People From Veneto

"Journalist: So, not enough is known about the artistic and cultural heritage of the Eastern Churches? Cardinal Gugerotti: No, it is not known. Decades ago, there was a document from the then Congregation for Catholic Education, which prescribed that every Latin seminary should include teaching on the Eastern Churches. It is probably one of the most disregarded documents among the many disregarded documents produced by the Holy See. Journalist: Why do you think that is? Cardinal Gugerotti: Because there was a period when the humanities were considered more important for the integration of the seminary curriculum than the historical or philological-artistic aspects. So it became a mammoth programme, covering everything, but these fundamental aspects for understanding Christianity were left out. This is very serious to me because it means a partial knowledge of one's own identity. It also potentially means a source of controversy between one person and another or, conversely, the premise of ecstatic adoration of the other: both attitudes that have no foundation and are not at all useful."

"(About Syria) It is a destroyed country. Twelve years of war, and above all the results of certain aspects of the sanctions, have made the people miserable. I was in Syria 25 years ago, I don't recognise it, it's the third world. Salaries are almost non-existent, there is no work, there is huge emigration, cities are destroyed by bombing; I can't see the difference between bombing and the fall caused by the earthquake. People are worn out, they have no hope. A bit of Eastern fatalism helps, where they say, ‘It's okay, it happened, let's hope for God’: Muslims say it, Christians say it with the same phrase in Arabic. The current situation of war and sanctions makes it very difficult to help them: it takes a long time to get visas, sending money is impossible, and then there are areas that are under different controls. And there are some groups that don't let anything through, except to those they decide. And I must say that many European countries also go through dissident groups on the ground because they have a more similar political position, but they do not check where this money goes and to whom. If it were not for some Franciscans who, with mental gymnastics and an infinite imagination that only Easterners have, manage to find more or less legal alternative channels, people would have nothing. I went there first and foremost to bring the Holy Father's blessing, closeness and affection, but also to provide practical help and to tell the organisations what they should not do when sending aid."

"What emerges from this brief but well-documented summary is that Rome has always been home to a significant number of Easterners and Eastern communities. This applies not only to the Empire but also to the Church. The Roman Church was heavily populated by Eastern communities that preserved their distinctiveness for a long time. Readers may be surprised to learn that eleven popes were Greek and almost ten were Syriac. This means that their presence was not marginal. Rome, caput mundi, was also a city in which Easterners identified themselves as integrated into its fabric, and not simply as small communities of emigrants."

"As Church, we are called to discern God's voice and read history not just with human criteria but especially in the light of God's word and there we can discover where the Lord wants to lead us, as a Church, as a society, as a single faithful."

"Even today God may continue to call people to Himself, so that others may discover the mercy and the forgiveness of God, so that others may know that they have a Father who is in heaven. Without our testimony, the Gospel could not continue to manifest that God loves man. In fact, this is our message, the message of which we are heralds: God loves man."

"Today, ecumenism in Ukraine is still a dream."

"Cardinal Gugerotti: I get the impression that very often the West, with all its sophistication, is accustomed to talking as if we were a group of old ladies playing bridge on an island surrounded by caimans. Journalist: You mean, from a position that is a little too "comfortable"? Cardinal Gugerotti: Yes, we are used to not having wars that directly involve us, but we could have them the day after tomorrow, and in any case they are already within our borders. All the conditions are there. The Pope often speaks of a war in pieces, and now the pieces are in danger of coming together very easily."

"The Eastern world observes Lent very strictly. One of the things that Easterners are most passionate about is knowing how much you fast. It may be a naive question, but generally it stems from the perception that fasting is a sign of how seriously you take God and how much you understand that God is the only essential thing. Therefore, you must distance yourself from all the little idols that systematically tend to replace Him. This is what fasting is really about: abstaining from what risks becoming the centre of the day, taking the place of God. Prayer and fasting, which increase during Lent, are a reaffirmation for Easterners that life belongs to God, that space belongs to God."

"The Church discovers its unity in the name of Francis."

"(About the Gaza war and Israelian raids) We have returned to the law of the jungle, well represented by very modern weapons, but it is still the law of the club. We hoped that, especially with Humanism, the Renaissance and the great cultures of antiquity, it had been overcome, but we realise that this is not the case for the moment. [...] The feeling is that hatred has grown exponentially in recent times. The delicate problem is that there is no international body capable of mediating. There are individual bodies that decide to be the masters of the world. This is another issue. This is not the spirit in which the United Nations or other organisations were created, nor, to tell the truth, the European Union. There is a strong institutional weakness in international organisations."

"I’m increasingly convinced that we have in our hands an effective answer to come out of the crisis, even if at times we are not always aware of it: this answer is a University that functions well, namely, a University that is an inexhaustible place of dialogue between faith and reason, a fervent forge of formation of formators."

"Be prophetic in a deteriorating social political situation. Christians are looking for direction and leadership."

"You lifted me but I must lift you, the Christian communities. Living and sharing our faith through different experiences is a shared responsibility and I enjoyed my share of experiences with faith. Thank God for all that happened."

"The Japanese by nature struggle to express their feelings, even with the idea of not loading their problems on others. So, in this cultural context, a verbal message and effective closeness and solidarity on behalf of those who do not criticize, but only encourage and pray, has a great value."

"In Japan, there is in reality a great need for religious values, there are some faithful who practice two different religions. But the Church is not able to satisfy this thirst for religion because its strategy is mistaken: the Church must not limit itself to teaching Catholic doctrine, faith, and traditions, but must find a way to connect these with the culture and everyday problems of the Japanese, avoiding the fracture between the teaching of doctrine and everyday life in Japan. Obviously, this is an extremely difficult task."

"When Sonia Gandhi's government came back to power for a second term, nobody was more delighted than the denizens of Delhi's drawing rooms. They pretended that their support for Sonia was because of their 'secular' and 'socialist' convictions. But as someone who understood this milieu well, I knew it was really because the Dynasty represented for them a vindication of their class and confirmation that the people of that India that lay beyond their tiny, elite, English-speaking world was as certain as they were that India was ruled best when it was ruled by its natural-born ruling class. Prime ministers from the wilds of Gandhiji’s 'real India' like Deve Gowda, Charan Singh and Chandrashekhar had shown that they did not have the mass appeal that the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty did. 'You see, dear, Sonia may well come from a humble background, but you have to admit that she is more like a maharani than most maharanis. She has learned how to rule.'"

"Mighty editors and TV stars of Lutyens' Delhi virtually became Sonia's public relations agents. So the picture created by the media was of a highly intelligent, compassionate political leader whose only reason for being in public life was her desire to do something for India's 'poor'. They knew that she was India's de facto prime minister but nobody ever wrote this, just as nobody ever wrote that her National Advisory Council was more powerful than poor Dr Manmohan Singh's cabinet. They knew that Rahul was apolitical and confused about economic and governance issues, but they kept quiet about these things and accepted him as the heir by birth to the democratic throne of India."

"India in the 1970s was a land of horrible poverty. The death rate for newborn babies was more than 100 per thousand. In Gandhiji's 'real India', it was hard to find a village of 'pucca' houses or people in those villages who could write their names. These were things never discussed in the drawing rooms in which Rajiv and Sonia spent their evenings, so the India of poverty, disease, deprivation and dirt never intruded into the life of the woman who would one day become de facto Empress of India. Later she loved saying in the handful of interviews she gave that she had never understood why anyone saw her as a foreigner because that is not how she saw herself. And the carefully vetted interviewers never asked why then she had become an Indian citizen only after her husband became a politician."

"Notwithstanding Dr Singh's discomfort with the NAC, intellectual differences between Sonia and him were never as sharp as projected by both her supporters and critics. Such projection, when it came from her supporters, was part of her image and brand-building. Sonia was to be projected as the 'caring socialist concerned about the welfare of the poor', while Dr Singh was to be blamed for being too fiscally conservative and pro-business. Indeed, Dr Singh, essentially a Keynesian, ended up being wrongly portrayed a 'neo-liberal' economist."

"A couple of years before Sonia Gandhi took charge of the Congress, the communist ideologue Mohit Sen wrote a persuasive column in the Times of India underlining the historic role Sonia would be called upon to play and urging her to do so. The first woman president of the Indian National Congress, he argued, was also a European woman, Annie Besant. The party, he stressed, should once again be led by another. When Mohit's column landed on my table—I was then the editorial page editor of the Times of India—I was amused and surprised. Mohit was an 'uncle', a close friend of my father from their time together in Hyderabad, and the person from whom I received my first lessons in Marxism. I called Mohit and told him that his suggestion that Sonia should take charge of the Congress was an outlandish idea. As the political party of India's freedom struggle, surely it had to have a future independent of the Nehru-Gandhi family? How could he suggest that Sonia become the party's president merely because she was Rajiv's widow? I told him people would laugh at him for his political naivete and suggested the column be junked. He was most offended and threatened to go elsewhere if I refused to publish his piece. Finally, I agreed to use it because of my affection and regard for him. Mohit's column was the first credible public call for Sonia's induction into public life."

"The creation of the NAC and Sonia's choice of its members was explained away as a recognition of the growing importance and influence of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), that claimed to represent civil society, in policymaking. However, in actual practice it created a parallel policy structure that sought to project Sonia as the voice of civil society and Dr Singh as the representative of government. While Dr Singh realized that he had no option but to live with this situation, and never complained about it, it always seemed to me that he was not too comfortable with it, even if he was willing to see merit in the ideas that came out of the NAC."

"The manner of creation of the NAC, by executive order, was no different from Nehru's creation of the Planning Commission. Many senior Congress leaders had felt unhappy about Nehru's decision to create a non-constitutional policy advisory body outside the Cabinet system, even though Nehru appointed himself as chairman of the Commission. John Mathai even resigned as finance minister from Nehru's Cabinet in protest. Yet, no one in the UPA government raised any such issues about the status and role of the NAC, a body of which the PM was not even formally the chairperson."

"Their strategy was simple. Moral domination. Nehru was a thinker. But Rajiv, Sonia, and Rahul are no intellectuals. They took a different route. They redefined morality. Secularism included. Anti-Congress was new immoral. Pro-Hindu became anti-Muslim. India was morally polarized. Morality is subjective. No one can say with guarantee what is pure morality. Masses were forced to choose between moral standards (Secularism, unity in diversity, inclusive etc.) and quality of life (development). People who wanted quality of life were made to feel guilty. Hindus who wanted to celebrate their religious freedom were made to feel guilty. Muslims who wanted to be part of mainstream India were made to feel guilty. They filled India’s psyche with fear, hate and guilt. They hated all indigenous, grassroots thinkers. They hated Sardar Patel, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Morarji Desai, Charan Singh, Chandrashekhar, P.V. Narsimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and now Modi. They are the land grabbers of Sainik Farms and Adarsh Societies of India. They run NGOs. They run media. They coin useless and irrelevant jargon to confuse the masses. They have designations but no real jobs. They are irrelevant NRIs who want us to see a reality which doesn’t exist. They want a plebiscite in Kashmir. They defend stone-pelters. They want Maoists to participate in mainstream politics. They want Tejpal to be freed. Yaqub to be pardoned. But they want Modi to be hanged. They are the hijackers of national morality. Secularism included. They are the robbers of Indian treasury. They are the brokers of power. They are the pimps of secularism. They are the Intellectual Mafia."

"What is true is that Sonia Gandhi's very successful political career was built with the help of many, many powerful Indians. High officials kowtowed before her as before no other political leader, even after her 'inner voice' persuaded her not to become prime minister. Fearless investigative journalists never bothered to investigate her role in the Bofors bribery scandal even after bribe money was found in the Swiss bank accounts of her two best friends, Ottavio and Maria Quattrocchi, and major politicians accepted her suzerainty. And Delhi's drawing rooms reverberated with praise of the new Empress of India. This is truly what she was, because except in matters of daily governance she remained in total charge of the government."

"Sonia knew nothing of Indian politics but what troubled me more on that morning of her victory was that I knew well that the India she knew, and I am not at all sure loved, was an India whose boundaries did not extend beyond the drawing rooms of Lutyens' Delhi. It was an India of memsahibs and sahibs, big bungalows and ayahs and holidays in Corbett Park or in the summer months somewhere in the hills. The vast, turbulent nation that lay beyond the framework of this dreary canvas she knew nothing of. In all the years that she lived in Delhi as a prime minister's daughter-in-law and wife I never once saw her show concerns that could be described as social, except if this word were to be used in the context of social secretaries and dinner parties."

"The Modi government has mismanaged the situation--exported vaccine and allowed a shortage to be created in India.... Public gatherings, including poll rallies should be cancelled... We must focus on India's vaccination drive first and foremost, then only export vaccines and gift them to other countries. We must stress on responsible behavior adhering to all laws and Covid regulations without exception. It is our responsibility to raise issues and push the government to move away from PR tactics and act in the interest of the people."

"It is absolutely essential that our party plays an active role in ensuring full vaccination coverage. At the national level, the daily rate of vaccination has to treble so that 75 per cent of our population gets fully vaccinated by end of this year. No doubt, this is dependent entirely on the adequacy of vaccine supply. We must continue to put pressure on the Union government which has, at our Party's insistence, finally taken on the responsibility for this. At the same time, we have to ensure that registration takes place, that vaccine hesitancy wherever evident is overcome and vaccine wastage is minimised."

"Vaccines are our foremost hope. Sadly, most of the states, including those ruled by the BJP and its allies, are left with a stock of just 3 to 5 days."

"Vaccines are our foremost hope. Accordingly, with enhanced availability, categories eligible for vaccination should be expanded on the basis of need and exposure rather than just age. In the same vein, the numbers allocated to a state has to be based on the prevalence and projection of infection in that particular state."

"Accordingly, with enhanced availability, categories eligible for vaccination should be expanded on the basis of need and exposure rather than just age. In the same vein, the numbers allocated to a state has to be based on the prevalence and projection of infection in that particular state. All equipment, instruments, medicine and support infrastructure required to deal with Covid-19 crisis should be made completely exempt from GST. Even ventilators, oximeters and oxygen cylinders currently attract GST as do key life-saving drugs like Remdesivir and Dexamethazone."

"While it will be necessary on one hand to substantially ramp up our domestic production capacity, it will also be prudent to allow emergency use authorization of all the vaccine candidates that have the required clearances, without any further delay."

"Vaccines are our foremost hope. Sadly, most of the states are left with a stock of just three to five days. While it will be necessary on one hand to substantially ramp up our domestic production capacity, it will also be prudent to allow emergency use authorisation of all the vaccine candidates that have the required clearances without any further delay."

"Experts are already talking of a possible third wave a few months from now. Some of them have been pointing to the vulnerability of children in the coming months. This too requires our urgent attention and we must take proactive measures so that they are spared this calamity. We have to take steps to be better prepared if and when this strikes."

"At the same time, we have to ensure that registration takes place, that vaccine hesitancy wherever evident is overcome and vaccine wastage is minimised... No doubt, this is dependent entirely on the adequacy of vaccine supply. We must continue to put pressure on the Union government which has, at our party's insistence, finally taken on the responsibility for this."

"The Modi government has mismanaged the situation — exported vaccines and allowed a shortage to be created in India... We must focus on India’s vaccination drive first and foremost, then only export vaccines and gift them to other countries."

"While it will be necessary on the one hand to substantially ramp up our domestic production capacity, it will also be prudent to allow emergency use authorisation of all the vaccine candidates that have the required clearances, without any further delay. Accordingly, with enhanced availability, categories eligible for vaccination should be expanded on the basis of need and exposure rather than just age."

"What can be more patriotic than all of us fighting the pandemic together. Our coronavirus warriors are fighting this war despite lack of basic safety gear. Our doctors, health workers and social service organisations are providing treatment despite the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE). Police and jawans are enforcing lockdown rules. Sanitation workers are constantly cleaning to prevent the spread of infection even in the difficult times."

"Everyone knew that Sonia Gandhi was India's real prime minister right from the moment in 2004 that Dr Manmohan Singh was chosen as her proxy, but her friends in the media – and their ranks were legion – continued to perpetuate the lie that she never interfered in policy. Ministers openly defied the prime minister and still they pretended that India had a real government instead of one appointed by someone whose only political qualification was that she married into a certain family. Editors who would tear government policies to shreds in their columns would never blame them on 10 Janpath. Sonia became as powerful as she did, and without any accountability, with the media playing an insidious, irresponsible role. When I asked famous TV anchors and colleagues in the print media why they accepted so compliantly her absolute refusal to give interviews they had no answers, but later I discovered that they had private access not just to her but to her children. This was enough to keep them quiet. In my own case I continued to point out every instance of direct interference by Sonia in government policy and was reviled for it. And because I was in a minority of one I soon became a target. After Shekhar Gupta resigned from the editorship of the Indian Express he told me that she had personally asked him to stop my column on the grounds of what I wrote against her."

"Singh and I had developed a warm and productive relationship. While he could be cautious in foreign policy, unwilling to get out too far ahead of an Indian bureaucracy that was historically suspicious of U.S. intentions, our time together confirmed my initial impression of him as a man of uncommon wisdom and decency…. What I couldn't tell was whether Singh's rise to power represented the future of India's democracy or merely an aberration.... In fact, he owed his position to Sonia Gandhi…more than one political observer believed that she'd chosen Singh precisely because as an elderly Sikh with no national political base, he posed no threat to her forty-year-old son, Rahul, whom she was grooming to take over the Congress Party... He feared that rising anti-Muslim sentiment had strengthened the influence of India's main opposition party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)... In the dim light, he (Singh) looked frail, older than his seventy-eight years, and as we drove off I wondered what would happen when he left office. Would the baton be successfully passed to Rahul, fulfilling the destiny laid out by his mother and preserving the Congress Party's dominance over the 'divisive nationalism' touted by the BJP?"

"The creation of the NAC in June 2004 was the first overt sign to me that Sonia's 'renunciation' of power was more of a political tactic than a response to a higher calling, or to an 'inner voice', as she put it at the time. Admittedly, she chose not to head the UPA government even after leading the Congress to electoral success in the 2004 General Elections, instead putting forward the name of Dr Singh. But, while power was delegated, authority was not. Her decisions, early on, to try and appoint a principal secretary to the PM of her choosing—the retired Tamilian official who had worked with Rajiv but declined Sonia's invitation—and to place her trusted aide Pulok Chatterjee in the PMO, were aimed at ensuring a degree of control over government. Of course, she had a decisive say in the allocation of portfolios."

"Stay at homes, wash your hands regularly and only go out from in exigencies while covering your mouth with mask, stole or cloth. This could be the best example of patriotism and cooperation against the fight with the virus."

"We cannot, however, lose sight of the fact that the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic has hit the country with fury. Despite a year to prepare, we have, regrettably, been caught off guard again. Families are being torn apart, lives & livelihoods have been lost and entire life savings depleted on healthcare. It is deeply concerning to read news reports of acute shortages of medical equipment and hospital beds. Reports from across the country speak of the scarcity of Covid-19 vaccine as also of important life saving drugs including Remdesivir in different parts of the country."

"Sonia and I had been friends in the days before Rajiv became prime minister. Tensions built up when I criticized his policies, and our friendship ended completely when she entered politics and showed that she wanted very much to become prime minister herself. There was nothing personal about my objections to her political role. They were based on my conviction that an Italian prime minister of India would seriously damage the already fragile sense of self-worth that most Indians have. Centuries of being ruled by foreigners have caused a congenital kink in the Indian psyche... but if there is reverence there is also shame at this reverence, and in retrospect I believe that if Sonia Gandhi had agreed to become prime minister in 2004, she would have certainly not won a second term for her government. At every turn she would have been accused of being the 'foreign woman', and every calamity would have been blamed on her personally. So she was well advised by her 'inner voice' to reject the job when she was offered it in 2004. This transformed her into the Mother Teresa of politics in the eyes of not just ordinary Indians but even senior political commentators. In an exchange I had on CNN-IBN with the venerable editor Vinod Mehta on Karan Thapar's show once, he said, 'Indians love people who sacrifice high office and this is why Sonia Gandhi is so loved.' She had only sacrificed accountability, not power, I reminded him, and he had no response, but he was not the only one who sang Sonia's praises after her 'sacrifice'. Since that day of 'sacrifice', sycophants had in the name of protecting secularism crawled out of everywhere. Journalists, bureaucrats, businessmen, movie stars and political leaders united to praise Sonia's 'sacrifice'. ... She spoke to nobody until she appeared in Parliament's Central Hall to announce to her newly elected MPs that her 'inner voice' had advised her against becoming prime minister and she intended to obey it. Her announcement caused hysterical shrieks and wails to rise in that high-ceilinged hall as men and women elected by the people of India to represent them in Parliament behaved like children suddenly bereaved of a parent."

"Mohit, as an Indira loyalist, had a special regard for her heirs. But his opinion that Sonia should enter politics was also based on his conviction that without a Nehru-Gandhi family member at the top, the Congress party would splinter and wither away. This view was also encouraged by members of the Delhi durbar—a 'power elite', to use sociologist C.Wright Mill's term, comprising civil servants, diplomats, editors, intellectuals and business leaders who had worked with or been close to the regimes of Nehru, Indira and Rajiv. Some of them inhabited the many trusts and institutions that the Nehru-Gandhi family controlled. They had all profited in one way or another, over the years, from their loyalty to the Congress's 'first family'."

"In the course of my talks with our Chief Ministers, the question of GST came up. They felt that as a preliminary measure, all equipments, instruments, medicines and support required to prevent and treat Covid-19 should be made free from GST. It is a matter of grave concern that life saving drugs like Remdesivir etc. and medical oxygen as also other basic supplements are subjected to GST @ 12%. Even basic equipments like Oxymeters and life saving critical equipment like ventilators are subjected to 20% GST. In the current state of affairs, this is inhuman and untenable."

"The reason I quote this sycophantic comment is because it reflects perfectly the consensus in smoke-filled newspaper offices and in Delhi's television studios. And Sonia, reserved to the point of being uneasy with conversation of any kind, used this to her advantage when it came to handling the media. She evolved a policy whereby she refused to talk to journalists except those who were carefully vetted as supportive and obedient. The kind that may have asked her questions about India's stand on important international issues or big political and economic problems were never allowed near her. The media was most helpful in this exercise. In newsrooms and TV studios I seemed always to run into some editor or columnist who had just come from 10 Janpath. You could tell that they had almost before they said anything in her support. No sooner did they get that invitation to tea in 10 Janpath than hard-boiled reporters would acquire so changed an expression on their faces that jokes began to be made about how 'one cup of tea with Sonia Gandhi could change the DNA of a journalist'."

"Nor can We predict happier times for religion and government from the plans of those who desire vehemently to separate the Church from the state, and to break the mutual concord between temporal authority and the priesthood. It is certain that that concord which always was favorable and beneficial for the sacred and the civil order is feared by the shameless lovers of liberty."

"We have learned that certain teachings are being spread among the common people in writings which attack the trust and submission due to princes; the torches of treason are being lit everywhere. Care must be taken lest the people, being deceived, are led away from the straight path. May all recall, according to the admonition of the apostle that “there is no authority except from God; what authority there is has been appointed by God. Therefore he who resists authority resists the ordinances of God; and those who resist bring on themselves condemnation.” Therefore both divine and human laws cry out against those who strive by treason and sedition to drive the people from confidence in their princes and force them from their government."

"This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. It spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it. “But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error,” as Augustine was wont to say. When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil, propels them to ruin. Then truly “the bottomless pit” is open from which John saw smoke ascending which obscured the sun, and out of which locusts flew forth to devastate the earth. Thence comes transformation of minds, corruption of youths, contempt of sacred things and holy laws—in other words, a pestilence more deadly to the state than any other. Experience shows, even from earliest times, that cities renowned for wealth, dominion, and glory perished as a result of this single evil, namely immoderate freedom of opinion, license of free speech, and desire for novelty."

"We must include that harmful and never sufficiently denounced freedom to publish any writings whatever and disseminate them to the people, which some dare to demand and promote with so great a clamor. We are horrified to see what monstrous doctrines and prodigious errors are disseminated far and wide in countless books, pamphlets, and other writings which, though small in weight, are very great in malice. We are in tears at the abuse which proceeds from them over the face of the earth. Some are so carried away that they contentiously assert that the flock of errors arising from them is sufficiently compensated by the publication of some book which defends religion and truth. Every law condemns deliberately doing evil simply because there is some hope that good may result. Is there any sane man who would say poison ought to be distributed, sold publicly, stored, and even drunk because some antidote is available and those who use it may be snatched from death again and again? The Church has always taken action to destroy the plague of bad books."