I had an email from an Italian friend about Cardinal Martini, in response to my post on the late Cardinal: huge crowds did attend his "lying in state" and funeral and Corriera della Sera has wept salt tears over him.
My friend pointed out a few things non-Italians forget:
- Against the background of two non-Italian Pope, and in the face an absence of honourable Italian secular leaders, "the patrician" -an important word for many Italians- Martini stood out. He had a natural charisma. My friend pointed out than in the present economic times, when Italy has little role on the world and it seems likely that Italians will not in the future have a firm grip on the Papacy or even necessarily on the Curia, Martini was in a sense the Italian Pope. Italians tended to see Martini as holder of the legacy of John XXIII and Paul VI ( and probably John Paul I) and a spirit of "modernity"
- Milan is a huge Italian diocese, the Milanese are Ambrosian, not Roman Catholics. They have their own Rite, their own calendar, and to some extent their own law. They reflect very much a Northern Italian attitude to the south, for them Rome is "the South", almost Neapolitan, if nor Sicilian! The Milanese, especially the Church, define themselves in contradistinction to the rest of Italian, most especially "Rome", which is seen the source of every sort of political and cultural corruption and vice.
- He also represented many of the post-war Italian Socialistic and Democratic values that have been obscured under leaders such as Berlusconi. He was a strong leader too, absent in the political arena and absent in the Church; the Bertone / Sodano squabble which seems to be at the root of Vatileaks has done great damage to the image of leading Italian clergy, it shows them as week. "Italians" my friend pointed out, "like to think of themselves on the left, even if in practice they can no longer afford it".
- Martini was a popularist!
5 comments:
So in summary, the good people of Milan are readers of the Tablet, whilst the good people of Rome read the Catholic Herald
Nice one PVD.
However, the prophesies of Malachi seemed to predict Martini as Pope as his latin phrase for the latest pope in his list was
'de gloria olivae'
An olive has no glory without a martini.
The Hierarchy of Holy Mother Church keeps monkeying around with their foolishness and drama while souls go to Hell.
Recently in Mexico City, the Devil took a stroll to have a look see at his turf; Mexicans became overcome with fear and anxiety and locked themselves in their homes.
Police were mobilized, and Scientists were called in.
The regular humanist stupidity we can expect from Government.
Plain and simple, the Novus Ordo does not work.
The Catholics there have no ammunition; no proper catechism, no real Mass, no real Sacramentals or Priests with which to repulse Satan and his demons.
Apparently, no one knew how to recite the greatest tool against Satan: the Holy Rosary.
Nice work, you bunch of Novus Ordo Modernists.
I am clearing up some things in America, then headed home to help the Tepeyac Hill Sacristan in teaching the Rosary and handing out Sacramentals like real Holy Water and Rosary beads.
We need to be incited to Holy Anger like little David that said
"Who dares to blaspheme the Lord?"
I hope nothing like this hits you in England.
It is ugly.
"...before setting to work for God and to fight against the devil, first calculate your forces; and if you consider yourself well enough equipped to begin, you are a fool, because the tower to be built costs an outrageous price, and the enemy coming out to meet you is an angel, before whom you are of no account.
Get to know yourself so well that you cannot contemplate yourself without flinching.
Then there will be room for hope.
In the sure knowledge that you are obliged to do the impossible in Him who strengthens you, then you are ready for a task which can be performed only through the Cross."
*
PVD
I understand Fr Ray’s Italian friend to be saying something quite different. He seems to imply that the Cardinal was the senior Italian so represented Italian influence in the Church. George Orwell described “My country, right or left” as the object of his loyalty: “Patriotism has nothing to do with conservatism. It is devotion to something that is changing but is felt to be mystically the same, like the devotion of the ex-White Bolshevik to Russia.”
For Northern Italians this applied more particularly as they have tended to emphasise their difference from Southern Italians.
In the absence of any better secular leader he represented the moral high ground in Italy.
Perhaps the people considered paragraph 20 of Lumen Gentium: “Therefore, the Sacred Council teaches that bishops by divine institution have succeeded to the place of the apostles, as shepherds of the Church, and he who hears them, hears Christ, and he who rejects them, rejects Christ and Him who sent Christ.”
My inclination is to agree with the assessment of Fr Ray.
The late Cardinal Winning once predicted "Martini Rosso will one day be Martini Bianco".
johnf: "De gloria olivae" could also be applied to our present Holy Father as there is a branch of the Benedictines known as the Olivetans.
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