and hopes, and also disappointments. Of course we were very hurt stigma then as it hurts the complicity of now.
should we realize that the very basis of the Church is growing discomfort, the dissent, the suffering, the slow and silent surrender. The bitter feeling of many, right or wrong, is that pastors have betrayed their flock, have preferred the soft palaces of Herod the grotto of Bethlehem, have shamefully abandoned the prophecy. And this trust in God, technically, is an atheist behavior.
submitted a small proposal, which may seem provocative, of which she could convey the same: the CEI and the Vatican publicly state to waive the payment of ICI on the properties of the Church are sources of income, who have the courage to say no to this outrageous proposal. Buy a little 'esteem and credibility, because, among many, is a scandal that cries out for vengeance.
Dear Bishop Anthony, pray together because the Spirit help us all to a real conversion, to be able to retrace our steps, to rediscover the size of a poor and disinterested service to spread joy and beauty and hope, freedom and truth.
The basic Christian communities of the Village Craftsman
Modena, February 2011
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