If there is one things I have really come to despise, it is this kind of sweet Christianity that is so much in fashion in the last decades. Everything is good, everyone is nice, everything is allowed. This kind of honey atmosphere really makes me sick, because it is really far from true Christianity. As Pope Francis said, the church is more like a field hospital. Many have criticized him for this, but I find this is a deeply Christian definition that takes into account the sickness of our souls, beyond the suffocating hypocrisy that surrounds us. Indeed the church is there to console those that are fighting in the spiritual fight, Il combattimento spirituale, as it says in a famous book by Lorenzo Scupoli (1530-1610).
Our liturgies are now the receptacle of sad shows with uplifting music “for the youths”, as if in life all is joyful and gracious. It is not. I know many people fight to show that scientific Darwinism is a theory. I am not in the position to judge about that. But social Darwinism is a reality, people fighting each other pursuing their own agenda. The church is not different. How many church men, priests and laypeople, are just following their own agenda to be served by the church and not to serve the church? So, this emphasis on the joyful Christianity I think is misleading, to say the least.It will not be bad here for me to remember a man that has meant a great deal to me.
Father Enrico Zoffoli (1915-1996) was a Passionist, a philosopher and a man sincerely seeking God. I met him when he was already nearing 80 and I became one of his philosophy students. I remember talking with him about all his upcoming books (he wrote many, I think over 70) and for some of them I followed the whole process through his confidences. He was a man sincerely seeking God and defending the church, and for this he made many enemies. My girlfriend of that time and I were very close to him. I remember him on his death bed calling us “his angels”.
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