Vittorio Messori

"At least in something we should be grateful to the happily defunct Soviet Union. Which, immediately after its foundation, created the great Institute for Scientific Atheism in St. Petersburg, which it had renamed Leningrad, with thousands of employees and hundreds of university professors in contact. For seventy years they worked hard to demonstrate the incompatibility between science and religion (and just like that, Science and religion, was the name of their magazine, distributed free of charge in many languages, all over the world), for decades, therefore, they worked hard to find the objective, irrefutable, scientific proof of the non-existence of God. When everything collapsed, and when Leningrad went back to being called St. Petersburg, the famous Evidence had not been found: they could have searched for another seventy or seven hundred years, but it still wouldn't have turned up. Therefore, also thanks to the billions of rubles invested by State atheism, we have objective confirmation that faith cannot be refuted by scientific means. (from Why I believe, Milan, Piemme, 2010, page 264 ISBN 978-88-566-1321-6)"

"Great theologian, extraordinary scholar, priest of vigorous Christian life, von Balthasar also presented singular, perhaps contradictory, aspects. (from Opus Dei. An investigation, Mondadori, C.E.2002)"

"You can't capture young people with a Catholicism on the guitar. We have too many Dee Jays, only one Papa. [...] But young people need the silence of the monasteries, values ​​such as sacrifice, renunciation, commitment. (quoted in Messori: "But the Church is not a disco" , Corriere della sera, September 3, C.E.1997)"

"[Renè Laurentin had] Marginal academic positions in France, his fortune was made in Italy and above all in the United States where he obtained a prestigious professorship, but let's not forget that he was registered in the register of professional journalists French and followed the Second Vatican Council on behalf of Le Figaro, of which he was an expert for the document on the Church. The final chapter of the conciliar document Lumen Gentium was practically written by him when he was a consultant at Vatican II."

"The Orthodox surpass us in Marian devotion."

"After Vatican II the only truly mass and popular movement was Medjugorje. It is then probable that Mary comes to the apparitions, even if these were not there at the beginning, [that is to say] that some apparitions were not such but become so later."

"[Would the coming of the Madonna be a reminder?] Exactly and he said it recently also for Medjugorie. It may be that Maria wasn't there at the beginning, but now - he said - "I'm absolutely certain that she is there. Maria cannot deceive her children who scrape their knees on Krizevac and now she certainly is there" [A Protagonist of the Council who, however, was never classified as a conciliar man] Because he opposed the drift towards the imaginary Council and for this reason he was frowned upon by his professor colleagues. He opposed the post-conciliar madness."

"Too many political passions had been unleashed on Fatima which in his opinion would have hindered his work. So he said no. He told it to me after a swim in the Sine. [A bath in the Seine?] Yes. One day I went to visit him in the convent where he lived and where he carried out his work of caring for the souls of the nuns. He went away for a moment, returned with his bathing suit and dived into the Seine. He told me it was his only sport, he did it to keep fit and he crossed the Parisian river from bank to bank. Incredible."

"[Why did a great Mariologist like Laurentin never deal with Fatima?] Because he thought it was difficult. Lourdes was a linear apparition, that of Fatima had several parts and above all a disclosure of secrets much later in life. He therefore decided not to be called to investigate that fact. He also said this with great cultural independence to the president of the Portuguese Episcopal Conference, sent directly by the Portuguese patriarch, who would have made everything possible available to him to study the phenomenon. And then too many political passions had been unleashed on Fatima which in his opinion would have hindered his work... [Laurentin was] a good and easy-going man, always available and he was not only a Mariologist and the greatest Lourdes expert."

"The excellent success of The Name of the Rose is precisely in the narrative happiness, in the consummate cunning of the profession, which also allows the housewife to get to the end by becoming passionate about the plot , absorbing its mischievous moods without even realizing it. In this sense, perfect mass instrument. (p. 33)"

"Talking about yourself is irritating and risky. If I dare to do so it is because I would like to reassure the reader: I started from doubt; or rather by indifference. Like him, like many today. Certainly not from faith. I came to these studies after 18 years of state school. I had to learn everything, starting from nothing. At school, the only priests for me were therefore those of the "religion hours" imposed by the conciliation with the fascists. Then, suddenly, an increasingly exciting treasure hunt began in first century Palestine. The first ticket in the chain was a copy of Pascal's Thoughts, purchased for certain marginal research in the political science degree course. This book is dedicated to Blaise Pascal: without him it would never have been written. Or it would have been completely different. (chapter I)"

"God, if he exists, is hidden. If he exists, men have always been forced to grope for him. And their research does not always have an outcome or a result. Whether positive or negative. One should wonder and be wary of those who claim they have no difficulty believing. Perhaps (as has been said) it is because they have not quite understood what it is about. The despairing human experience is that no divinity peeks out from behind the clouds. Heaven and earth are silent. But, if a god exists, he is not only hidden behind the silence of nature. He also hides behind the reality of the evil of the innocent which seems to accuse him without the possibility of defence; behind the multiplicity of religions. In these, behind the difficulties of the many "sacred writings", including the Bible. If it exists, it is also hidden behind the scandals of the churches; behind the errors and inconsistencies of those precisely who should testify to their existence with life itself. (I understood)"

"Simone Weil, the Jew educated in agnosticism, also reacted in the name of reason to man's instinctive and recurrent protest for the lack of divine evidence. (chap. II)"

"anti-Semitism is unfortunately almost as old as the Jews and, as has been observed, arises precisely from amazement and anger towards this people who are unable to dissolve into others, to assimilate. Not with threats and not even, note, with flattery. The renegade Jew who accepted the gospel in Christian countries was removed from a subhuman condition to receive the fullness of rights and, sometimes, honors and riches. Yet, conversion was so rare that in medieval Nordic Europe one could even promise the renegade a barony or a county. The Muslims converted Christians by the millions and erased faith in Jesus from entire countries but they failed to convert the Jews. (chapter III)"

"One day they asked Sigmund Freud to summarize his "recipe" to defend man from the dark evils that emerge from the depths. «Lieben und arbeiten, to love and work» was the response of the founder of psychoanalysis. It is, coincidentally, the same formula proposed to man by the New Testament, which he places at the center of his love and work message. Less known, perhaps, is this second aspect, so much so that the phrase of Saint Paul in the second letter to the Thessalonians ("Whoever does not want to work, let him not eat) is often attributed to [[Lenin] ]. Incorrect attribution but, we believe, highly significant. (chap. VIII)"

"For Christianity the fundamental attitude is the transformation of the world and reality. The achievement through history of the "Kingdom of God". And in this sense the evangelical message is profoundly revolutionary, it truly aims to "know reality in order to transform it", according to the slogan that Marx borrowed from the best Jewish-Christian tradition. (chap. IX)"

"Lourdes – if believers are right – is a glimpse suddenly opened onto an Other World; it is the truth entrusted not to professors and experts, but to the illiterate; it is Heaven itself that ratifies the dogmas of a Pope, moreover "obscurantist" and "reactionary" like Pius IX: it is the mocked Catholic Mariology that has full confirmation; it is the blind who regains his sight, the cancerous person who heals, the paralytic who walks. Lourdes is – and cannot help but be – the scandal, the division, the denial of the common sense imposed by the new conformism. She has therefore not ceased her provocative role; nor, for that matter, will she ever be able to stop it. (p. 47)"

"All those who were physically healed in Lourdes have died or will die, even if for evils other than those for which they turned to Mary's intercession. [...] It is an obvious reflection, perhaps apparently banal. Yet, it allows us to clarify the Catholic's perspective in the face of the impressive dossier of "physical" healings which, at the foot of the Pyrenees, have not ceased to occur since C.E.1858. The believer, that is, knows that what is promised by the Gospel - what 'everyone' is promised - it is indeed the radical and definitive "healing" of the body too; but only when this is resurrected to eternal life. (p. 59)"

"Unique among religions, Christianity not only announces the salvation of the soul, the survival of the "spirit", but also the resurrection of the flesh. It too is destined - albeit mysteriously transfigured - to live in eternity: it is also to show this that the risen Jesus, the model and foretaste of every man's resurrection, asks for something to eat and sits at the table again with the disciples. (pp. 59-60)"

"Why is the Madonna appearing? Why didn't Jesus himself or any canonized saint appear in Lourdes (as in rue du Bac, La Salette, Pontmain, Beauraing, Fatima, to name just the last century and a half and facts approved by the Church)? But it is because – answers the theology, meditated by mystics –, according to the Catholic Creed «the Immaculate Mother of God, always Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed into celestial glory in body and soul» . Thus, the words of the dogma of the Assumption, defined and proclaimed by Pius XII only in C.E.1950 but believed in its object since the times of the Fathers of the Church both in the East and in the West (the feast of the Dormition, which has in nuce the Assumption of the Virgin Mother, it is probably the most ancient of the Marian feasts that unite the universal Church). Mary, in short, having carried in her womb the One who said: «I am the resurrection and life" (Jn 11, 25), followed the Son in his eternal destiny before any other human creature; she is the one who preceded us all, already welcomed into eternity "in body and soul". Therefore, if she appears to mortals, it is also to remember that what she already is, we too will be. Her sign and pledge, in short, in the person of herself, of that salvation we were talking about and that she will give us true health: the vision of Mary's body already "saved" is a guarantee that everyone's will be. (pp. 61-62)"

"In fact, precisely in this is the God in which the Christian believes "different" from any other: in the fact, that is, that he proposes faith to men (which is, at the same time, experience ' 'and hope, use of reason and adherence to revelation, even in what that reason surpasses); which does not require adherence to evidence (in which one must necessarily "believe" and demand to be verified, under penalty of unreasonableness). [...] Only a God who proposes himself with signs, clues, traces, imprints and who does not impose himself, appearing dazzling in his glory, can establish a free and not a necessary dependency. (pp. 78-79)"

"The Christian God proposes and does not impose, always leaving a margin of darkness that allows denial and that saves man's freedom; and, for Him, the right to forgive. (p. 91)"

"Status social, culture, wealth, even health: the very opposite of all this in Marie-Bernarde Soubirous, known as Bernadette, fourteen years old (but with the development of a ten year old, according to doctors who visited her, and not yet a woman, due to insufficient nutrition); asthmatic; stomach ache; closed in her silence as a shy and introverted person; illiterate and considered by some of her relatives incapable of learning anything; she is also uneducated in religious matters, so much so that she even ignores the mystery of the Trinity; daughter of the most miserable family in the city; resident in the cell of the municipal prison, cleared by the authorities because she was considered unhealthy for the inmates themselves; with the father not only bankrupt and with the reputation - albeit abusive - of a slacker and a drunkard, but also with a stay in prison behind him on suspicion of theft: released after nine days, he dropped the accusation, it was so inconsistent, but without proceeding to any judgment, so as to leave him with a defamatory suspicion. Let us realize: in all this, only the eyes of faith can see a mysterious conformity to the Gospel and, therefore, the stigmata of truth. Only adhering to an inverted perspective compared to the "eyes of the flesh" can make us hear the echoes of the Magnificat intoned by She of whom Bernadette Soubirous was a witness: «... she looked at the humility of her servant [ ...]; she has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; she has overthrown the mighty from their thrones, she has exalted the humble; she has filled the hungry with good things; she sent the rich away empty-handed ... »( Luke 1, 48 and 51 ff.) (p. 92)"

"In May C.E.1949, the Council of Europe was established in Strasbourg, a body then devoid of effective political powers and charged only with «laying the foundations for the construction of a European federation». Thus in the act of its foundation. The following year - therefore, in C.E.1950 - that Council announced a competition of ideas, open to all artists, for a flag of the future united Europe. A then young Alsatian designer, Arsène Heitz, participated with a sketch, where twelve white stars stood out in a circle on a blue background. As he later revealed, the idea was not accidental: devoted to the Madonna, he recited the rosary every day. Just when he heard about the European competition and decided to participate, he was reading the story of Saint Catherine Labouré and – stimulated by that reading – he had decided to procure, for himself and his wife, a «Miraculous Medal», which he had not known about until then. The stars, therefore, of his plan came from there: and, there, they came directly from the Apocalypse and from the "Woman clothed with the sun" with the crown around her head. As for blue, it was the traditional color of the Virgin. Among the 101 sketches that arrived from all over the world, "inexplicably", as Heitz himself said (who had participated in the competition without too much hope, almost only to respond to an impulse given to him by the discovery of the Medal), the Council of Europe chose his. It should be noted, among other things, that the head of the commission that made the choice was a Jew, Paul M.G.Lévy, director of the Council's Press and Information Service. Therefore, no confessional motivations were at work [...] Furthermore, to confirm the singularity of the choice, Heitz's proposal was opposed by the fact that, if there were 12 stars on the proposed flag, not as many were then the States of the Council. In fact, in the face of criticism, the designer had to reply that the twelve represented a "symbol of fullness" (and this is, in fact, also in the Old Testament: twelve, among other things, the sons of Jacob , like the 12 tribes of Israel; and therefore twelve is the number wanted by Jesus for his apostles, meaning that the Church is the "new chosen people"). Having adopted this symbolic perspective, the community authorities, when Europe's member states ended up exceeding a dozen, officially established that the number of stars on the flag was to be considered immutable. (pp. 107-108)"

"Fatima, in fact, is the name of Muhammad's favorite daughter [...] All of Islàm, beyond every school, has not forgotten a 'hadit' ' of Muhammad, a saying, that is, handed down by the oral tradition of the first disciples and considered a source of revelation alongside the Koran. That hadit preserved a word of the prophet of Islam addressed to Fatima: «You will be the mistress of women in Paradise, after Màryam». A superiority, therefore, in the Muslim sky itself, of what Christians call Regina Coeli. And, at the same time, a direct link with Fatima. The two exercise together (even if Mary is at the top) a sort of lordship in Paradise. It is not surprising, therefore, that Louis Massignon [...] saw not a random coincidence, but rather an eloquent sign in the fact that Mary, "Mistress of women" in the Muslim Paradise, chose to appear in a location hitherto unknown to many of the same Portuguese, but who bore the proper name of one who, for Muhammad, is immediately below her in the kingdom of the blessed. [...] so that Islamic pilgrims, even if unorganized, have never been lacking in Fatima and are now always growing. [...] It is singular that, in so much talk of ecumenism, Mary is the "place" where Muslims and Christians (those, at least, Catholic and Orthodox) are closer than anywhere else. (pp. 187-191)"

"Judaism – as has been said, albeit in a somewhat simplified way – is the religion of hope; the Christianity of charity; the islamism of faith. (p. 191)"

"The Marian dogmas are, as we know, four in all: perpetual virginity and divine motherhood; then, after almost fifteen centuries of debate and exploration of the mystery, here is the conception without the stain of original sin and the assumption into heaven. Well, these truths have been codified and solemnly protected as dogmas, that is, as basic and indisputable truths of the faith, not so much out of devotion to Mary, but as a defense of faith in Jesus. In fact, if we reflect on their content , we realize that they reaffirm the authentic faith in Christ as true God and true man: two natures in one Person. They then reiterate the fundamental eschatological expectation, indicating in Mary the immortal destiny that awaits us all. And, finally, they secure the faith, now threatened, in a creator God (it is one of the meanings of the more misunderstood truth about Mary's perpetual virginity), a God who can freely intervene even on matter. (p. 236)"

"Mary is «figure», «image» of the Church. Both have motherhood as their primary vocation. Thus, looking at her, this Church is protected from a "male chauvinist" model, which sees her as an instrument to pursue a socio-political action program. In Mary, her figure and icon, the Church rediscovers the face of her mother, it does not degenerate into an involution that transforms it into a sort of party, into an organization, into a pressure group serving interests humans. To repeat, here, the words of Ratzinger: «If Mary no longer finds a place in certain theologies and ecclesiologies of today, the reason is simple and dramatic: they have reduced faith to an abstraction. And an abstraction doesn't know what to do with a mother." (pp. 237-238)"

"Verlaine, the maudit poet, but with a strong religious torment that ended up prevailing, speaking of the love for Mary: «all other loves are orders». With similar words, he wanted to underline that "free" character of Marian devotion that the Church has always safeguarded. Over 20 centuries, only a few dogmas have been proclaimed about her di lei: which among other things, we know, are at the service and shelter of her di lei Son di lei, well before her di lei. Only to these defined truths does the Catholic owe homage. Everything else, regarding Mary, is left to the free sensitivity and initiative of the believer. (p. 274)"

"Mariology is closely linked to Christology: abandoning or even just downsizing the former means calling into question the latter as well. (p. 322)"

"Who may you confide in, who may you turn to to alleviate the anguish and loneliness a little? [...] Will you then turn to the politician, the trade unionist, the sociologist? But all these gentlemen have to sell theories and strategies only for the strong, the healthy, the young. The old man and his prospect of death are doubly taboo because they undermine both their power and their depth: what will become of their authority and their words when they themselves are nothing but exes?Think of one of the new, truly powerful people of Western societies: the union boss, at least in certain contemporary Italian versions; not, it’s clear, in the courageous and beneficial ones of past eras, or even today in many countries, perhaps in those where - according to the theories - trade unionists would no longer be necessary because the workers themselves would already have the power... Someone, here, it’ll risk scandal more than ever: unions and trade unionists - a revered dogma dictates - cannot be spoken of except well, or rather very well. Here we should always speak in terms of noble, disinterested champions of the ideal, of knights without blemish and without fear of Humanity. But I laugh at those who break the statuettes of old saints to build new ones. I refuse to consider categories or people not on a case-by-case basis, based on objectivity but on the basis of prejudices, whether favorable or unfavorable. I do not recognize any human institution as sacred: if I want the "Sacred" I know where to look for it; I prefer the original, not the imitations. (Chapter II, Years to life and not life to years)"

"If in C.E.1953 [23 May] the violence of the sky knocked down the star [Emblem placed on the top of the spire of the Mole Antonelliana], in C.E.1904 lightning had knocked down, at its peak, the Angel of Light , who had the regulatory five-pointed Masonic star on his head. The same one that had been affixed to the lapels of the army uniforms, the New Religious Order for the New Italy, with the king in place of the Pope, the generals in place of the bishops, the officer class as the new clergy, the troops as the people penitent of God, devoted to obedience, poverty, discipline, honor, silence and, finally, to the sacrifice of his life. And all in the name of the new faith, that of the Motherland. Nothing surprising, everyone knows that you only fight one religion to build another. (I understood)"

"But, since he was mentioned as the inevitable Duce: the people of Turin called him, as you know, Cerüti. With the Piedmontese «u». As a proletarian from Romagna, with consequent inferiority complexes, he probably was in awe of Turin, he seemed to fear its elegant snobbery: it was still the city of the aristocracy, it was the capital of fashion, with its related institution (which the Regime itself, moreover, had founded) [....] –, Benito defined Turin as «half French» (chap. III)"

"Turin wasn’t a small copy of Paris also because, unlike Paris, it was not a city of riots or barricades. It’s a city that produces eccentrics, loners, geniuses and sometimes brilliant types, outsiders, isolated writers and painters, some anarchists but theorists, rarely bombers, causes murders and suicides (for the latter, one of the highest, if not the highest , Italian percentage, in sad competition with Trieste, the city on the opposite border), but the mass is of calm people, of subjects, often grumpy and hypercritical but, in the end, obedient. In its history it never chased away its dukes and then kings, it never plotted against them. Unlike Paris, which was periodically on the barricades, Turin rose up only twice. And both not for vague ideological objectives, but for the concreteness of bread: in C.E.1864 when, treacherously, the transfer of the capital arrived; and in C.E.1917, when the State asked to fast with war rations and at the same time to work at an accelerated pace in the factories producing for the front. There was also movement in the last days of April 1945. But, here too, for a very concrete issue: above all to prevent the destruction of industrial plants, on whose work future life would depend. Once again, the awareness, dictated by common sense, that the interests of entrepreneurs coincided with those of employees prevailed over the myth of the "class struggle". Without factories, no profits for the boss; but not even bread for the workers. (chapter III)"

"«How many divisions does the pope have?». Stalin's question found, more than forty years later, a first answer in Warsaw, then in Budapest, then in Moscow itself from where, as we write, Gorbachev respectfully asks [ [Pope John Paul II|John Paul]] to be able to meet him to see if and how he may help him to bring the USSR and its satellites out of a history that is not only no longer practicable but now intolerable. (p. VII)"

"This book , in fact, is an effective sum of the perspective of life and thought of a man who moves as a protagonist on the scene of the history of everyone, not just his faithful. (p. VII)"

"La passion de convaincre, the passion to convince: this, for Blaise Pascal, the distinctive sign of every Christian who is truly convinced that he has found it in the Gospel – or rather in the personal encounter with Christ – the truth about man and humanity. That passion seems to entirely pervade the pope "who came from afar". (IX)"

"The Christian Karol Wojtyla is convinced that the man has lost the keys that allow him to open the drawer inside which is the man's instruction booklet. For him, brothers in humanity are certainly not "bad": they are simply lost, confused, lost, plagiarized by bad teachers, by deceptive suggestions. (IX)"

"Vittorio Messori, Inquiry into Christianity, Oscar Mondadori, Milan, C.E.2003. ISBN 88-04-52048-5"

"Vittorio Messori, Hypothesis on Jesus, Società Editrice Internazionale, Turin, C.E.1976."

"Vittorio Messori, Hypothesis about Mary: facts, clues, enigmas, Edizioni Ares, Milan, C.E.2005. ISBN 88-8155-338-4"

"Vittorio Messori, Bet on death, Società Editrice Internazionale, 7th edition, Turin, C.E.1987, ISBN 88-05-03746-X"

"Vittorio Messori, Aldo Cazzullo, The Mystery of Turin, Mondadori editore – Le Scie, Milan, C.E.2004. ISBN 88-04-52070-1"

"John Paul II, Words about man, edited by Angelo Montonati, preface by Vittorio Messori, BUR, C.E.1989. ISBN 88-17-11517-7"