His Holiness,
writing to You seems to me somewhat offensive and inappropriate, especially for the contents of the letter itself, for the person of the sender and the one who will receive it.
I will try to briefly tell you of my religious path.
As a child I was a fervent believer, especially in my imagination driven by those who, at the time, indoctrinated me to catechism as I have previously written in other notes.
I’ve been an altar boy, initially due to my faith and belief then cause my assistance to the priest was somehow paid. In those years, until the first year of high school, if I remember correctly, there was in my village, between two priests somehow rivals (two Don Camillo belonging to two different currents of the same party), a contention about my person to decide whether it was appropriate to send me to study in a seminary or not. For one I was too young, the other was noticing in me a strong conviction of the various Christian ideals, and again for the first I was suddenly mature and he would have taken care of the institute, the most appropriate, to direct me to, for the other one then my attitudes showed only the capriciousness of a boy. I visited several seminaries, never be finally written, I have had periods of meditation and prayer with the Benedictine monks. When I visit different cities I love visiting different cities, I love to go into the churches and find out what they contain, and above all, for a certain respect for those who believe or those created the wonders which you can find there, it still happens that I still signs with holy water.
At the moment I do not know if I believe or not. I’ve lost almost all arrogance as a person to be arrogant as a believer. I’m proud of what I write and almost vainly tend to speak of my “gift”, but beyond that there is no arrogance in me and I can say this arrogantly. In matters of faith, I do not know if I believe it or not, so I would tend not to call myself agnostic because, despite having doubts about the person of God, the major of them concern me in the act of believing.
I avoid getting lost in discussions about this point and very little related to the topics that I would like to be treated.
I have profound respect for You, for Your actions and Your words, when they are about this world and not the Kingdom of Heaven. There are some of Your ideas I do not agree with such as those on drugs and the equivalence of all drugs. Not everyone can know everything, so I think that both I, as You, we could be in some way, in error either on this or that theme.
You have worked in the early months of Your pontificate so convincingly simple and I imagine many, even among non-believers have looked to His Holiness also with interest and hope and maybe reflex were subsequently also interested in God or social experiences or organized religious event in the name of the Most High.
I wanted to write to You weeks ago, on the occasion of the canonization of Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II, but due to shyness, lack of time and because I thought my speech is probably not worthy of being presented to the reading of the Holy Father, I gave up. In recent days, however, you have acted in a way surprising to me again.
If Your predecessors, about the problem of mafia “limited” Their acts and words to a request of repentance, you went over, you have excommunicated the mafia. I found it in a way ironic that His Holiness communicated to someone he or she got an ex-communication. “Mafioso, communicate to you that you are ex-communicated,” it sounded to me like a funny play on words, although, clearly, including the weight and importance of words and gesture for You, for people with strong faith and maybe for some of the mafiosi themselves, I’m conscious of the fact that Your gesture has represented something very significant. I also asked: “But if the mafioso would repent, how can the Pope communicate he is not ex-communicated anymore?”
Leaving, however, this first linguistic reflection, I must confess my surprise at your launching your anathema. I realize that there is a profound difference between gay people and mafia, but if God do not condemn “who am I to judge”? ; the point, however, I would like to present to your attention, as a human being who looks at another human being, is that I saw in You as a symbol of extreme openness to the world: gay ,people professing other religions, lay people, atheists, children of Satan, everyone somehow.
For this reason (and I come to the point), I decided to write in the days after the canonization of the two popes; Four Popes together had never been seen even in the times of Avignon and certainly its impact in that case was powerful, but I reflected, considering the image that I had initially made to you, though it didn’t happen, at least not yet, to broaden even more the catchment area of the Catholic Church, leading, if not God to many people, at least many people to God, so from a marketing point of view, as from the more purely evangelical and doctrinal .
Take the example of two Popes you entered in the endless list of Saints that men have approached God
On Roncalli, honesty, I cannot see many faults. A certain ambiguity during fascism with regard to his person or practical ideas and political propaganda on the choices of the Party of Don Sturzo or the anti-communist propaganda in Italy. Not to mention the excommunication of Fidel Castro. already an atheist, probably an executioner of many of the enemies of the revolution, but at the same time a symbol of dignity and freedom for many Cubans, at least in the early years, was excommunicated, while no such act I believe was ever made against Kennedy, or Nixon or any other American President who made people starve, or in some other ways, had been responsible for the deaths of entire populations in Latin America, or South East Asia or other regions of the world. No excommunication for the popes who in past centuries, post facto, they were stained for the death of witches, heretics, infidels. I guess we cannot give an excommunication after the last rites, but I think it is a point on His Holiness with His counselors can think spending a few minutes of prayer and meditation.
I express my opinions, I would never dare to give advice to the Holy Father.
Turning to Wojtyla I cannot admit that even in His case He expressed a deep humanity and closeness to the lasts of this planet. Yet, by His biography also emerge some contradictory facts. On the one hand he set Poland free from the “terrible bondage of communism” and then He went to pay tribute with His person to a butcher such as Pinochet. On the one hand condemns the mafia, but I do not think He has ever checked if there were any resources within the IOR coming from Cosa Nostra. Even in His case, on the one hand He condemned the leaders of the USSR and then Russia, but He never spent a word against Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr. (sooner or later I guess Bush will also appear the Bush Holy Spirit, but I’m not are well versed in such matters to express myself firmly on this point).
As You said on your flight back, I guess from Brazil “Who’s the Pope to judge this or that person?”
Still some people are made Saints and some other are condemned forever.
I will try to give some examples before getting to my point.
The Cathars. What did, based on my knowledge of the topic, these populations in the south of France want? Basically to live off the labor of their hands and the sweat of their brow, making free love and probably make each man a priest himself, in full respect of each other and without interfering with other forms of social organization then in force. The Cathars simply grew and multiplied, within what they considered, rightly or wrongly, the Love of Christ.
I think You know better than I do what the Church did in that period; they sent the Dogs of God, the friars of San Domenico, to massacre them, and it is said, that to the question of how to distinguish heretics and sinners from people simply curious or not at all interested in such a heresy, important figures of the Church then have responded: “you kill them all, God will choose His ones. ”
I urge you to keep in mind this phrase, because the logic of this letter will present continual references between the various points and see how this response will be very useful as to somehow justify what is my intention to express, in my humble way of seeing.
Now let’s take the example of another very important figure, connected and then “destroyed” by the Church. I’m talking about Giordano Bruno. I think he’s considered one of the greatest thinkers of modernity, an innovator, a great connoisseur of various sciences and philosophies, “magician” because wise, concerned disseminator of ideas, which later have been proved to be true, and that in their way made the Glory of God higher (heliocentrism, the multiplicity of worlds, the presence of an infinite universe in continuous expansion, etc..). These ideas were all much more dangerous than it may be today the discovery of particles traveling faster than light, or the God particle, probably because, over a period of more widespread and profound ignorance, every new idea necessarily had a greater effect than may happen today any new one, even if some scientist found a way to become immortal, nowadays the news would soon be forgotten or hidden, due to the elimination of Italy at the World Cup.
I invite you again to keep everything in mind, everything will come back in this letter.
What, then, was the greatest fault of Giordano Bruno? To tell everyone in a language comprehensible to everyone for more: “God is in you, you are God.” Spinoza got similar ideas and it was a great luck for the Dutch at that time to be a Jew. And the way in which monk from Nola was talking about these ideas meant basically what it means for the Church and that I think has always meant for Christ. God is in all things. “Have faith and live as I would do”; I guess that’s what Christ have said throughout His entire life. My question is: “If you just cannot sanctify this little monk as well, maybe a little ‘impetuous, but still quite a good person, perhaps he could be at least forgiven?”
Your Holiness, if I were you or who have preceded or will follow You on the papal throne, I would be very cautious with the excommunications. It takes the same time, I imagine to do it for the mafia boys as for priests who are guilty of pedophilia to be excommunicated (and for them, the excommunication is, I believe, considering their faith, something which would make more sense)
I guess it takes some time to accomplish certain steps. It took 400 years to rehabilitate Galileo, a couple of centuries to say that perhaps Darwin was not completely wrong, eighty years to say that the Church was perhaps a bit ‘responsible for the extermination of the Jews, but I sincerely trust in Your Person then, I suppose, everything will be resolved sooner or later, in the best way. Clearly when it relates to “your people” it’s easier and faster. Sanctifying San Francisco after having considered him a heretic takes less than a minute, the same with the Popes as mentioned above, but by the time I think it is also possible to arrive at what I’m suggesting.
Your openness to the world is my hope.
You cannot rehabilitate those convicted of heresy? Okay, God will choose those who will judge and who will have to be condemned.
You, however, if I remember correctly, also expressed a deep opening to the laity and the atheists, indicating the demonstration of the faith of believers, every day, in small or large stocks, the chance to show, through the individual example, and showing this w, to non-believers, the Greatness of God ? Ins’t that, in the end, the Good? The greatness of God?
Why, then, does not prove favorable to the beatification of secular saints and martyrs? There must be something somewhere in the Gospel where Jesus says (and I believe this idea is also used by St. Paul when he says, “Now there are these three things: faith, hope and charity, but the greatest of these is charity”) not because that somehow professes and screams from the rooftops their faith will have eternal life, but because their acting is in accordance with the Word of Jesus. “What we will do the last of our brothers we will do it to Him, not for him.” The examples, if I may put forward candidates to your attention are many: Falcone, Borsellino, (both judges killed by Mafia) the court Ambrosoli (judge killed cause he was investigating on connection between Italian terrorism and government), Allende, Mattei( manager of the Italian national oil company killed cause he was inteferfering with American monopoly) , Solzhenitsyn, etc..
This would benefit not just the attention of the laity to the Church, that You have already profoundly stimulated with Your action. “The Pope gave the beatification to secular people? What is it about this man? Which force guides Him? Maybe I can interrogate myself a moment about my role in a larger plan wanted by someone more important than me. “I think these would be the questions that non-believers would begin to wonder about.
My proposal would extend to those people who lived in this world and tried to make it a better place and that belonged to other faiths: Malcolm X, Gandhi, etc.. Should not this seem like getting new testimonial of Christianity, but a tribute to faiths other than “our”, remembering the good things these people have done for the happiness and the good of all humanity, without ever acting for the exclusive benefit of this or that religion.
I avoid talking about, if not accidentally, the benefits in terms of hegemony that such an opening could generate, cause surely these are neither mine nor in Yours most pure and genuine interest. We do this only to the Greater Glory of God and Peace on Earth.
One last idea, if it’s possible to call ideas those I have. Sanctify all, but really everyone!
Alive, dead, seculars, believers, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, all. The world has to offer a lot of people who deserves to be called Saint, and unlikely as it may seem, there are many people like that. Alex Zanotelli (priest working in Afrika), Gino Strada (doctor working in war areas), me, Wilde, Subcomandante Marcos, Che Guevara, Frida Kahlo, Picasso, Rocco Siffredi, Serena Grandi (extremely beautiful Italian actress), Naomi Campbell, Maradona, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Toto (Italian actor), Van Gogh, Descartes, Marx, Freud, all Jews in the concentration camps and billions and billions of other men and other women who in one way or another, with associations, individually, in silence or in chaos, do nothing in their life except offering themselves to the others.
“Then God will choose His”
The thank for taking the time to read my letter.
I just hope not to have them taken away too much precious time and did not hit his person in any way.
Vittorio Musca.
P.S. Mujica exclude from the list of “all”, but only for a still recent and burning resentment connected to sports events.
Tuttattorto 