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.
[…]
You go first, Francis. Show us your devotion to the Word of God, and to service of others. Then we can follow what you do, but not that which (only) you say.
“Preach the Gospel at all times; use words when necessary.”
The Holy Father’s exegesis is itself closed. God can save “closed Christians”. At the end the Holy Father mentions that God can make the deaf hear and the dumb speak. Well, God also can stop up your hearing and your ability to speak what He wants.
But it is flawed in other ways. For example, leading people into temptation -whether in the name of fraternity or the Name of Jesus or the name of charity or the name of being open or whatever name- is not the Gospel and is not speaking of Jesus.
We do not exchange our baptism for the human virtue of brotherliness. To do that comes up to Pelagianism. VATICAN II recommends the practice of human virtues in charity because it is most fitting the call to holiness and the apostolates for these times.
In the first place the fruit of the Holy Ghost is not brotherliness but benignity. And the fruits are not summed up in brotherliness but in magnifying God in His gifts. Holy Father presents the danger not merely in what he says but also in what he does.
In its best light, might we suppose that Pope Francis goes overboard, or maybe only backwards, in his style or sequence of inculturation? Two quotes and a proposal:
FIRST, Cardinal Danielou explains:
“Christianity is always at first [at first!] led to take a stand against the errors of paganism, it [then] goes on to take to itself the good things in it. An obvious example which offers proof of this is the evangelization of the West. Christianity has taken up all that was valuable in the religions of Greece and Rome. Shrines of pagan goddesses became shrines of the Virgin Mary, and the seasonal pagan feasts were displaced by Christmas and Candlemas […] Christianity lifts them up, purifies them, and transfigures them” (“Prayer as a Political Problem,” 1953, p. 91).
SECOND, related to which, and possibly explaining the way-station of pluralist (?) “fraternity,” the Anglican convert, Fr. George William Rutler, gives us this:
“We might say that the cardinal virtues have their counterparts in the quadrivium: music and justice are both sciences of harmony; arithmetic and prudence are sciences of order; geometry and temperance are sciences of transcendence. And the theological virtues comport themselves with the fundamental trivium: grammar being to discourse what faith is to supernatural conversion; rhetoric being to grammar what hope is morally to faith; and dialectic providing a natural analogy of the heavenly discourse of love, just as love is the highest logic of creation. It is an arbitrary scheme, to be sure, but a fair reminder of the community between natural and spiritual sciences” (“Beyond Modernity: Reflections of a Post-Modern Catholic,” Ignatius, 1987, p. 123).
PROPOSAL: “The community between natural AND spiritual sciences”?
Which is to propose that once the Church gets back to making an “un-mess” [!] of things, the prevailing disconnect between so-called “concrete” experiences and so-called “abstract” rigidities might draw from reflections such as these…BECAUSE these frontward reflections are, today, messily perceived and branded as “backwardist.”
(Still, at the Synod on Youth, exchanging the papal crozier for a Wiccan stang was a bit much. Also, housing Pachamama within St. Peter’s Basilica on the same floor as the tabernacle and Real Presence.)
The “abstract rigidities” could be misnomer, Beaulieu, or a misconstrued business (or something off). In different senses too.
For Pope Francis the rigidity is the problem whether it is to do with abstraction or anything else. He is saying either grace is incipiently blocked or virtue is lacking.
I don’t accept it merely on such terms. A priest RIP of the “Francis” type mold used to converse at length about all kinds of things some of it plain out NOT our faith; eg., “Trinity” is “God with 3 hats”.
Trinity is God with 3 chips? Chocolate chips? Raiding the ref? Passing in the night? With 3 hats?
Here you encounter loose wobbly abstracting that is not “rigid” itself but is not our belief. What is behind it COULD be rigid, actually; in the sense of wrong and weighed down stubbornness.
But in another mode abstracting does not produce rigidity just so nor is it a sign of blockaded grace or undeveloped virtue or style-less-ness.
One of the priests who moved my faith now deceased RIP, was brief, repetitive, rebuking, retiring; yet uniquely real and transparent. For his 10-minute homilies he merely repeated passages from the readings. That was his level of abstracting and it was effective articulation.
And the attraction was the father.
In yet a third sense, the explanation of the faith say in the outline of a heresy, ITSELF contains the cure -incipiently; when it often happens that the rigidity lies in the one doing the resisting/rejecting of the faith or resisting/rejecting of the incipient cure that is attempting to pass.
Begging your pardon sir and the Lord’s, I wished to do this well.
The Good News is healing and empowering. Long live the Good News in thought, word, and action.