Aurelio Porfiri
There is true hypocrisy and false hypocrisy in matters of faith. If we say that it is right to do something, even if we are not up to the same principles that we take as a model of behavior, it is not really hypocrisy. It is weakness, it is fragility, it is being sinners. If we are aware of the reality of original sin we are aware of how prone we are to make mistakes, this cannot surprise us. But of course there are always people who want to find something bad when it comes to Catholics, and so are ready to point out everything, from minor mistakes to big ones. That is also good from one point of view, because it makes us alert as to how we should behave, but it is disagreeable on the other because it gives a bad idea about the values of Catholicism.
Yet this story of Catholics who preach well and behave badly is always used as an example to find something to talk about. The historian Giordano Bruno Guerri, in his Gli Italiani sotto la Chiesa, for example, says: โThe perfect example of duplicity was the formally pious attitude of many gentlemen, who between one crime and another went to Mass every day, built churches, they did pilgrimages and good works.โ Now, Giordano Bruno Guerri refers to what we would call the late Middle Ages, but the concept has often been expressed also in the contemporary era. Of course it would be good to live up to what faith asks of us, but even if we make a mistake, this does not exempt us from pointing out to others what is right. If those gentlemen carried out criminal acts and also made pilgrimages, good works and went to Mass every day, there is no contradiction, perhaps they atoned with these works for the evil they found themselves doing. Then, it is always difficult to judge with our mentality, acts performed in a completely different context. It would have been true hypocrisy if the gentlemen in question had brought themselves as a model of Christian virtue, in that case we would have to bring up the accusation of hypocrisy. We are often not what we want to be, yet we strive to do our best to adapt to the moral demands we refer to. If we fall, just realize it and always be ready to get up.
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