O Croce di Cristo!

O Croce di Cristo,
simbolo dell’amore divino e dell’ingiustizia umana,
icona del sacrificio supremo per amore e dell’egoismo estremo per stoltezza,
strumento di morte e via di risurrezione,
segno dell’obbedienza ed emblema del tradimento,
patibolo della persecuzione e vessillo della vittoria.

O Croce di Cristo,
ancora oggi ti vediamo eretta nelle nostre sorelle e nei nostri fratelli uccisi, bruciati vivi, sgozzati e decapitati con le spade barbariche e con il silenzio vigliacco.

O Croce di Cristo,
ancora oggi ti vediamo nei volti dei bambini, delle donne e delle persone, sfiniti e impauriti che fuggono dalle guerre e dalle violenze e spesso non trovano che la morte e tanti Pilati con le mani lavate.

O Croce di Cristo,
ancora oggi ti vediamo nei dottori della lettera e non dello spirito, della morte e non della vita, che invece di insegnare la misericordia e la vita, minacciano la punizione e la morte e condannano il giusto.

O Croce di Cristo,
ancora oggi ti vediamo nei ministri infedeli che invece di spogliarsi delle proprie vane ambizioni spogliano perfino gli innocenti della propria dignità.

O Croce di Cristo,
ti vediamo ancora oggi nei cuori impietriti di coloro che giudicano comodamente gli altri, cuori pronti a condannarli perfino alla lapidazione, senza mai accorgersi dei propri peccati e colpe.

O Croce di Cristo,
ti vediamo ancora oggi nei fondamentalismi e nel terrorismo dei seguaci di qualche religione che profanano il nome di Dio e lo utilizzano per giustificare le loro inaudite violenze.

O Croce di Cristo,
ti vediamo ancora oggi in coloro che vogliono toglierti dai luoghi pubblici ed escluderti dalla vita pubblica,
nel nome di qualche paganità laicista o addirittura in nome dell’uguaglianza che tu stesso ci hai insegnato.

O Croce di Cristo,
ti vediamo ancora oggi nei potenti e nei venditori di armi che alimentano la fornace delle guerre con il sangue innocente dei fratelli.

O Croce di Cristo,
ti vediamo ancora oggi nei traditori che per trenta denari consegnano alla morte chiunque.

O Croce di Cristo,
ti vediamo ancora oggi nei ladroni e nei corrotti che invece di salvaguardare il Bene Comune e l’Etica si vendono nel misero mercato dell’immoralità.

O Croce di Cristo,
ti vediamo ancora oggi negli stolti che costruiscono depositi per conservare tesori che periscono,
lasciando Lazzaro morire di fame alle loro porte.

O Croce di Cristo,
ti vediamo ancora oggi nei distruttori della nostra “casa comune” che con egoismo rovinano il futuro delle prossime generazioni.

O Croce di Cristo,
ti vediamo ancora oggi negli anziani abbandonati dai propri famigliari, nei disabili e nei bambini denutriti e scartati dalla nostra egoista e ipocrita società.

O Croce di Cristo,
ti vediamo ancora oggi nel nostro Mediterraneo e nel mar Egeo divenuti un insaziabile cimitero, immagine della nostra coscienza insensibile e narcotizzata.

O Croce di Cristo,
immagine dell’amore senza fine e via della Risurrezione, ti vediamo ancora oggi nelle persone buone e giuste che fanno il bene senza cercare gli applausi o l’ammirazione degli altri.

O Croce di Cristo,
ti vediamo ancora oggi nei ministri fedeli e umili che illuminano il buio della nostra vita come candele che si consumano gratuitamente per illuminare la vita degli ultimi.

O Croce di Cristo,
ti vediamo ancora oggi nei volti delle suore e dei consacrati – i buoni samaritani – che abbandonano tutto per bendare, nel silenzio evangelico, le ferite delle povertà e dell’ingiustizia.

O Croce di Cristo,
ti vediamo ancora oggi nei misericordiosi che trovano nella misericordia l’espressione massima della giustizia e della fede.

O Croce di Cristo,
ti vediamo ancora oggi nelle persone semplici che vivono gioiosamente la loro fede nella quotidianità e nell’osservanza filiale dei comandamenti.

O Croce di Cristo,
ti vediamo ancora oggi nei pentiti che sanno, dalla profondità della miseria dei loro peccati, gridare: Signore ricordati di me nel Tuo regno!

O Croce di Cristo,
ti vediamo ancora oggi nei beati e nei santi che sanno attraversare il buio della notte della fede senza perdere la fiducia in te e senza pretendere di capire il Tuo silenzio misterioso.

O Croce di Cristo,
ti vediamo ancora oggi nelle famiglie che vivono con fedeltà e fecondità la loro vocazione matrimoniale.

O Croce di Cristo,
ti vediamo ancora oggi nei volontari che soccorrono generosamente i bisognosi e i percossi.

O Croce di Cristo,
ti vediamo ancora oggi nei perseguitati per la loro fede che nella sofferenza continuano a dare testimonianza autentica a Gesù e al Vangelo.

O Croce di Cristo,
ti vediamo ancora oggi nei sognatori che vivono con il cuore dei bambini e che lavorano ogni giorno per rendere il mondo un posto migliore, più umano e più giusto.
In te Santa Croce vediamo Dio che ama fino alla fine,
e vediamo l’odio che spadroneggia e acceca i cuori e le menti di coloro preferiscono le tenebre alla luce.

O Croce di Cristo,
Arca di Noè che salvò l’umanità dal diluvio del peccato, salvaci dal male e dal maligno!
O Trono di Davide e sigillo dell’Alleanza divina ed eterna, svegliaci dalle seduzioni della vanità!
O grido di amore, suscita in noi il desiderio di Dio, del Bene e della Luce.

O Croce di Cristo,
insegnaci che l’alba del sole è più forte dell’oscurità della notte.

O Croce di Cristo,
insegnaci che l’apparente vittoria del male si dissipa davanti alla tomba vuota e di fronte alla certezza della Risurrezione e dell’amore di Dio che nulla può sconfiggere od oscurare o indebolire.

Amen!

Papa Francesco

A Must Read

A Must Read: Yes, this book is more than a quarter of a century old; but I am still going to recommend it to you ... well, to those of you who don't already have it, or who don't refer often to it ...

John Henry Newman A Biography by Ian Ker (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1988) (available in paparback).

Blessed John Henry Newman is exactly the man you need to read now. And "Dr Ker's biography is gripping because ...

Distributism Is Not Dead

Distributism Is Not Dead:

The Catholic Worker, July-August 1956

The very fact that people are always burying Distributism is evidence of the fact that it is not dead as a solution. John Stanley buried it last year in the Commonweal and Social Justice of the Central Verein in St. Louis some months ago buried it. But it is an issue that won’t be buried, because Distributism is a system conformable to the needs of man and his nature.

We write of farming communes as an ideal form of institution towards which we should aim, and for which we should plan and we will continue to write about those which are in existence today in a continuing attempt as a way of living. We feel that there are ways of combating the servile state, and working towards a restoration of property.

During those months there was an exchange of visits between Soviet farmers to this country and some of our farmers to the U.S.S.R. There were some very interesting newspaper accounts. One of our Iowa farmers visited some large-scale collective farms where 5,000 or so Russians were employed by the State in spite of the fact that they were using modern machinery. This was a collective farm, but each family was allotted anywhere from half an acre to two acres, and on this small plot they had their own cow and chickens and pigs, and raised such an amount of vegetables, that it was due to their efforts that so much foodstuffs were able to go on the market. The cities would be hard put to find the foods they needed, were it not for these smaller plots.

At the same time one would feel that communal farming of such vast acreage as there is in the Soviet Union and the United States would not be out-of-place in the raising of wheat and flax and cotton and fruits and other such stuffs that demand large acreage and in some cases many men employed.

Here in the U.S. we have our migrant laborers, millions of them, to harvest the crops, and they live ill-fed, ill-clad, ill-housed and are definitely a problem in our economy. In Russia they seem to be stabilized. The very mention of such numbers would indicate that there could be no speed up, though planting and harvest time necessarily mean long hours, from dawn to dark, with corresponding shorter hours and lighter toil in winter.

I’ve been told on farms I have visited in my trips around the country that winter is just as hard as summer for the individual farmer, since the animals have to be fed more often (not having the grazing they do in the summer) and the work is done under the difficult conditions of the cold and dark, with fewer laborers.

Governor Harriman talked of poverty being a national problem and he was doubtless thinking of migrants, and Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Negroes and our city and country slums. Labor leaders have talked of pockets of unemployment. Where industry has moved south, or to another town there is great fanfare over enterprising real estate men who buy up the factories and invite other diversified industries to take over. With all our prosperity there is still the specter of unemployment.

But on the land, as Peter Maurin always said, there is no unemployment. There is food, clothing, shelter, and fuel and work to do. Proof of this is in spite of our poverty and pockets of unemployment, is the fact that in all the 23 years of the Catholic Worker, only one farmer has come to us, and that was John Filliger, who was a seaman during the 1936 strike, who seeing our need, stayed with us. There is the saying, “Scratch a seaman and you will find a farmer.”

In the New World Chesterton series published by Sheed and Ward, the volume Tremendous Trifles has an essay called “The Dickensian.” Our readers will remember that G.K.’s Weekly championed Distributism and his two books, What’s Wrong with the World and The Outline of Sanity are basic volumes to read on Distributism, together with The Sun of Justice, by Harold Robbins, his friend.

In this essay, “The Dickensian,” Chesterton and a stranger meet on a little pleasure boat crawling up Yarmouth Harbor. The stranger is mourning the passing of good old things like the wooden figureheads on ships and he prowls around the old parts of the town looking for traces of Dickens in Yarmouth. During the course of the afternoon they visit a church and there is a stained glass window which was flaming “with all the passionate heraldry of the most fierce and ecstatic of Christian Arts,” there was the angel of the resurrection. Chesterton dashed out of the church, dragging his friend after him, to buy as he said, ginger beer, postal cards, to listen to the concertinas, to ride on a donkey. And when the Dickens enthusiast all but decided Chesterton needed to be committed to a mental hospital, the latter explains:

“There are certain writers to whom humanity owes much, whose talent is yet of so shy or retrospective a type that we do well to link it with certain quaint places, or certain perishing associations.” And he went on to say that were Dickens living today, he would not be harking back to the past, but dealing with things just as he found them. So that he, Chesterton, was being particularly Dickensian by enjoying his surroundings as they were, and beginning from there.

It is the same with Distributism. It needs to be constantly rewritten, re-assessed, restated, with the wisdom and clear-sightedness of a Chesterton who by his paradoxes, made us see our lives and our problems in the light of Faith, who can help us today to make a synthesis of Cult, Culture and Cultivation.

In spite of the nuclear age we are living in, we can plant our gardens even if they are only window boxes, we can awaken ourselves to God’s good earth and in little ways start going out on pilgrimage, to the suburbs, to the country, and when we get the grace, we may so put off the old man, and put on Christ, that we will begin to do without all that the City of man offers us, and build up the farming commune, the Village, the “city” of God, wherein justice dwelleth.

The post Distributism Is Not Dead appeared first on The Distributist Review.

Il mercato dei corpi -

Mariangela Mianiti, 15.03.2016 

Habemus Corpus. Chiamare la maternità surrogata una donazione è un eufemismo perché in realtà si tratta di un vero e proprio mercato che ha dei tariffari, una domanda e un’offerta, dei contratti, un marketing, dei mediatori, come in qualunque scambio di merce o di prestazione

Nel felice racconto della genitorialità con la gestazione per altri si è trattato con pochi accenni a una parte importante della questione, ovvero il prima dell’impianto dell’embrione. Quel prima non è un pezzo da poco perché riguarda la selezione e l’acquisto del materiale genetico che serve per costruire la nuova vita, ovvero lo sperma e gli ovuli, fondamentali perché determinano le caratteristiche di una persona. La scelta di questi donatori e della portatrice di utero hanno dei costi e si stanno muovendo secondo criteri economici e geografici simili a quelli dei movimenti dei capitali finanziari.

Chiamare la maternità surrogata una donazione è un eufemismo perché in realtà si tratta di un vero e proprio mercato che ha dei tariffari, una domanda e un’offerta, dei contratti, un marketing, dei mediatori, come in qualunque scambio di merce o di prestazione. L’invasione del linguaggio e della mentalità del marketing nel mercato dei corpi, perché di questo si tratta, è già avvenuto e basta guardare gli slogan di certe agenzie che ricalcano quelli della promozione di viaggi low cost, come Pacchetto bimbo in braccio, Pacchetto Surrogacy, pacchetto Economy Plus che stabiliscono tariffe diverse secondo i tentativi di fecondazione e le scadenze del compenso.

Continua qui.

Photo

Photo:

Punctuation in Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (left) and in...

Punctuation in Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (left) and in...:

Punctuation in Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (left) and in Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner (right).(source)

Life, Underground

Life, Underground:

Buona festa di San Patrizio a tutti!

The Modern World and the Election of 2016

The Modern World and the Election of 2016:

(Illustration: us.fotolia.com | dervish15)

The Modern World and the Election of 2016 | Carl E. Olson | Editorial | Catholic World Report

“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives," wrote G.K. Chesterton in an April 19, 1924 column in The Illustrated London News. The essay was titled "The Blunders of Our Parties", with the parties in question being the Tories (conservatives) and the Whigs (progressives).  Despite being nearly a century old and being written about another country's political conflicts, the essay provides plenty of food for thought, as do the many other essays by Chesterton from the same period—many of them about America (a country that both fascinated and rather confounded the great English writer, who confessed "I really did feel as if I were on another planet when I was in the United States.")

"The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes," wrote Chesterton, who then stated:

The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types -- the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob. This is called the balance, or mutual check, in our Constitution.

The current Long March to the White House is a perfect case in point. Perhaps even the best case possible, for it is, to my mind, yet another round of the same old song-and-dance routine that is presented under the auspices of "liberal vs. conservative". Now, I am not denying there are real and substantive differences between the various candidates, as I think there are; nor am I saying that it won't really matter who is elected since nothing ever really changes and improves—although I confess to being tempted at times to resign myself to such a perspective.

Rather, consider what FOX News, the leading "conservative" news/opinion outlet, covers approximately 94.38% of the time: the presidential campaigns, caucuses, speeches, debates, dramas, arguments, strategies, posturings, and platforms. It's not just that news stations and outlets focus nearly all of their time and energy on politics, with occasional forays into the world of entertainment and celebrities (and, really, who can tell the difference between candidate and celebrities?). It's the incessant, constant, and unremitting coverage of the cult of the presidency, which has in recent decades been married (or adulterated) with the cult of celebrity, further fusing together the essential qualities of the dominant American culture: power, fame, and salesmanship.

So, we are told that Candidate X is "liberal" and Candidate "Y" is "conservative" because of differing stances on the economy, immigration, marriage, race relations, solar power, and so forth. That's all well and good, but we hear and ingest these labels and positions with the assumption—it really is the political air we breathe—that Candidate X or Y is going to bring about remarkable change on all these fronts. He or she is going to bring about "change", impart "hope", restore "order", manifest "sanity", inculcate "fairness and equality", establish "accountability", grant "freedom", and once again plant—in the town square, or on your television screen—the shining beacon of "greatness" that has soiled and sullied by President Z.

Yet that was not the role of the President of the United States prior to the 20th century. Quite the contrary.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Towards a Pro-Life and Pro-Family Economy

Towards a Pro-Life and Pro-Family Economy:

Last month I wrote an article titled Are They Pro Life? In this piece I offered mixed praise of Rand Paul, the Republican Senator from Kentucky, and Bernie Sanders, the Democratic Senator from Vermont, two candidates that in various areas diverged from the establishment, while concluding that their respective guiding principles are ultimately neither pro-life nor pro-family.

The Democratic Platform idolizes abortion on demand, same-sex marriage, gender ideology, and aims to exert greater control over who can or who cannot participate in the economy—penalizing small entrepreneurs with uniform tax policies and hefty regulations in order to satisfy those at the very top of their market sectors.

This assessment might leave our readers to assume I hold the opposite platform, applauding the Republican alternative and extolling Capitalism as the victor in its sesquicentennial wrestling match with Socialism. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Capitalism arose as a social and economic force that annihilated the family and organically developed into the culture of death we breathe in today. As G.K. Chesterton wrote in The Wells and the Shallows,

It cannot be too often repeated that what destroyed the Family in the modern world was Capitalism. No doubt it might have been Communism, if Communism had ever a chance, outside that semi-Mongolian wilderness where it actually flourishes. But, so far as we are concerned, what has broken up households, and encourages divorces, and treated the old domestic virtues with more and more open contempt, is the epoch and power of Capitalism. It is Capitalism that has forced a moral feud and a commercial competition between the sexes; that has destroyed the influence of the parent in favor of the influence of the employer; that has driven men from their homes to look for jobs; that has forced them to live near their factories or their firms instead of near their families; and, above all, that has encouraged, for commercial reasons, a parade of publicity and garish novelty, which is in its nature the death of all that was called dignity and modesty by our mothers and fathers.¹

While most Republican candidates tend to be nominally pro-life, their platform has little to offer that is truly pro-life and pro-family. Influenced by the principles that promote radical individualism and low wage dependence, the Republican Platform makes it difficult, if not altogether impossible, for expectant mothers to support their children post birth. Even if abortion is made illegal, if Roe v. Wade is overturned (both of which would be good things), an economic philosophy that makes abortions desirable and resolves to have charity provide for those who take the courageous decision to keep their children, is hardly pro-life.

Multiple studies have shown that poverty plays a significant part in a woman’s decision to procure an abortion. One U.S. study from 2008 shows that close to 42% of women who obtained abortions live at or below the poverty line, while a more recent 2011 study reveals that nearly 69% of terminated pregnancies are from economically disadvantaged women—women who can’t take time off work, typically have substandard healthcare, have little or no paid vacation, and work more than 40 hours a week. Using data from 2008 and 2011, a recent study polled 954 women and concluded that close to 40% of women sought abortions because they did not consider themselves financially prepared for a child, 12% sought a better life for a child than was available to them at that moment, and 36% felt it simply wasn’t the right time for a baby.

These statistics do not make abortions morally justifiable. Not by any means. But they do show a correlation between systematic financial instability and infanticide.

Just as Chesterton, Belloc and many other distributists have documented, Distributism takes these socio-economic realities into account.² A distributist economy would entail supporting local and small family-owned businesses that would encourage the growth of family size through direct control of the means of production. Those employed outside of the home would be guaranteed a just wage, that is, a substantial wage for a single parent to provide for the family, one which “allows a person not only to provide the basic needs of his family and maintain his status, but also enough extra that, through diligence and effect, he can improve his situation.”³ Amongst other practical distributist economic policies would be the development of programs to help expectant mothers support their children (post birth) in the wake of pregnancy: paid maternity leave, effective and affordable educational assistance for mother and child to advance in their educational paths, and providing free or affordable education for those who choose to have more children. This could also include the creation of a “child allowance” in which parents are given a monthly allowance for each child—a financial boost for the wellbeing of their children. According to Elizabeth Bruenig and as illustrated by Matt Bruenig a no-strings attached $300 per month per child stipend would reduce child poverty by 42 percent. Similarly, a working child allowance program would also provide private charities (including crisis pregnancy centers) with job opportunities and a valuable source of reassurance. Crisis pregnancy centers and other pro-life agencies could train volunteers to help struggling parents or single mothers sign up for the program.

These practical distributist policies emerge as an antidote to the destruction of the family caused by the natures of Capitalism and Socialism, which have both sought to undermine the family economically and socially. Distributism would allow families to be self-sufficient with access to the means of production, sound policies to encourage family flourishing, and an authentic platform for achieving a truly pro-life and pro-family economy.

The post Towards a Pro-Life and Pro-Family Economy appeared first on The Distributist Review.