The entry into force of a law in France that will penalize anyone who seeks via Internet to dissuade women from abortion is a new sign that the threshold of totalitarianism has been crossed. This threshold is crossed when national legislation not only permits evil, but also makes it compulsory and considers doing good to be a crime; when national […]
Statements by Stefano Fontana
Matrimony, Eucharist And the social Doctrine of the Church
There is a very close bond between the sacraments of Matrimony and the Eucharist on one hand, and the Social Doctrine of the Church on the other. This may seem a strange relationship when considering that the first ambit has to do with the sacramental life in the Church, while the second has to do with commitment in society and […]
The dictatorship of groundless ethics
Here is the text of the speech delivered by Stefano Fontana in Trieste on Friday, 11 November 2016, to the participants at the course organized by the Medical Association on the theme: “Ethics: evolution and repercussions on the work of physicians” ***** Ethics is the study of our deeds from the viewpoint of good and evil. It has to […]
Neusner and that Jesus, who was too much for a Hebrew
www.lanuovabq.it Rabbi Jakob Neusner, the author of “A Rabbi Speaks with Jesus”, and friend of Joseph Ratzinger, has passed away. Benedict XVI cited him extensively in his first volume of “Jesus of Nazareth”, doing so with those lofty flights of thought of his to which we were accustomed. Still fresh in our memory is their remote dialogue because it […]
Wars of religion. Wars against religion. Introductory Abstract.
VII Report on the Social Doctrine of the Church in the World of the Observatory Cardinal Van Thuân Introductory Abstract WARS OF RELIGION, WAR AGAINST RELIGION Stefano Fontana[1] The readers who take a close look at all the factual news in appendix to this Report will be awestruck by the immense number of acts of violence and persecution perpetrated […]
The secularization of the Social Doctrine of the Church and the personalism of Maritain
On several occasions our Observatory has dealt with the theme of secularization, which has also assailed the Social Doctrine of the Church[1]. An interesting pathway for exploring this in depth would be to ask ourselves if Catholic personalism[2] may have represented a stage in this process. Applied to secularization must be the criterion suggested by Benedict XVI with respect to […]
Thats enough with the inductive method. In documents lets give God His place.
I wouldn’t want the Synod on the family to pass by without some serious thought being given to the method of its documents, and the Relatio finalis in particular. I’m therefore referring not to the method of the actual proceedings, but the method used in drafting documents. The Final Report begins with a part dedicated to “The Church listening to […]
Marriage and Family: The Church at the Crossroads
The Synod on the Family to be celebrated in October 2015 will be very different in comparison with all the previous Synods of the Catholic Church. It will be so, but to a certain degree we can say it has already been so. In February 2014 Cardinal Walter Kasper delivered his famous report on the Gospel of the Family to […]
The Final Document CCEE in Jerusalem: a test of courageous and Christian realism
I have the distinct impression that silence has reigned supreme regarding the final document of the Assembly of the Council of the European Episcopal Conferences (CEEC) held in Jerusalem from the 11th to the 16th of September this year. Present among other prelates from Italy were Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, who chairs the CEEC, and Archbishop Giampaolo Crepaldi, who chairs its […]
Non negotiable principles: if they arent only maladroit expression.
Non negotiable principles: in the recently published issue of “Teologia”, Giuseppe Angelini, dean of the Faculty of Theology of Northern Italy, refers to this as a “maladroit expression”. Then again, in the preceding issue of the same publication, Antonio Lattuadahad made a series of comments about the selfsame notion of non negotiable principles, leaving very little still standing. Prior to […]
The chaos of migration, the migration of chaos. VIII Report on the Social Doctrine in the World.