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    Uprooted: Dialogues on the Liquid Church
    Uprooted: Dialogues on the Liquid Church
    Uprooted: Dialogues on the Liquid Church
    Ebook119 pages2 hours

    Uprooted: Dialogues on the Liquid Church

    By Aldo Maria Valli, Aurelio Porfiri and Antonio Livi

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    About this ebook

    In the Catholic Church it is time for great divisions, divisions on important themes and of great impact for the faithful and also for those who do not profess Catholics. Here is a book that carries on the dialogues on some of the most important nodes behind these divisions, a passionate and suffered book, written by Aldo Maria Valli, well known Vaticanist and Aurelio Porfiri, church musician and writer (and translated by Giuseppe Pellegrino for the English speaking audiences). Both engaged in intense journalistic activity, have condensed hours of discussions, meditations and reflections against the current narrative.
    Aldo Maria Valli, journalist and writer, has been a vaticanist for years. In his blog Duc in altum (among the most popular and authoritative) has long been committed to the defense of Catholic tradition, the right doctrine and correct liturgy. For Chorabooks he has already published Uno sguardo nella notte, Sradicati (with Aurelio Porfiri) and Claustrofobia.
    Aurelio Porfiri is a composer, choirmaster, writer and teacher living between Rome and Hong Kong. He has published more than 30 books and more than 700 articles. His musical works are published in France, Italy, Germany, the United States and China.
    Table of contents
    Preface.
    We are Cradle Catholics.
    Our Youth in the Post-Conciliar Church.
    When We Changed.
    Traditionalists?.
    The Issue of Obedience.
    The Church of Mercy.
    Divisions In The Church.
    Catholics, But…..
    The Issue of The Family.
    The Catholic Church and Homosexuality.
    Priests in Crisis.
    Poor Liturgy.
    The Role of Social Media.
    To Speak…Despite Our Imperfections.
    Will We Die As Catholics?.
     
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChorabooks
    Release dateMay 3, 2019
    ISBN9789887961789
    Uprooted: Dialogues on the Liquid Church

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      Book preview

      Uprooted - Aldo Maria Valli, Aurelio Porfiri

      Catholics?

      Preface

      By Monsignor Antonio Livi

      I have known Aurelio Porfiri and Aldo Maria Valli for many years, for different reasons. I am happy to be able to say a few words about this book, Uprooted , in which the two authors attempt to take on various problems that are presently urgent in the church, a Church in great crisis, almost a liquid Church as the subtitle of the book states. Aurelio Porfiri and Aldo Maria Valli, the authors, speak as sincerely and deeply believing Catholics, and they are not afraid of the fact that what they write may attract enemies: the truth has rights that are superior to seeking one’s own personal advantage. As the Gospel says, the truth will make us free, not the conveniences dictated by the exigencies of furthering one’s own career.

      The style of a dialogue, chosen by the authors, makes this a book that may be read quickly, even if the topics addressed are not light. The observations made by the authors oblige the reader to pause and reflect. Their book is intense, full of sincere suffering, a suffering for the good of souls (this is the only reason for which Christ instituted the Church) which is sensed on every page that the authors write. In the book they speak of liturgy, morals, matrimony, priesthood, eschatology, and many other problems of the life of the Catholic Church. When necessary, the authors denounce the doctrinal and practical errors present within the Church. They speak with great frankness, but also with respect, the respect which is owed to persons, but which does not make them lose sight of the damage which the adulteration of the Gospel causes to the salvation of souls (which, I repeat, is the only purpose of the Church of Christ).

      For some time I have followed with interest and substantial sympathy to their views the publishing work of the journalist Aldo Maria Valli and the musician Aurelio Porfiri. I note how much passion and how much personal suffering motivates their battles, and I know well how they have personally paid for these battles with isolation, at times with personal offense from those who have taken hold of ecclesiastical power and hold onto it tenaciously. I would like to say to these two friends of mine: do not allow yourselves to be silenced or to be afraid of those who would silence you either publicly or in a hidden way. Rather, rejoice and be glad in the face of this persecution, in the certain knowledge that you are defending the truth of the Gospel from heresies and from political instrumentalization. To suffer for the truth of Christ on this earth is a certain way to merit to one day rejoice in the peace and joy of paradise, when Our Lord will say to us: Come, good and faithful servant: you were faithful in a small matter, and now I confer on you a great reward!

      We Are Cradle Catholics

      Aurelio Porfiri: You and I are ten years different in age, but we both come from the post-conciliar era. We got the full dose of Vatican II Catholicism, without any half-measures, and perhaps in some of its darkest moments. And yet for both of us Catholicism was something in which we simply found ourselves, we were born as cradle Catholics. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the years in which I went to church and to the Oratory as an adolescent, I never realized that the Church was passing through a truly difficult period, which has actually never ended. The silly songs which I sang at Mass, and which today would make me shiver, seemed to be a normal thing to me, because nobody ever told me that the music which should be sung in church was something different. I discovered this on my own, and after this discovery I became discouraged by priests who were opposed to the fact that I had rediscovered my liturgical and musical roots and did not wish to continue singing the silly songs which they threw at us in church. I understood – I don’t know if you have the same impression – that the Catholicism in which I grew up was already polluted, sick and weakened by the shock waves which it had endured in those years, thanks to the holes which had been opened in the Church by Vatican II.

      Aldo Maria Valli: Ten years separate us, it’s true, but our generations are united at their root by one thing above all: both you, born in 1968, and I, born in 1958, got caught in the midst of the full measure of the rotten fruit of Sixty-Eight, of the so-called protest and of all the various false liberations which the protest carried in its wake. We got caught by terrorism, the Years of Lead [the term for the political violence of the 1970s and 1980s], dark Italy, the massacres by the State. And yet without even the satisfaction of being able to say those were difficult years. Because in those years we either were not even born yet or we were too young to remember them, and the most we can say is that we sensed something was awry as we watched our older brothers and sisters. Hence we have a certain sense of frustration and certain resentments which we still carry with us. But, for my part, ever since I was a young boy I have also had a great desire to go against the current with respect to the dominant cultural thinking, the culture imposed by the intellectual elites which is the daughter of the violence of 1968, while at the same time arrogantly pretending (with the help of many useful idiots) to give moral instruction to everybody and impose themselves as masters of thought. This is why I have always been a bastion of contrariety, as they say where I come from. Or, to use an expression dear to Italian literary critic Giuseppe Prezzolini, you might say that I am a member of the Apoti Society, those who do not buy into things. With regard to the Church, my experience has been different from yours. I am a son of the Ambrosian Church, which formed me since I was little, especially by my involvement with the Oratorian way of life. I have always seen priests, and above all Don Filippo (the head of the Oratory of San Carlo di Rho), as people whom I could completely trust. And I have never been disillusioned, much less betrayed. Truly the Lord has given me this grace. I used to take everything for granted. Today however I realize how good the Lord has been to me in making me meet, know, and spend time with many holy priests. Thus it was necessary for me to be almost forty years old before I began to notice that there was something that was not quite right in my Church, to sense that not all of the fruits of the Council were good, and that just because a man is a priest he is not automatically holy and honest. This was a process that became ever more painful, as little by little my awareness grew.

      As so often happens, it was the liturgy which began to create problems for me. As time passed my eyes were opened. Sloppy liturgies, sentimental songs and music, liturgical abuses, exaggerations, excessive focus on the celebrant’s personality, misinformed laity, a lack of respect towards Our Lord, the absence of the sense of the sacred, contempt for silence, no reverence, and all getting progressively worse over the last few years. I do not wish to accuse anyone. I know many good Catholics who serve in their parishes and wonderful priests who do all they are able to do, but the process of disintegration has been irreversible. You are just a formalist, someone tells me when I express my concerns. But you know better than I do that in the liturgy the form is the substance, and the incapacity to give glory to God is the expression of a faith that is no less impoverished. But obviously this is not only a liturgical question. What shall we say about doctrine? We will address this later. Here I will only say that under the pontificate of Francis the veil definitively fell from my eyes and finally I saw the devastation which is the fruit of the reigning modernism. When I speak of my experience, about the veil that fell from my eyes, some smile and think I am mad.

      Someone once even interrupted me, as if I was a traitor. They said to me: But you were a friend of Cardinal Martini! But so what? What kind of reasoning is this? Just because Cardinal Martini honored me with his friendship, does that mean I should not see the devastation in the Church? In fact, during our conversations we spoke about some of these problematic aspects of the Church. So I do not worry too much about the criticisms leveled at me by superficial people, who think only in terms of applying labels to people. And I am not ashamed to say that I experienced something very similar to a conversion – not from one Church to another, as happens to many converts, but from a church that is Catholic in name but in fact is modernist to a Church that is truly Catholic. A Church that is difficult to find, but which does exist.

      AP: Don’t get me wrong, I also knew holy priests, who struggled in the prevailing climate in the Church to bear witness to their vocation and to bring Christ to everyone. But the fact that we remember these priests so vividly is perhaps because the climate in which we encountered them was so deteriorated. Don’t think that I wish to pine for the good old days. Everything wasn’t beautiful and perfect before the Council, there were sloppy liturgies, priests who took advantage of others through their vocation, lay Catholics who were catholic in name only. But my impression is that after Vatican II – and I mean in spite of Vatican II – an embankment collapsed which up until that time, for better or for worse, had held things in place, where they were supposed to be. You are right when you say that we have taken the mentality of ’68 as a

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