Journalists From Italy

"Karol Wojtyla burst onto the scene in the 1980s with the solemn gait of the most famous pope in history. Famous, but not celebrated. [...] After fifteen months of pontificate, Pope Karol Wojtyla is no longer an unknown figure: yet the more the world knows him, the less it loves him."

"(About the Jehovah's Witnesses ) Their founder was a former Presbyterian and then Adventist, Charles Taze Russell. He preached the imminent end of this evil world and the advent of God's Kingdom on earth. And so he instilled in his followers the feverish activism of the great eve. They went from house to house, in pairs, to spread the Bible and a magazine, ‘The Watchtower’, founded in Brooklyn in 1879 and since then translated into all the languages of the world, the repository of their doctrine. A true organisational talent, Russell was the first to apply door-to-door advertising methods, the potential of a popular press such as Reader's Digest, and the appeal of the nascent cinematic arts to religious preaching. A magnificent film was, in fact, their advertisement."

"Well, science has not yet been able to prove that the vital principle of the human organism resides in any organ of the body. The integrative system of the body, considered as a “whole”, cannot in fact be localised in a single organ, however important, such as the heart or the brain. Brain and heart activity presuppose life, but they are not strictly speaking the cause of life. Activities should not be confused with their principle. Life is something elusive that transcends the individual material organs of the living being and cannot be measured materially, let alone created: it is a mystery of nature, which science is right to investigate, but over which science has no control. When science claims to create or manipulate life, it becomes philosophy and religion itself, slipping into “scientism”."

"Is it right to declare a person dead based on a legal convention whose sole purpose is to facilitate organ transplants?"

"Unfortunately, all organs, with the exception of corneas, have this unfortunate characteristic: in order to be transplanted, they must be removed from the “donor's” body while their heart is still beating, their blood is still circulating, their skin is still rosy and warm, their kidneys are still secreting urine, and any pregnancy is still continuing, to the extent that it is necessary to administer curare drugs to prevent unpleasant reactions when the surgeon makes the incision. Do these seem like corpses to you? Yes, transplant surgeons assure us. No, according to a law of the state: in fact, “corpse means: ‘The human body deprived of cardiorespiratory and cerebral functions’” (Ministry of Health circular no. 24 of 24 June 1993)."

"Alessandro Nanni Costa, director of the National Transplant Centre, argues that in 40 years, the criteria for determining brain death “have never been questioned by the scientific community and are applied in all scientifically advanced countries”. But not in Japan. Is Japan to be considered a scientifically backward country?"

"(About w:fr:Adrien Candiard) He could have followed in his father's footsteps, this young man who will turn 40 on 31 October. When he decided to embrace the novitiate, he was one of the most highly regarded ghostwriters for Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was running in the French presidential primaries. He left DSK halfway through the race, almost as if he had foreseen the sex scandal that would force the socialist economist, who had since become managing director of the International Monetary Fund, to resign in New York in 2011."

"Regarding the Finnish girl who was raped in Rome the other night, one feels like asking her: didn't anyone ever teach you not to accept lifts from strangers, especially at 4 o'clock in the morning? I'm sure it's dangerous everywhere, even in Finland."

"It also makes one think that the myth of equality with men is having perverse effects, and that many girls now go out at night without taking the most basic precautions. It would be nice, of course, if men changed and accepted this new freedom for women, but we know that this is not the case, and perhaps never will be. A little realism therefore does no harm, and it is better to avoid dangerous situations. It is certainly not by forcing reality and trying to bend it to our desires that we change the world."

"The ancient idea that men must protect women is perhaps one of the first customs that feminism has erased, since it meant that women had the illusion of protecting themselves. Women, especially young women, need a social context that surrounds them with a protective shield, and they need supportive eyes to watch over them and perhaps even warn them in case of danger."

"I would like to nominate [for the title of Doctor of the Church] women of the twentieth century who have not even been declared saints: such as Adrienne von Speyr, who accepted with simplicity and profound humility her role as a mystic and at the same time a doctor, wife, woman of her time, and who wrote beautiful texts that are now almost forgotten."

"Mulieris dignitatem had the merit of introducing a new point of view: at a time in history when women's emancipation was achieved through the adoption of male behaviour patterns and a consequent denial of the value of motherhood, the Pope's proposal seemed to suggest that emancipation should and could take place while keeping alive the specificity of women, finally recognised as a value, as a form of genius."

"The discovery of female genius was the work of John Paul II, who made it the heart of his apostolic letter Mulieris dignitatem, published in 1988 as the conclusion of the synod on lay people."

"Interviewer: Isn't there an underlying tone of extreme pessimism? Is it so absurd to think that technology can be used for good? Scaraffia: Jacques Ellul didn't think so. For him, it was simply impossible. He even lived in the countryside to protect himself from the effects of progress. His observations on technology are certainly marked by pessimism. But his conception of the world is animated by Christian optimism. He was convinced that God acts in history and that, therefore, He will intervene to save man from himself. There is a tendency to separate his philosophical and sociological writings from his theological ones. But for him, the relationship with technology is inextricably linked to that with God. And, in particular, to the function that God has entrusted to man in the world: that of knowing but not destroying, of dominating reality while respecting it, of aspiring to the best while preserving a sense of limits."

"[Philosophers and psychologists] have revealed the sense of openness that motherhood brings towards the transcendent, towards the “infinite world”, to use the words of Clotilde Leguil, who writes that recognising that the female body is radically different from the male body “implies a transition from a closed world to an infinite universe”. Leguil quotes the verses of the poet Antoine Tudal, much loved by Lacan: “Between man and love, there is woman. Between man and woman, there is a world. Between man and the world, there is a wall”."

"(About q:it:Francesca Cabrini) Not only her relationship with space, but also her relationship with time was modern, so dominated by haste and speed: “Hurry, hurry and cheerfully, my daughters,” she wrote to the nuns, even urging them to act “ardently and quickly”, a phrase with an almost futuristic flavour, which perfectly conveys the sense of her movement in the world."

"The scientific justification for this choice lies in a peculiar definition of the nervous system, now being challenged by new research that questions the very fact that brain death causes the disintegration of the body. As demonstrated in 1992 by the sensational case of a woman who entered an irreversible coma and was declared brain dead before it was discovered that she was pregnant, it was decided to allow her to continue with the pregnancy, which proceeded normally until a miscarriage occurred. This case and other similar ones that ended with the birth of a child have called into question the idea that in this condition the bodies are already dead, corpses from which organs can be removed. It therefore seems that Jonas was right when he suspected that the new definition of death was motivated more by interest, i.e. the need for organs for transplantation, than by real scientific progress."

"We Christians know this, or should know it: our faith is characterised by et et, not aut aut. We are not exclusivists. God is one and triune. He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Jesus is God and man, true God and true man. For Christians, man is flesh and spirit, body and soul. Christians like to integrate and include, not erect barriers. Through the Incarnation, God became man. The Church itself lives by the principle of et et. It is a Church of prayer and action, of great ascetics and great workers, of contemplation and mission. Ora et labora, not ora aut labora. The Church has preachers and confessors, cloistered monks and nuns, and street priests. The Church welcomes everyone: poor and rich, educated and uneducated, young and old."

"When Bergoglio was elected, and I saw him take the name Francis for expressly ideological reasons and appear at the balcony of St Peter's, bowing to ask for the blessing of the people, after saying “good evening” instead of “Praised be Jesus Christ” (“good evening” which, of course, was very much appreciated by the enemies of the Church), I said to myself: “Here we go!" The prediction had come true. After that, it was a succession of painful confirmations, especially for me after Amoris laetitia."

"Interviewer: ‘Is Italy still a Catholic country? Aldo Maria Valli: If we look at the figures for baptisms and children receiving their first communion, it would seem so. But very often it is a superficial Catholicism, linked to family tradition. Participation in the sacrament is more of an occasion for celebration and serves to strengthen family ties. As soon as confirmation comes around, there is a great exodus. In any case, compared to other countries with an ancient Christian tradition, two signs indicate that Catholic values are still alive in Italy: the stability of the family based on marriage (which, despite everything, remains a goal for many young people) and widespread solidarity, which manifests itself in voluntary work."

"Today we have a reigning pontiff who uses the same language as the world and proposes the same theses as dominant secularist thought. On more than one public occasion the pope has avoided giving a blessing using the Trinitarian formula in order not to offend the sensibilities of non-believers and those of other faiths."

"(About Maria Montessori) Italians know her as a maternal and reassuring lady who appeared on the thousand lire banknote for a long time, the only woman depicted on our banknotes, but in her long life she was a transgressive and restless woman, so much so that when asked what nationality she was, she replied: “I live in the sky, my country is a star that revolves around the sun and is called Earth”."

"At the Paris Exhibition, the Soviet pavilion and the Italian Futurist section represented the cutting edge of artistic avant-garde. It featured the architectural concepts and theater decoration and set designs of Enrico Prampolini and Giacomo Balla, and the panels of Fortunato Depero, with their vivid colors, embroidered figures, and cloth superimposed on cloth, perfectly executed and of the finest taste, with a stylized composition that was schematic and sometimes caricatural. Some of his painted wooden puppets also attest to his inventiveness, with their summary volumes and search for curious and effective rhythms, often with happy results."

"The undersigned was among the first to denounce the inadequacy of the Pope's comments on terrorist violence and to gently suggest that he reread Benedict XVI's lecture in Regensburg, when Ratzinger, with foresight, confronted Islam with the problem that this religion has with the use of the sword, that is, force and coercion."

"[...] Maria Goretti was also greatly admired for her humble origins, redeemed by the strength with which she defended her dignity as a human being and daughter of God. Her cult therefore had social significance, as Palmiro Togliatti understood when he cited her as an example to young communists in a speech in the 1950s."

"The certainty of the law is not called into question by the fact that Valerio Fioravanti, after paying his heavy debts to justice, is out, but by the certainty that countless other criminals will never pay their debts, albeit less heavy ones."

"In any case, if there were any doubts about the “line of firmness” at the time the events took place, today there can be none. It is no coincidence that terrorism began to lose momentum after the Moro case and dissolved within a few years. This proves that the line of firmness was right not only from an ethical and legal point of view but also from a practical one. If we had listened to Craxi, Mancini, Signorile, Pace, Liguori and Deaglio, that is, the entire area that flirted with terrorism, today Renato Curcio would be the master of the country."

"If there is one case in which the sentence has been served in full, it is that of Fioravanti. He was 23, little more than a teenager, when he was arrested and imprisoned, and he is now 51, a mature man approaching old age. He spent the best years of his life in prison, which no one can give him back, just as no one can give back the lives of his victims. It was a fair and sufficient punishment, at least according to the principles of our Constitution. Having declared himself neither repentant nor dissociated from his terrorist past, which includes other murders, which he admitted [...] Fioravanti did not benefit from the substantial reductions granted by the infamous 'reward legislation' that released murderers who were certainly much worse than him from a moral point of view after only a few years in prison, but he was released only in accordance with the general principles of our legal system."

"The Constitution establishes that punishment must aim at the re-education of the convicted person and their reintegration into society. This is clearly not possible if they remain in prison until their death. This is why even life prisoners can be released from prison if they have served 28 years, behaved well and “in such a way as to make their repentance credible”."

"In any case, the government, led by Giulio Andreotti, and the Christian Democrats, with the decisive support of the Italian Communist Party, decided to say no to the blackmail of the Red Brigades and Aldo Moro. It was the only way forward. [...] The very survival of the state was at stake. What would the Red Brigades have done if the government had given in to blackmail? They would have kidnapped the first Mr Rossi who came within their reach and started all over again. A downward spiral would have begun, leading only to the dissolution of the state and the victory of the terrorists."

"The certainty of punishment is not undermined, or even almost nullified for some crimes, by these general, fair, just and humane principles, but by the abnormal length of our trials, which means that the majority of crimes (especially financial, economic and those against the public administration, in short, the crimes of “the powers that be”, politicians and privileged citizens) fall under the axe of the statute of limitations. This already unsustainable duration has been exacerbated in the last fifteen years, after Mani Pulite, by a series of so-called “guarantee” laws with which the Code of Criminal Procedure has been crammed and which, in reality, by ensuring the statute of limitations, only guarantee the impunity of the aforementioned gentlemen."

"It is shameful that even today the Christian Democrats are still being accused of the only occasion on which, by sacrificing their leader, they demonstrated that sense of statehood that they have always been accused of lacking. What did Moro ask for? In those letters, the “distinguished statesman”, the man who had governed the country for over thirty years, asked the state to renounce the principles on which it was founded, its laws and its institutions in order to save his life."

"For the first time, a prime minister has found the courage to speak clearly and bluntly to the Americans, even telling them exactly what they need to hear. Who was it? Mario Monti at the G20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico."

"When I appeared on television and radio talk shows, I stated that during the first Gulf War, ‘smart bombs’ and ‘surgical missiles’ had killed 32,195 Iraqi children, who are no less children than ours, I expected a reaction from my interlocutors, who would tell me that it was a provocation, that I was lying, that it was not true, that it could not be true. But they could not do that because these are Pentagon figures and therefore above suspicion. I expected cries of outrage, of horror, of disgust. Instead, nothing. Silence. The topic was glossed over and quickly moved on to Berlusconi, Rutelli, Fini, Follini, Prodi or other nonentities of politics and life. I don't think it's always indifference. It's also passivity."

"*If he had been born in another country, Giulio Andreotti would have been a great statesman. In Italy, he could only be half a statesman, having to devote the other half to the often shady intrigues that characterise Italian political life. But at the hour of your death, we bid you farewell, “divo Giulio”, with regret. With you, a long season of Italian politics comes to an end, and, given what has come after, certainly not the worst. If the God you believed in, going to Mass early every morning, exists, he will surely be kind to you.'"

"Paul Tibbets is the pilot who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. In 1985, a journalist from The Columbus Dispatch, Mike Harden, interviewed him and, in light of the appalling consequences of that bomb, asked him, “Would you do it again today?”. “Of course,” he replied, 'I was brought up to obey orders. In my day, if you received an order from someone in authority, you obeyed." I don't understand why what was true for Paul Tibbets at that time should not also be true for Erich Priebke. Why did the Americans win the war and the Germans lose? [...] If Priebke had refused to obey Kappler, he would have been a hero. But he wasn't Salvo D'Acquisto, he wasn't a hero. He was a man with the intellectual and moral depth of a servant dressed in a soldier's uniform. And I would really like to see among those journalists, opinion makers and television presenters who today act so tough and “beautiful souls” who, in 1944, would have dared to resist an order that came directly from Adolf Hitler."

"Milena Gabanelli claims that ‘ordinary people don't need more than fifty euros a week’. Where does she live, in a monastery? A good bottle of wine and a packet of cigarettes already cost 15 euros a day. The moralism of the left is unbearable. And now I understand why so many people, without being crooks, voted for Berlusconi. Because by defending his criminal freedom, Berlusconi also defended, by extension, everyone's freedom from the excessive power of the state. Bring back Cainano immediately."

"Moro is not the imaginary saint depicted in the self-serving official iconography. [...] Moro is the man who emerges from his letters, the letters he wrote while he was a prisoner of the Red Brigades, which are the most painful and humiliating words ever to come out of a prison. The “distinguished statesman” who, when push came to shove, renounced all the principles of the rule of law, seemed to consider the state and its institutions as his own private property, and invited his party friends and the leading representatives of the Republic to do the same. The man who asks for mercy for himself but, in ninety letters, has not a word for the men of his escort, killed for him, and indeed, the only mention he makes of them is coldly bureaucratic, describing them as “administratively inadequate”. He is a politician who confirms the tradition of the Italian ruling class, ready to demand everything, even life, from the humble, but never willing, on the rare occasions when it happens, to pay personally (think of Benito Mussolini fleeing under a German overcoat, or the way in which the king and Pietro Badoglio abandoned Rome). To say these things about a man who died as Moro did may seem, indeed it is, cruel. But it is the truth. And since I wrote these things when Moro was still alive (“Distinguished statesman or poor man?”. Il Lavoro, 4 April 1978), I have no qualms about repeating them now that he is dead and other pieces are coming together to complete the picture."

"Let it be said in passing that Richard Nixon was the best American president of the post-war period: he ended the Vietnam War, opened up to China forty years ahead of his time, eliminated the misunderstanding of the “gold exchange standard”, and was not a mafioso. But because, unlike Kennedy (who started the Vietnam War, botched the dangerous “Bay of Pigs” affair, brought the world to the brink of World War III alongside Khrushchev, and was close friends with notorious gangsters such as Sam Giancana), he had an ugly face, he went down in history as “Nixon the hangman”."

"In September 1997, Emma Bonino, European Union Commissioner, requested to visit Afghanistan. The Taliban had no obligation to allow her entry, as the EU did not recognise their government. However, they granted her a visa and treated her with kindness and courtesy, as they had always done with guests, even during the dramatic period of the US aggression in October 2001, and as is the Afghan tradition. Emma was able to visit Afghanistan and see everything she wanted. On 28 September, followed by a retinue of 19 people, including EU delegates, journalists, photographers and cameramen, she entered a hospital in Kabul and headed straight for the women's ward, where the photographers began to take pictures and the cameramen began to film. This was extremely foolish behaviour because in Islamic culture the reproduction of the human figure is, in principle, forbidden. Just look at a Persian carpet; it is decorated with plants, animals and fish, but there are no human figures. And this was even more true in Taliban Afghanistan. After all, even in our country, you cannot photograph or film patients without their consent or the authorisation of the hospital management. The “Corps for the Promotion of Virtue and Punishment of Vice” arrived, grabbed Bonino and the others and took them to the nearest police station. For such an offence, the punishment was flogging with “sacred rods”. Bonino was explained how things worked in those parts and shortly afterwards she was released by the officials, who were perplexed and a little disgusted. They would have done better to flog her. With the “sacred rods”, of course. Perhaps she would have understood what, as a good Western radical, she has never understood: that the sensibilities and customs of others also deserve respect. Instead, she wanted to make an international case out of it and, back in Brussels, she got the EU to cut humanitarian funds for Afghanistan."

"Fallaci is a great journalist for the same reason she is a mediocre novelist. She is an enormous, protruding uterus that embraces a wide swath of reality. But what she gains in breadth when she writes articles, she loses in depth when she writes books."

"The judiciary is like the referee in a football match. You can say that the referee makes mistakes, that he is unprepared, that he doesn't see, but if some players claim that he is corrupt and refuse to accept his decisions when they are against them but demand that they be upheld when they are in their favour, the game quickly ends in a brawl because, sooner or later, all the other players will behave in the same way. Metaphor aside, the social contract that holds us together is broken and we descend the steep slope of anarchy and civil war."

"Luigi Manconi, sociologist, political scientist, university professor, former spokesperson for the Green Party, former member of the Olive Tree coalition, unwisely appointed undersecretary of justice in the Prodi II government, after following in the footsteps of Bersani in calling Beppe Grillo a “fascist” and Antonio Di Pietro, he also labelled, by transitive property, the newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano as “close to the positions of Grillo and Di Pietro”. And if we are not exactly “fascists” for Manconi, we are still right-wing thugs. [...] Manconi, 64, is one of those happy people who were born yesterday and have the enviable ability to completely erase their past. Luigi Manconi was an important leader of Lotta Continua. In the 1970s, he took to the streets with his comrades and, in addition to smashing shop windows and, when necessary, a few skulls, he shouted “Fascist, black beret, your place is in the cemetery”, “Killing a fascist is not a crime”. [...] The truth is that Grillo [...] is frightening with his 15-20% approval rating in the polls. And so he is a “fascist”. [...] It is the fate of my generation, contemporary with that of Manconi, to have to take lessons in good political manners from those who, in words and deeds, were squadristi, and even worse."

"In reality, no representative democracy is a democracy, but rather a system of organised minorities that prevail over the majority of citizens taken individually, suffocating them by severely limiting their freedom and keeping them in a state of minority. It is a system of oligarchies or polyarchies."

"In the 1950s and early 1960s, Christmas was still a holiday that had something to do with the spirit and the soul. You didn't have to be Christian to believe that something extraordinary was happening on that night, which for believers was the birth of Jesus, and for others (for me, for example, who am from Russia, where we celebrate not Christ but “Father Frost”) it was something magical and enchanted, irrational and incomprehensible. We seriously believed that on Christmas Day, people were all a little bit kinder."

"But the problem is not the Americans and those who command them. It is us Europeans. It is since that day, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, that we should have understood that the United States had become, from forced allies, adversaries if not enemies. We Europeans have no interest in following the United States in its repressive policy towards the Arab-Muslim world, if only because it is on our doorstep and not ten thousand kilometres away. And in the economy, it was the Americans, pursuing the insane dream of mortgaging the future for ages to come, who caused a devastating crisis that they then dumped on Europe, even allowing themselves to blame it for a crisis that started with them and further undermining it with negative forecasts from their rating agencies. For the Americans, we have always been “useful idiots” to be used as they please."

"I have gone blind. My career as a writer and journalist is over. I have gone blind. Or, to be more precise, I am partially blind or “visually impaired”, to use the convoluted language of doctors. Basically, I can no longer read and therefore cannot write either. For a writer, this is the end, if you like, and in its own way romantic, but I would gladly have spared myself it."

"The political power of a TV network does not lie solely or primarily in the information it provides directly about politics, but in the culture it disseminates through its entire programming schedule. If in 1994 the entrepreneur Berlusconi, despite running for office for the first time and being a political novice, was able to win the elections with percentages similar to those of a large mass party such as the Christian Democrats, it was not because his three networks campaigned for him (at that time, his opponent also controlled three networks), but because for a dozen years, owning the entire private national television system, he had been able to educate Italians in his culture and preferences."

"In fifty years' time, books such as The Force of Reason will be viewed with the same horror with which we view Mein Kampf today, and we will wonder how it was possible."

"Theologians, both Christian and Muslim, especially in the Middle Ages, have always been struck by the power of money and the devastation it can wreak on the human soul. More secularly, orthodox Marxists have condemned it as a “means of appropriating other people's money”. Psychoanalysts liken it to excrement, because of the pleasure derived from both expelling it and retaining it."