Reflections and comments on what emerged from the three days dedicated to the natural family. Where the Italian state has gone to date.
I read carefully the considerations of my friend Massimo Viglione on the World Congress of Families which took place in Verona. This is a serious reflection that cannot be archived with sufficiency and that, On the contrary, deserves proper attention.
The findings it places in a constructive perspective are, Indeed, anything but unfounded.
Net of the importance of the Congress, of the excellent scientific work carried out in the workshops, and above all of the street mobilization of the people of the families - also in reaction to the vulgar and disorderly attacks -, two words must be said regarding what Viglione observed.
1) The law 194/78 It remains an absolutely unjust law how legitimate is a "heinous crime", an abominable crime, just to quote a conciliar document like Gaudium et Spes (n.51). Even from a rational point of view, the suppression of a defenseless and innocent human being can never find normative justification in a society worthy of the name. Nor can the asserted right of women to dispose of their own bodies be invoked, since through abortion the mother disposes of the body of another human being, his son.
In light of what has been said, it is clear that if it were up to Viglione and me such a law would be repealed tomorrow morning.
The point is that it doesn't apply in Italy (some might say alas) a duumvirate with absolute powers, therefore the immediate repeal of the law tout court does not appear objectively achievable.
Today, Unfortunately, the cultural and political conditions do not exist (in terms of parliamentary votes) for such a desirable hypothesis. We must always be realistic to avoid the trap of utopia.
This is why it becomes an absolute priority to work to create the cultural and political conditions for the repeal.
There are few things that, in the blackberries, we can ask politics. One of them is, for example, begin to essentially repeal the law on abortion. Given that the vast majority of women resort to the tragic decision to terminate their pregnancy for economic reasons (we talk about 90%), a state worthy of the name should invest resources to allow mothers to avoid that decision.
In this way the State would obtain three results: it would avoid women from an indelible psychological wound, would avoid the commission of a "crimen nefandum", it would avoid the worsening of the demographic crisis we are experiencing.
Certo non può parlarsi di diritto acquisito. La soppressione di un essere umano indifeso e innocente non può mai considerarsi un “diritto”.
2) Sulla cd. Legge Cirinnà c’è poco da dire. Chi scrive ha personalmente giocato la propria faccia parlando dal palco del Circo Massimo di fronte a centinaia di migliaia di famiglie il 16 January 2019, per gridare una decisa opposizione «senza se e senza ma».
Moreover, questa è una legge che andrebbe abrogata anche perché contiene dei voluti e pericolosi elementi di ambiguità, in contrasto con quanto stabilito dalla stessa Corte costituzionale con la sentenza n.138/2010. Mi riferisco, for example, all’espressa dizione di «vita familiare» contenuta nel dodicesimo comma dell’art.1 della legge. Si tenta di diffondere, through the pedagogical force of the law, the idea that even that between people of the same sex is a family, contrary to the provisions of the art. 29 of the Constitution, and reiterated by the aforementioned Constitutional Court ruling no. 138/2010. Only for these evident legal errors - absolutely not accidental - the law should be repealed.
For Catholics, Then, it should count, in addition, the provision of the art. 2357 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which expressly states that homosexual unions "cannot be approved under any circumstances".
3) Compared to Viglione, I would also add the repeal of the law on divorce.
Not so much for a religious evaluation, sacramental, theological, but starting from an exquisitely secular perspective. If even for a layman, Indeed, the family represents the cell of society, the indissolubility of that cell is a guarantee of the indissolubility of society itself. And the State has an interest in maintaining a solid society rather than a liquid society.
Even a layman, moreover, can understand that the indissolubility of marriage first and foremost defends the dignity of women, the weakest party in case of abandonment, than after giving her husband the best of herself, after sacrificing his life for his family, It certainly doesn't deserve to be replaced as if it were an expired product. And everyone can understand the necessity of indissoluble marriage for the fate of children, their livelihood and education. We see before our eyes every day the devastating effects of divorce on entire generations of young people.
As the great philosopher-peasant Gustave Thibon argued, "spouses are not only committed to each other, but also both towards a reality of which they are part and which surpasses them: family first and foremost, of which they are the source and support, and later the Nation and the Church, living bodies of which families are the cells". This is why an institution as important as marriage needs to be protected against the thousand vicissitudes of instinct and personal interest., because marriage itself constitutes the foundation of the human community; if that breaks, this falls apart.
Thibon is absolutely right: today we witness the dawn, by reaction, of a kind of mystique of marriage, which is more concerned with the quality of the personal bond between spouses than with its social consequences. We live in an era in which a sort of hyperesthesia of the ego and gross egalitarianism seem to spread and dominate., which considers the happiness of the individual an "absolute" right. But that's not the case. If someone makes a wrong choice in life about the person they decided to marry, cannot present the bill to the community. Pay privately. Between individual sacrifice for a wrong decision in the private sphere and the collective interest of society in its overall stability, it is the latter that must prevail. An adult person takes responsibility for their actions and if they make mistakes they must accept the consequences. A choice, of the rest, she is truly free only when she is responsible.
Nor is the objection that the indissolubility of marriage is opposed to love valid. On the contrary, the opposite is true. Thibon himself explains it well by distinguishing the preceding and subsequent phases of marriage. Before getting married, Indeed, the individual aware of the irrevocability of marriage is «induced not to venture lightly into that dead end that has the closing wall behind it; like the conqueror who burns his vessels to eliminate any possibility of retreat before the battle, engaged couples who agree to bind themselves to each other until death draw on this "idea-force" as a preliminary guarantee against all the events of destiny that will threaten their love". On the contrary, «the very idea of ​​a possible divorce takes up residence tacitly in the depths of the soul, like a worm deposited by a fly in a developing fruit and which will one day devour its substance". Experience has repeatedly demonstrated, Indeed, than in some circumstances, especially when it comes to big tests, it is sufficient to consider something as possible for it to become necessary. This is an elementary psychological fact that alone is enough to debunk, among other things, the myth of the so-called “trial marriage”.
After the real wedding, Instead, «the nuptial pact, placing the substance of love once and for all beyond contingencies, necessarily contributes to decanting, to purify love; just as a dam not only contains the flow of the river, but it makes its waters clearer and deeper; the need to undergo and overcome the test of time acts on the affection of the spouses like a sieve that separates the chaff from the grain of wheat; it strips it little by little of its accidental and illusory elements and preserves only the incorruptible core, transforming passion into true love".
I dwelt particularly on divorce, because I consider it the beginning of the anthropological revolution we are experiencing. The indissolubility of marriage, Indeed, it constituted the Maginot Line of that society which was still able to maintain and guarantee solidity. Before reducing to its current liquid form well described by Zygmunt Bauman.
Even a Tuscan like Amintore Fanfani understood this, that the 26 April 1974 in Caltanissetta, during a rally, he explained it in his own way and for the sake of the people: «You want a divorce? Then you must know that abortion will come next. And after that, homosexual marriage. And maybe your wife will leave you to run away with the servant!».
Edited by Massimiliano Amato
SOURCE – https://vocecontrocorrente.it/editoriale-di-massimiliano-amato-sul-congresso-di-verona/