Giorgia Meloni, leader of the Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) holds a “Thank You Italy” sign during a press conference at the party electoral headquarters on Sept. 25, 2022 in Rome. / Photo by Antonio Masiello/Getty Images
Rome, Italy, Sep 29, 2022 / 11:00 am (CNA).
The victory of Giorgia Meloni and her “Fratelli d’Italia” (Brothers of Italy) party in Italy’s recent election made global headlines.
Meloni won with a platform that supports traditional families, national identity, and the country’s Christian roots. In a speech earlier this year, she said “no to the LGBT lobby, yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology.”
As the leader of a party that originates from a postwar movement born from the ashes of fascism, Meloni can neither be called a post-fascist nor simply a far-right leader.
Her international position is Atlanticist, and she has supported Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, congratulating him on his election.
On European issues, Meloni is critical of how Europe runs the risk of imposing policies on nation-states, but she is not against the principle of a European Union.
In short, the reality of Meloni’s politics is much more nuanced than it may seem at first glance. This explains why Catholic hierarchies in Italy have shown a degree of openness toward the politician following her electoral victory.
Italian political background
Italy’s history plays an essential role in understanding this reality. After fascism, the Italian state was reconstituted with a powerful Catholic party, the Christian Democrats, which for decades was the undisputed leader in the elections.
Catholics had been among the first opponents of fascism.
The Italian Constitution was inspired by a group of Catholics who, in 1943, already toward the end of the war, had gathered in the monastery of Camaldoli in Tuscany to define the principles for a post-fascist state.
In the early 1990s, a widespread corruption scandal in Italian politics called Tangentopoli wiped out traditional parties, including the Christian Democrats.
New parties arose, and members of the Christian Democrats joined these or were part of varying political formations.
The current Italian Democratic Party, considered center-left, is made up of former members of the Christian Democrats as well as members of the old left parties.
The secretary, Enrico Letta, had a background with the Christian Democrats. Similarly, parties considered to be center-right in Italy, such as Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, include among their ranks heirs of the Christian Democrats but also former socialists and former members of the Italian Liberal Party, traditionally secular and in some respects even anti-clerical.
The Italian Church had initially supported the so-called center party, which was the first direct heir of the Christian Democrats. Soon, however, the policy of the Italian bishops became not to support political formations but rather the values and themes promoted within the various parties — no longer, therefore, a Catholic party, but Catholics in politics.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, Cardinal Camillo Ruini was the Italian Bishops’ Conference president. In the face of tremendous parliamentary battles, Ruini coined the expression “nonnegotiable values.”
By nonnegotiable values, he first meant the importance of life at a time when political actions promoted euthanasia, in-vitro-fertilization, and even abortion as a matter of personal conscience.
After the bishops’ conference presidency of Ruini and that of Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, the question of nonnegotiable values has become more nuanced.
With Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti, who became president of the Italian Bishops’ Conference in 2014, the Church in Italy has aimed more at a concrete look at the issues of poverty and the economy, arguably losing sight, somewhat, of the values platform.
It was a strategic choice dictated by the fact that Catholics in politics were increasingly marginalized and that the social doctrine of the Church took less and less space in the formation of the new ruling class. There were attempts to create new platforms of Catholic culture in the early 2010s. These were sidelined by an economic-institutional emergency that had led to economist Mario Monti leading the government.
To all this, it must be added that the culture in Italy has been strongly forged by leftist thinking. It should be remembered that Italy had the largest Communist Party beyond the Iron Curtain after the war.
The Communist Party strongly developed an anti-fascist resistance narrative. Yet, the communist partisans were also authors of heinous murders and systematic elimination of priests — for instance, the recently beatified seminarian Rolando Rivi.
The Catholic platform in Italy
The historical context explains how Catholic thought in Italy was forged, especially in the years following the Second Vatican Council. Then, Catholicism in Italy fluctuated between the need for identity and the narrative of a rupture, which wanted a Church more committed to social issues and less to the centers of power.
A case in point: The latest bill against homophobia, which could have introduced gender classes in schools, was strongly supported by the Italian Democratic Party, led by the former Christian Democrat Letta.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the Catholic vote in Italy has rewarded Giorgia Meloni. Lacking a political party of reference, the Catholic center looked to the party that most corresponded to specific values.
Meloni’s voters are likely people who attended Family Day events held in Italy in 2007 and 2016 to oppose two bills on the civil unions.
The organizer of the most recent Family Day, Massimo Gandolfini, said in 2019: “We recognize that Brothers of Italy and Giorgia Meloni are pursuing a policy to the advantage of the family, for the defense of life from conception to natural death, and the educational freedom of parents.”
On the other hand, Meloni has been met with skepticism and concerns over leading a party with a fascist legacy.
Much attention was paid to her meeting with Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect emeritus of the Congregation for Divine Worship. But there were other talks with Vatican figures. Rumors also speak of contact with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state.
Added to this is a meeting with Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, president of the Italian Bishops’ Conference. In an interview with the Italian bishops’ newspaper Avvenire on Sept. 28, Zuppi made it clear that he knew Meloni well. He also described the Church in Italy as committed to collaborating with all parties.
To fully understand the context, it is worth remembering that Zuppi is an exponent of Sant’Egidio, a movement closer to the demands of the center-left than the center-right.
The Italian bishops’ position
In general, the Italian bishops do not endorse any particular political candidate, keep a low profile, and only issue statements regarding the bishops’ conference president or possibly the secretary of state.
Meloni also kept a low profile. Compared with others, her campaign did not exploit religious faith. While setting what is generally considered a conservative tone, Meloni’s rhetoric was political, not religious.
The president of the “Fratelli” is described by those who know her as someone “who considers herself part of the Church, very respectful of Pope Francis even when perhaps she does not understand or share certain [aspects] of his statements or acts.”
She was also present at the Communion and Liberation Meeting in Rimini, which takes place every August, and spoke about Catholic social teaching.
Brothers of Italy and the Italian Church
Cardinal Ruini, whose voice still carries weight, said in an interview with Corriere Della Sera on Sept. 28, “intellectuals are on the left, but the real country is on the right.” He acknowledged the reality of Meloni’s role and her party’s election.
In doing so, Ruini pointed out that the Catholic world in Italy has been closer to the so-called center-left rather than the center-right. In Italy, as elsewhere, there is a perception of a deep rift between those who stand up for nonnegotiable values and those who instead support a more pragmatic approach to dealing with contemporary challenges. But this is a perception, and reality is more nuanced.
Perhaps now is the time for a nuanced reconciliation of opposites for the Italian Catholic world. Giorgia Meloni is not a Catholic politician. The values she espouses, however, also won over the Catholic electorate. This is a reality to be ignored at peril.
[…]
@Italy’s Culture War. “The Italian bishops will now in a difficult spot between papal preferences and popular sentiment. It will be interesting to see if they can all get past the slurs about ‘fascism’ and help Europe come to grips with a populism that is not without its perils – a challenging new sign of our times” (Robert Royal).
In his usual scholarly objective, though quietly partisan manner, an art, Royal favors events in Italy as a fortuitous turn of events. That in respect to the Francis’ ideology [as this writer perceives it, more evidently expressed here than Robert Royal’s similar expressions] of unlimited massive emigration [mainly Muslims] destroying Christian cultures, tacit approval of LGBT agendas of cultural political domination, saving the planet at the cost of infants in the womb.
Ursula von der Leyen [born in Flemish Belgium Ursula Albrecht] married to a German nobleman Heiko von der Leyen, Ursula member of German parliament, Chairman European Commission, now Giorgia Meloni’s arch enemy [Ursula darkly said she has ‘tools’], and likely a major issue for the EU’s, UN’s great ideological patron, Pope Francis. It’s the old British march The World Turned Upside Down, in real life tempo [allegedly played marching in surrender by a defeated British army at Bunker Hill]. By golly, even liberal Sweden, Royal reports, just voted in a conservative govt.
Drama. Will His Holiness call in his seers, Fr Spadaro, Austen Ivereigh, cardinal Kasper? I would say it, though it sounds trite, lacking appropriate rules of humor, will he secretly offer sacrificial homage to environmental goddess Pachamama. But I won’t.
“Not a Buffet”
Protestantism is ‘Faith Alone’, while Catholicism is Catechism 2068 . . . the mission of teaching all peoples, and of preaching the Gospel to every creature, so that all men may attain salvation through faith, Baptism and the observance of the Commandments.”
Possessing Faith in Jesus great enough to Move Mountains, Yet Jesus burns them in hell as ‘Evildoers’.
Matthew 7:21 The True Disciple.
Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. When that day comes, many will plead with me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ have we not prophesied in your name? have we not exorcized demons by its power? Did we not do many miracles in your name as well? Then I will declare to them solemnly, I never knew you. Out of my sight, you evildoers!
1 Corinthians 13:1-13 Excellence of the gift of love.
Now I will show you the way which surpasses all the others. If I speak with human tongues and angelic as well, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong, a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and, with full knowledge, comprehend all mysteries, if I have faith great enough to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
John 14:15
If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
1 John 5:3
For the love of God is this, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome,
John 14:23
Jesus answered and said to him, “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; yet the word you hear is not mine but that of the Father who sent me.
John 15:22
If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin; but as it is they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me also hates my Father. If I had not done works among them that no one else ever did, they would not have sin; but as it is, they have seen and hated both me and my Father. But in order that the word written in their law might be fulfilled, ‘They hated me without cause.’
John 5:27
“The Father has given over to him power to pass judgment because he is Son of Man; no need for you to be surprised at this, for an hour is coming in which all those in their tombs shall hear his voice and come forth. Those who have done right shall rise to live; the evildoers shall rise to be damned.”
Matthew 11:20 Reproaches to Unrepentant Towns.
Then he began to reproach the towns where most of his mighty deeds had been done, since they had not repented. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty deeds done in your midst had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would long ago have repented in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you. And as for you, Capernaum: ‘Will you be exalted to heaven? You will go down to the netherworld.’ For if the mighty deeds done in your midst had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom on the day of judgment than for you.”
Deuteronomy 7:9
“Understand, then, that the LORD, your God, is God indeed, the faithful God who keeps his merciful covenant down to the thousandth generation toward those who love him and keep his commandments, but who repays with destruction the person who hates him; he does not dally with such a one, but makes him personally pay for it. You shall therefore carefully observe the commandments, the statutes and decrees which I enjoin on you today.
Catechism of the Catholic Church; Ten Commandments
Catechism 2068 The Council of Trent teaches that the Ten Commandments are obligatory for Christians and that the justified man is still bound to keep them; The Second Vatican Council confirms: “The bishops, successors of the apostles, receive from the Lord . . . the mission of teaching all peoples, and of preaching the Gospel to every creature, so that all men may attain salvation through faith, Baptism and the observance of the Commandments.”
Catechism 2055 When someone asks him, “Which commandment in the Law is the greatest?” Jesus replies: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the prophets.” The Decalogue must be interpreted in light of this twofold yet single commandment of love, the fullness of the Law: The commandments: “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this sentence: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
Catechism 2052 “Teacher, what good deed must I do, to have eternal life?” To the young man who asked this question, Jesus answers first by invoking the necessity to recognize God as the “One there is who is good,” as the supreme Good and the source of all good. Then Jesus tells him: “If you would enter life, keep the commandments.” And he cites for his questioner the precepts that concern love of neighbor: “You shall not kill, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother.” Finally Jesus sums up these commandments positively: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Catechism 2083 Jesus summed up man’s duties toward God in this saying: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This immediately echoes the solemn call: “Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God is one LORD.” God has loved us first. the love of the One God is recalled in the first of the “ten words.” the commandments then make explicit the response of love that man is called to give to his God.
https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P78.HTM
What exactly is the purpose of all this and why is it here? How does any of this specifically relate to the content of this piece?
“Top 5 Heresies Among American Evangelicals (Christianity Today)”
“Among evangelicals, 94 percent believe “sex outside of traditional marriage is a sin” and 91 percent believe abortion is a sin, both the highest levels since the survey began.”
I had a coworker run a route with me. He was a Pentecostal minister on his honeymoon. He had convinced one of his flock that she was ‘unevenly yoked”. So the young 28 year old, married mother of four, divorced her husband, as advised by her minister. The minister then realized the immediate need for her and her children to have a caretaker, so he in his fifties, married her, in his Assemblies of God, ‘church’. I responded, “Well couldn’t you have cared for her and her family, Without Having Sex with her?”
The Protestants believe in sex outside of Traditional Marriage is a sin, but they have manipulated Traditional Marriage to include the divorced and remarried. I read online where a Protestant Pentecostal minister was astounded at all the old men with young wives in his congregation.
Jesus makes it clear, if you want to go to heaven, do not commit Adultery through divorce and remarriage.
Mark 10:6
At the beginning of creation God made them male and female; for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and the two shall become as one. They are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore let no man separate what God has joined.” Back in the house again, the disciples began to question him about this. He told them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and the woman who divorces her husband and marries another commits adultery.”
Mark 10:17
“Good Teacher, what must I do to share in everlasting life? Jesus answered, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not kill; You shall not commit adultery;'”
@Triumph of the Immaculate Heart. “We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-church, between the Gospel and the anti-gospel, between Christ and the Antichrist” (Archbishop Krakow Karol Wojtyla 1976 Philadelphia).
Our future John Paul II was prophetic. Perhaps a sense of things to come through his great devotion to the Mother of God, and our Mother, lovingly conferred to us by Christ from the Cross.
Cardinal Carlo Maria Caffarra was appointed 2006 by John Paul II to the executive Committee of the Pontifical Council for the Family. Caffarra was also devoted to Our Lady and like John Paul believed we were actually in end times, that becoming his conviction following publication of Amoris Laetitia perceived by him as a threat to the traditional family. Accordingly he participated [with Cardinals Walter Brandmüller, Raymond Burke, and the late Cardinal Joachim Meisner] in drafting the Dubia forwarded to Pope Francis, a list of questions regarding sections that suggested change to doctrine on marriage and reception of the Eucharist, to which Francis has declined to respond.
Cardinal Caffarra had met and befriended Sr Lucia Dos Santos, one of the three Portuguese children to whom Our Lady appeared at Fatima. They exchanged letters, the substance of which was Lucia’s belief in an alleged revelation [private revelation is always considered private, and not necessarily actual by the Church unlike public revelation such as the mysteries of Christ, the Virgin birth] that the final battle would be centered on the sanctity of the family.
Whether that assumed revelation to Lucia was actual, what is undeniable is that events since support it.
A Christian family is the nucleus of the Church faithful, and the major institution of a cohesive society [see social scientist Emile Durkheim]. If the family is deconstructed by Church recognition of homosexual unions, which is precisely a main agenda of the Synod on Synodality, already proposed as doctrine by the German Synodalweg, the Bishop of Rome relegating himself [virtually] and other bishops as mere facilitators the Church will inevitably divide, an anti church in opposition to Christ’s Mystical Body.
Neuer Anfang, a faithful German Catholic body in opposition to Synodalweg, and the latter’s heretical assumption of doctrine opposed to the universal Christian definition of marriage, of sexual identity, of Holy Orders, of Christ, and the Eucharist foresees that divide in Germany. Although, this break with Christ is linked to the Synod on Synodality, which severs the Magisterial head from the body, in effect severing Christ from the Church [the infallible authority invested by Christ in the Chair of Peter the visible link that maintains spiritual coherence].
If such occurs, inclusive of the bishop who claims the Chair of Peter, we can be assured that Christ will support and guide the faithful Body. Should it be the end, Christus Vincit.
Fr Morello, you are a brave and honest man! Bless you for setting out the consequences of any change in the teaching of the Catholic Church regarding Homosexual acts.
The church seems to hurtling helter skelter to schism and suicide over this of all issues!
It’s beyong amazing that the proponents of this development cannot see that all the churches throughout the world that have already gone down this road are in steep (in some cases terminal) decline.
Once this one issue has been ‘relativised’ there will be no stopping as the flood gates will be opened to every strange doctrine that there has ever been.
And the Catholic Church too will have relinquished all claims that it may make to antiquity, as in Apostolicity, Orthodoxy, Catholiciity and Holiness.
Yes James, what you said 2022 on the proliferation of the evil of homosexuality is true, that it will open the floodgates “to every strange doctrine that there has ever been”. Now becoming increasingly apparent 2023.