FLASH
Shkruar nga Carlo Verdelli
Don't take the name of God in vain...
As the world slides towards the catastrophic risk of another major war, with irresponsible actions and threats bringing us closer to crossing the line of no return, a raging current of hatred is increasingly taking shape, engulfing both the international scene and within individual states, including Italy. And one of the sticky elements of this growing and raging intolerance seems to be the cross. And not just any cross: the cross of Christ.
There is no crime for the inappropriate use of the word "Lord". No court can punish those who distort for their own purposes the cornerstone of his evangelical message: love your neighbor as yourself. There is no law that prevents the Father from becoming god. And so we are witnessing the phenomenon of ideologies that, in the name of God, try to bless positions and choices that have nothing to do with the spirit of the Gospel and that have everything to do with an authoritarian and hierarchical concept of social relations, including political, military or commercial relations.
The heart of this new church, Christian in inspiration but tribal and pagan in reality, is the United States of the second Trump, with an emperor who also considers himself pope, with its crowd of MAGA believers, with its preachers, like Charlie Kirk, who ascended to a kind of secular sainthood after being shamefully murdered.
Influencer Kirk said he wanted to save America. In reality, he wanted to save only one: his own, white, armed, and scared.
Once, he addressed an audience, arguing that " God didn't make us all equal; he gave us different roles."
Once again, that " minorities must remember that they are guests in this house" .
He often softened these outbursts the next day, but in the meantime, the message had gotten through. Kirk spoke to the heart of a country that sees diversity as a threat, that turns faith into a weapon and the Bible into a flag. A country that has found in Trump not a leader but a mirror. That Trump who continues to pray to God not for forgiveness but for approval, with an early and powerful message: He is on our side.
It's hard to say how he could decide this, but it's very easy to understand the benefit of this unjust appropriation. A legitimization of his power that literally transcends electoral consensus.
A divine investiture that erases all traces of democratic accountability and boasts not-so-remarkable, but countless precedents, from the Crusades to “Gott Mit Uns,” God is with us, pressed into the buckles of the Third Reich.
It is the catechism of the new right, with its dust-off trinity of “God, country and family,” which is gaining followers in Europe, from Marine Le Pen’s France to Orbán’s Hungary. The Italian prime minister furiously professes her Christianity, Deputy Prime Minister Salvini has gone through a phase, though apparently over, of boasting about kissing a medallion of the Virgin Mary, and the majority is forcing Parliament to hold a session in memory and honor of Charlie Kirk, whom no one knew before his murder but who quickly rose to the ranks of the chosen martyrs of the Faith.
And again, from Kirk's own apocryphal gospel: " God created America to be a Christian nation, and anyone who wants to change that goes against the divine plan. "
Another time, addressing civil rights protesters: “We don’t need more equality, we need more order.” And we’ll spare ourselves the sermons on the genetic superiority of whites over blacks or other races.
There is truly no religion left in this appropriation of the most widely practiced religion in the world and its diabolical distortion into something completely opposite to what Christ preached and embodied in his Passion. As if the Ten Commandments, with their profound and indispensable teachings for doing good, were not carved in stone, but written in invisible ink.
The last will be first, let alone “America first.” But almost anything is permitted in politics, even leading us like lost sheep toward difficult horizons, but under shining banners blessed by who knows what deity, devoted to propaganda, called to rallies as a convinced witness.
Since May 8, Pope Leo XIV, born Robert Francis Prevost of Chicago, Illinois, has sat on the throne of Peter. He is the first American pope to hold the office. One wonders how it feels to see the God he represents on this Earth dragged off the mantle for causes beyond his omnipotent divinity, and which, in any case, would seem far removed from the indications of brotherhood, equality, love for others and for nature, preached by the Word.
There must be some kind of protection against any attempt at forgery, and perhaps he himself, the American Pope, could send a carrier pigeon to his compatriot Donald, with a message tied to its paw. "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain. The second commandment. Thank you. " And above all, do not use it as a badge on the battering ram that threatens to overturn the last trench of democracy, of peace. /Adapted from "Pamphlet" by "Corriere Della Sera"
Lini një Përgjigje