Liberal Catholicism Archives - LAW AND RELIGION FORUM

This is an interesting piece by J. Peter Nixon about how traditional views of hell are increasingly seen as tiresome, motivationally inefficacious, and generally outré. The story neglects an important piece of the banalization of hell, of course. From Sartre’s No Exit — as you remember, the scene is a drawing room decorated in Second Empire furnishings (which I’ve always kind of liked, though to Sartre’s modernist taste, it looked “rather like a dentist’s waiting room”) in which three people are trapped with nothing but each other. — MOD

Garcin: Will night never come?

Inez: Never.

Garcin: You will always see me?

Inez: Always.

Garcin: This bronze. Yes, now’s the moment; I’m looking at this thing on the mantelpiece, and I understand that I’m in hell. I tell you, everything’s been thought out beforehand. They knew I’d stand at the fireplace stroking this thing of bronze, with all those eyes intent on me. Devouring me. What? Only two of you? I thought there were more; many more. So this is hell. I’d never have believed it. You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the “burning marl.” Old-wives’ tales! There’s no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is — other people!

Those who may not know the blog, Palazzo Apostolico (“Apostolic Palace”), authored by Paolo Rodari and run by the Italian newspaper, Il Foglio, may want to take a look. One of Rodari’s recent posts deals with liberal Catholicism in Italy. A phenomenon of the nineteenth century, Rodari writes that liberal Catholicism consisted in the position that it was a good thing that the Church lose its temporal power inasmuch as it could devote its energies exclusively to its spiritual vocation. Most interestingly, Rodari writes that liberal Catholics of that era believed that they owed obedience and allegiance to the Pope and to the Church’s core precepts (as Rodari says, this distinguishes them from the “liberal” of today), even as they also believed that individual conscience had an important role to play and that they were not obliged to “bow their heads” to the wishes of bishops and cardinals. The heroes of the liberal Catholics were Cardinal John Henry Newman, Alessandro Manzoni (author of The Betrothed), and Antonio Rosmini.

The referent of this post’s title is former Italian President and liberal Catholic, Francesco Cossiga (a controversial figure in his own right), whose party was the Democrazia Cristiana (now gone), and who recently passed away . Below the fold, a translation of some of Cossiga’s thoughts about liberal Catholicism from Rodari’s post. — MOD