The focal point of the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI’s “Pastoral Letter to the Catholics of Ireland”

(Article published on “Il Foglio” – March 30, 2010, by Roberto de Mattei) The focal point of the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI’s “Pastoral Letter to the Catholics of Ireland”, dated 19 March 2010, is above all to be uncovered in its calling for an authentic renewal and reformation of the spirit of the Church itself.

The appeal to repentance which is the key notion here is never detached from the repeated call to the “The ideals of holiness, charity and transcendent wisdom”, which in the past have made Ireland, and Europe as a whole, such a great country, and can still nowadays provide strong enough  foundations for its re-birth ( No.3).  The one and only foundation for such reconstruction is in fact Jesus Christ “who is the same yesterday, today and for ever” (cf. Heb 13:8) – ( No.9).  All the faithful of Ireland are invited by His Holiness “to aspire to high ideals of holiness, charity and truth, and to draw inspiration from the riches of a great religious and cultural tradition” ( No.12).

Such tradition has in fact never declined, even if “fast-paced social change has occurred, often adversely affecting people’s traditional adherence to Catholic teaching and values” ( No.4).  This is a crucial point in the letter and the Pope acknowledges that in the Sixties “the tendency”, also on the part of priests and religious, to adopt ways of thinking and assessing secular realities without sufficient reference to the Gospel” was particularly “significant”. “The programme of renewal proposed by the Second Vatican Council was sometimes misinterpreted”, and there was “in particular, a well-intentioned but misguided tendency to avoid penal approaches to canonically irregular situations”. “It is in this overall context” of  “weakening of faith and loss of respect for the Church and her teachings” “that we must try to understand the disturbing problem of child sexual abuse”( No.4).

And in what way has the Second Vatican Council been misinterpreted? Benedict XVI briefly and rather significantly touches upon such matter, and it is indeed worth it to further expand on it. We must remember that during the Vatican Council II the idea of a wandering Church, rather than a militant one, following the signs of times and ready to renounce the tradition and “virginity” of its doctrine in order to be “fertilized” by the values of the world.

All this simply meant for the Church to relinquish its very own values, starting with that which is most crucial to Christianity: the idea of Sacrifice, which steaming from the mystery of the Cross permeated all aspects of ecclesiastical life down to moral doctrine as well, and which once was the inspiring principle behind any life, be it secular or clerical, of those who had been baptized.

The Vatican Council II imposed on Bishops the duty of what was called “Pastoral sociology”, recommending that they open to the sciences of the world, ranging from sociology to psychoanalysis. During those years, the work of the Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich was re – discovered, after he died almost completely forgotten by the whole world in an American mental hospital in 1957. In his manifesto, the book entitled “The Sexual Revolution”, he had replaced the categories of middle – class and working – class with respectively those of repression and liberation, the latter term indicating the fullness of sexual freedom. This in turn entails the reduction of man to a mere ensemble of bio-physical needs, and in conclusion, of sexual energy alone. Family, which finds its foundations on monogamist and indissoluble marriage between a man and a woman, was considered the paradigm of all repressive social institutions: no sociological consideration could authorize its survival. A new moral philosophy, based on the sole exaltation of pleasure, was on its way to sweep away the traditional Christian morals, which, on the contrary, always had attributed a positive value to the concepts of sacrifice and suffering.

The new theology, while ecumenically embracing the values of the world, was in vain looking for an impossible – to – achieve dialogue between Christian morals and its enemies. The supporters of these new morals, who in Italy were theologians such as Father Enrico Chiavacci ( born in 1926), Father Leandro Rossi ( 1933 – 2003) and Father Ambrogio Valsecchi ( 1930 – 1985), acknowledged as masters of the new course authors such as Wilhelm Reich and Herbet Marcuse.

In 1973, edited by Valsecchi and Rossi, the Paoline publishing house, printed a rather pompous Encyclopedic Dictionary of Moral Theology, which aimed at substituting the classic, and still precious, Dictionary of Moral Theology compiled by the Cardinals Francesco Roberti and Pietro Palazzini ( the fourth edition being published by Studium in 1968). In the new volume, Enrico Chiavacci asserted that “the true human nature is not to have a nature” and that man is such because of the “tension” of his own conscience, which is independent from all kinds of “prohibitions” deriving from traditional morals. Valsecchi believed it necessary to free oneself from a concept of morals based on a metaphysical notion of human nature itself. The only sin, root and origin of all others, was that committed “against love” and the only virtue, that of following love, obviously in a natural, and not super – natural, manner.

These new moralists which someone calls “porno-theologians” did in fact substitute the objectivity of natural law, with the “person” , intended as will which can plan, free from all regulating laws and fully immersed into the historical and cultural milieu, that is what we call “the ethics of circumstances”. And since sex is an integral part of man, its role was re-discovered and re-defined as a “primary function of personal growth” ( in Valsecchi’s words) also because, according to them, the Council was teaching us that only through dialogue with “the other”, can the human being find its own realization.

They were quoting on this subject, the principle according to which “ I need the other to be myself”, deriving from No. 24 of the Gaudium et Spes Encyclical, which is the Magna Charta of such post – counciliar progressive attitude. Chiavacci, Rossi and Valsecchi publicly challenged the CEI (Italian Bishops’ Conference ) firm anti – divorce stance in 1974, but nevertheless continued to be regarded for many years to come, as the most respected and well-known “moralists” within the Italian Church. Still today in every single Catholic bookshop, you will find on the first shelves their books, published by Paoline editions or Queriniana.

Nevertheless, what should make us think are in fact their personal lives, such as that of Ambrogio Valsecchi who was Professor of Morals at the Faculty of Theology in Milan and consultant to the Cardinal of Milan, Carlo Colombo, during the Vatican Council II, and champion of the new morals then exonerated from his vows and married ( in Church ) in 1975, he has become in the last decade of his life, psychologist and analyst as well as couple therapist. Just as disastrous is the life of the man who is today, together with Hans Kung, the main accuser of Benedict XVI: Rembert Weakland. Defender to the bitter end of the “sexual revolution”, of “gay” rights and the ordination of women in the Church, Weakland is no longer Archbishop of Milwaukee since 2002 when, as Sandro Magister has proven on his website www.chiesa, he was exonerated after a former student of theology accused him of rape, even if Weakland himself had tried to buy his silence with 450.000 dollars taken directly from the Archdiocese cash book. The “liberal” press, far from condemning him, treated him with a lot of consideration and respect, as was due to a celebrated champion of the Progressive offshoot of the Church.

The enemies of Tradition have always and vainly, I may add, tried to champion the primacy of life over doctrine, of real – life Christianity over the abstraction of  preaching. The “Tribunal of Real Life” to which they so forcefully appealed to, has however overturned all their judgments and expectations. Those who turned their back to the firm austerity of principles in order to anchor themselves to the soft foundations of their own experience, have often abandoned that very Church they were pretending to better serve.

Those who deny the existence of a natural law to be respected, did in fact start to satisfy those instincts of nature, whose very existence they were denying, and, as a consequence, to favour those perversions which the will presented to their intelligence, which was by then totally alienated from the truth. The transition from heterosexuality to homosexuality, and finally to pedophilia, has therefore been for some, if not chronologically sequential, at least consistent from a logical point of view.

As a matter of fact, we can today read on the first page of the “Repubblica” newspaper in Italy that ecclesiastical celibacy is the direct cause of pedophilia as such, but no newspaper, for instance, could ever make such a firm and direct connection between homosexuality and pedophilia. This is in fact forbidden by specific laws currently in force in a number of European countries which have introduced the crime of homophobia, but also, and even more so, it is forbidden by the social and cultural censorship which is constantly at work for reducing the boundaries of what can be considered legitimate defense of moral principles as such.

Within a specific sector of the Catholic world, even more grievously is considered the affirmation that a relation exists, no matter how indirect, between the new theology of the Sixties and the pansexualism which invaded the Church following the Vatican Council II.  Benedict XVI had indeed the courage to make such affirmation, and we certainly must admire him for that.