Italian Theologian & Francis Defender: Priesthood is Formidable Invention!
I cant make this stuff my friends...
Google translation of ilsismografo.blogspot.com/2017/03/italia-la-messa-e-finita.html
Sismografo
3/23/17
Alberto Melloni (La Repubblica): Some great historical cycles ended with thunderous events. Other cycles, however, are closed almost unnoticed, although not less important than those to which a monument or a subsidiary line gives eternal glory. Quietly he ran out a great cycle: that of the priest. That formidable sixteenth invention that has shaped the culture and politics, psychology and the inner life, the ‘art and theology of’ the West and its former colonies was not extinguished (about 420 thousand priests in the world), but OL- three a century is in crisis: in Italy we passed ninety ‘years by 15 thousand to about 2,700 seminarians. Sure they have some weight extrinsic factors: tomorrow the disgrace of pedophilia in the media lens makes it appear that crime as a specific priest; Yesterday laziness of the authorities to discuss the ecclesiastical celibacy; Today simony soft that rewards episcopati- giving prizes for “factory” priests or numerous or showy. Counts in this historical phase the reverb on the clergy of the fall of the intellectual qualities of the ruling classes to which belong both those who choose the priesthood that he who gives it to him. But the question is wedged deeper into the story. The priest that we have known has a precise date of birth: the Council of Trent which closed in 1563. It ‘s enormous effort with which it tried to mark a caesura (disputed by Protestants that instead accusing the Catholic church of continuity with’ abuse) downstream of Luther’s reform. Late, but with courage the council tried to invent unknown drugs: for example, ordered his bishops residence in the diocese, preventing them from hanging out at the papal court. He invented the priest: that teased from literature and cinema, the ‘wise man made only by the failures, sanctified by the institutional heaviness of what one gives. The priest who does not have children to bring up, the priest with a standard course, and very long, the priest leading the proletariat to become the ruling class, the priest who plays the “suprema lex salus animarum” which is mercy. This “priest Tridentine” seems to cross the turning point of modernity without damage: indeed the birth of new orders and societies of priests’ nineteenth century, and zeal in making large seminars as factories, appear to ensure that its function remains intact within the same shell institutional and theological. But it is not true: the church which is perched in defense of its own fence makes an official whose inner profile you wear in social control. The poll of consciousness of a humanity which has no experience weakens compassion. Its ancient science compared to transmissions of knowledge increasingly sophisticated, it is an under-educated. The ecclesiastical zeal to condemn everything that you can attack the “ism” suffix, it impoverishes the readings and makes it foreign to “her,” who become suddenly “gone.” The role of loss and ’emotional neglect exposes the worst: to the soppy exaltation of celibacy that traps sexuality in search of sublimation and attracts the priesthood unresolved or even sick people. Its qualification becomes the name of a vice never fought enough: clericalism. And in recent European history the priest craft is contracted out, such as marginal tasks, to clerics d ‘import, elected caretakers of abandoned communities. Even the discussion about women-priest (forgetting that the “priesthood” that is received by baptism women have already, and that is no small thing) is mixed dangerously to all male logic which grants all ‘other kind Deprecations trades. The amount of orders declining draws for two centuries a curve downward in front of which you close your eyes, especially those who are under a bishops’ miter. There would in fact need and even urgent to rethink the priest starting right from ‘Eucharist and by the community, and not from life details or gender. But this, however, it seems impossible to talk, even in ‘last half century. He did not mention the Vatican II that he just groped to remove the priest that he had semi-monastic tone. Not the papacy which simply pack a priest poetic. Do not mention the bishops who package the communities in what are called “pastoral units”, and condemn the priests in Italy to become breathless officials, overwhelmed by a Community polygamy where nobody wants them well and they are unable to love, with risk of becoming saints or shipwrecked on the rocks erotic not always candid. What is so bad that not even speak Pope Francis. The next synod, in fact, has a theme of general-generic as that of the “young”: as if even the ‘indefatigable reformer Pope had wanted to look for a break to the controversy. And if the ‘encyclical next as they say it will be on religiosity “popular” will too’ it the same limit. D ‘Moreover, the most significant decision of his pontificate, the one contained in the Evangelii Gaudium, has not yet been transposed by the bishops is the one that says that the episcopal conferences have “authentic teaching authority.” So would touch the bishops Bishops Conferences raise a topic on which you play the life of their churches, but the ‘indolence prevail, encouraged by the hope that the reform tomorrow to have the same courage that “invented the priest.” Figure that while evaporates turn on the memories and regrets of believers, former believers and non-believers.