FRAGMENTS (1)

– Vittorio Messori

The saintly curate of Ars – whom Pius XI proclaimed patron of the all parish priests – said with a phrase that many considered paradoxical, perhaps excessive, as happens to saints who, to us mediocre, often seem exaggerated: “Leave a country without a parish priest and after one year they will worship beasts.” Note that, in his time, there was still no trace of one of the ideologies that mark our time: that animalism that not only requires the sacred respect for every creature of God, but that considers animals equal if not superior to human beings.

Worthy not only to be looked after as children but also worthy of imitation, for their “virtues” that would be superior to ours. So here in Auvelais, in the banlieu of Brussels, one of the few Belgian churches has survived, not only open yet but even (admirable dictu audituque!) with a permanent parish priest. Which is faced with an ever-decreasing frequency of the faithful, even at the festive Masses, but must also deal with the economic resources, which tend to zero. Belgium followed the French example of the Masonic Third Republic – a strict separation of the State from the Church – so there is not an eight per thousand [the Italian deduction from taxes that can be donated to the Church] nor a salary, even if small, for the clergy. The money for the sustenance of the priests and the money for the costs, not indifferent, for the preservation of a great ancient and artistic building like a church should come from the faithful. But if these are few and not very wealthy (almost all are now retired elderly and some South American and Filipino immigrants), it would be necessary to resort to the diocese, its bishop, its curia. But here too, the need is growing, even the hierarchy survives with difficulty, in great episcopies now semi-deserted but with expensive maintenance. Here then the parish priest of Auvelais had an idea: even funerals for humans are continuously decreasing, while cremation is advancing. So why not find some resources in the funeral offered for dogs and cats? It is said uneasily, although not judging anyone: it is a fact that a few months ago, in the Belgian parish church that includes statues of saints and paintings of evangelical scenes, were celebrated the funeral of this Miss Chiwa, a Chihuahua dog eleven years old and whose owner did not resign herself to death. It seems that, with the funeral in church, celebrated by a priest, she hoped to have the guarantee of meeting in the afterlife her beloved companion. It was an event well liked, the rumor spread, so reservations came from all over the country. No, Saint John Maria Vianney, he did not exaggerate. His was not a paradox. Unfortunately, the extraordinary curate from Ars had confirmed himself as a prophet and had once again been right.

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I read, in a historian that I usually appreciate and in whose perspective I often find myself: “The prejudice that every negative event in history must necessarily have a positive side, is not different from the prejudice according to which ugly women must necessarily be at least intelligent. But – as is well known to everyone’s experience – there is no lack of ugly women who are also stupid.”

Among my main interests, as perhaps those who read me, there is the meditation on history and the enigma that it represents. The main belief that I have acquired is that human events (guided by the Creator according to a design that very often escapes us) is never in black or white, but in white and at the same time in black. According to the et-et logic that seems to guide everything in the Catholic faith, there are never only good on one side and only bad on the other, but in each of us the saint and the killer, at least potentially, coexist. So, even in every clash – from politics, in parliament, to the military, on the battlefield – the opponents, the “bad guys” par excellence according to who is engaged by the other side, have at least some reason. So, at least for once, I do not agree with the historian that I quoted and that was ironic about who think that the negative can always be flanked by at least some positive side. To stay with a macroscopic example – that of war, which has always accompanied and will always accompany human history – no one is so cynical as not to recognize and not to denounce the horrors. But, once, I was “amused” – completely inappropriate term for such a theme – to write of the formidable advancement that wars in general and modern ones in particular have given to scientific research and its industrial application. In the extraordinary effort to find the means to better kill the enemy, we have come to results that, when peace arrived, helped us to live better. An example in a thousand: every time we get on an airplane or a ship, our security is entrusted to those radars due to spasmodic military research shortly before and during the Second World War. Thus, the missiles, created to target the enemy, have proved necessary not only to get to the moon (this was essentially a propaganda undertaking to show American superiority over the USSR) but, above all, to put those hundreds of satellites in orbit that carry out many tasks that make life easier. Again for another example: the horrible atomic bomb of 1945 on two Japanese cities, is due to the frantic search for a team of physicists financed (regardless of expenses) by the American government who feared landing in Japan. The “civil” fallout was precious: the atomic energy aroused and tamed to win a war has been, and increasingly will be, at the center of infinite applications. And what can we say – still an example among innumerable ones – of the internet that comes directly from military needs: to ensure, that is, an interaction between the Command in the event of war that interrupts any other possibility of communicating? But, to be in the history that most concerns us, that of the Church. Here, too, I cite only a few examples of “negative events”: pagan persecution, medieval heresies, catharism, Renaissance popes to Alexander VI, the Protestant revolt, the French revolution, the homicidal atheism of communism in power, the nineteenth-century secularism …. It could continue. But one could also, for each of these episodes, show how – at least at a distance – the negative has also produced positive consequences. And of great value. In short, here too et-et. The Creator, by his unfathomable decree, does not seem to love the aut-aut, he always loves to remix. Combining, as we said, white and black.