Posted on 08/27/2007 5:51:05 AM PDT by FrPR
(All Things Catholic by John L. Allen, Jr)
The deathbed friendship between a Bishop and an Atheist
Conventional wisdom has it, "There are no atheists in foxholes." In truth, atheists can be found even in foxholes, but often they're atheists whose deepest yearning is to be wrong.
In just that spirit, among people who believe that Western civilization today is locked in mortal combat with radical Islam, there's a growing contingent of what we might call "Christian atheists," meaning non-believers nonetheless committed to a strong defense of Christian culture. In this quirky galaxy, no star burned brighter than that of the provocative Italian writer Oriana Fallaci until her death in September 2006.
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Fallaci's credentials as a non-believer were never in doubt. She once defined Christianity as "a beautiful fable," and wrote: "I'm tired of having to repeat, in writing and also orally, that I'm an atheist. In addition to being a secularist, I'm also profoundly anti-clerical. Priests don't sit well with me, just as they didn't with the anarchists of Lugano." (That's a reference to a city on the Swiss-Italian border where 19th century anarchists were chased out because of their opposition to the ultra-Catholic Hapsburg Empire.)
Many conservative Christians nonetheless regard Fallaci as a hero, a veneration clearly on display Tuesday in Rimini, Italy, where the annual "Meeting" sponsored by the Catholic movement Communion and Liberation ends tomorrow. One of the most popular sessions was devoted to Fallaci, and it featured the man whom she asked to be at her side as she died: Bishop Rino Fisichella, rector of the Lateran University in Rome, and an intimate of Pope Benedict XVI.
Their improbable friendship illustrates an important current percolating in contemporary Western culture, a budding détente between institutional Christianity and some of its sharpest Enlightenment-inspired critics, motivated by a deep sense of shared peril.
In part on the strength of her mega-best seller La rabbia e l'orgoglio (The Rage and the Pride), Fallaci became the leading voice of Western protest against militant Islam. Together with British writer Bat Ye'or, she popularized the term "Eurabia" to describe what she saw as a creeping Islamicization of Europe, transforming the continent from the cradle of Christian civilization into an outpost of the Arab world.
A colleague of Fallaci and a fellow non-believer, Italian journalist Vittorio Feltri, summed up their position during the Tuesday panel: "All of us have been shaped by a Christian culture. Facing a threat from the outside, and we all know where it comes from, we have to rally around our culture, which is the culture of Christianity, even if in the end we can't bring ourselves to believe in God, except perhaps, every now and then, at night. This was Fallaci's argument, and I share it from the first word to the very last."
A degree of affinity between Fallaci and the cultural positions of the Catholic church actually predates today's frisson over Islam. In the 1970s, during a bitter referendum campaign in Italy which eventually legalized abortion, Fallaci wrote her famous work Lettera a un bambino non mai nato (Letter to a Child Never Born). She had found herself pregnant, decided to keep the child, and then lost it. The book is regarded by some as one of the most eloquent reflections on maternity and the gift of life ever written, and it brought Fallaci to the attention of a new German bishop and fellow intellectual, Joseph Ratzinger.
In late August 2005, Pope Benedict XVI met with Fallaci at his summer residence at Castel Gandolfo, granting what was in effect her dying wish, since by that stage Fallaci was already debilitated by the cancer that killed her a year later.
On Tuesday, Fisichella recounted the story of his friendship with Fallaci, which began in the final years of her life after she wrote a letter praising an interview he had given on Islam and religious freedom to the Italian paper Corriere della Sera. Towards the end, Fisichella said, the two would talk on the phone sometimes three or four times a day. (Fallaci was in New York, where she had lived for decades, undergoing treatment at the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.)
Fisichella said that despite Fallaci's atheism and anti-clericalism, he saw signs of vestigial Christianity.
Fallaci returned to Italy in her final days because, she said, she didn't want to die in exile. She asked Fisichella to help arrange a room for her in Florence where she could look out at the famous dome of Brunelleschi atop the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. She also requested a CD with the sound of church bells to play softly in the background.
It was Fallaci's desire, Fisichella said, that on the day of her funeral, the bells of the cathedral would ring out. It wasn't easy to arrange, Fisichella said. Though he didn't elaborate, it's well known that some Catholics objected to bestowing such an honor upon a professed atheist, while others argued that it would be seen as an endorsement of her stridently anti-Islamic views. Nonetheless, Fisichella said, he managed to pull it off.
"With a great deal of difficulty, due to various polemics, it happened that when her coffin left the clinic to go to the cemetery, the bells of the Cathedral of Florence pealed for Oriana Fallaci," he said, to thunderous applause from the crowd in Rimini.
It's worth quoting Fisichella at length about his final experiences with Fallaci.
"I held her hand the day before she died, as I had promised, a hand by then reduced to just skin and bones. I also gave her a blessing. I did so consciously, because Oriana Fallaci was baptized. She was a Christian. I did it because Oriana Fallaci made her first Communion, because she was confirmed. I did it because many times Oriana Fallaci told me how, with her father, taught to do so by her father, she read the Bible of Douay. She knew all the illustrations of her Douay Bible, which she decided to leave to me. I did so because many times during the last weeks of her life, when it was just the two of us by her bed and she was suffering enormously, she would look at me, raise her eyes to Heaven, and say, 'If you exist, why don't you let me live?' She didn't say, 'Don't make me suffer,' but rather, 'Let me live.' I did it because Oriana Fallaci loved life, and because the God of Christians is the God of life. I did it because, even though Oriana Fallaci said that she didn't believe, she had great hope.
"During those days, a phrase came into my mind from the posthumously published book of Ignazio Silone called Severina. The protagonist is a sister who had left the convent, who is now dying from a wound she received during a protest. At a certain point, one of the sisters from the convent comes to her deathbed and takes her hand, saying, 'Severina, Severina, tell me that you believe!' Severina looks at her and says, 'No, but I hope.' I believe we Christians have a great responsibility to talk about our faith with the language of hope. Quite often, people won't understand us when we talk about the content of our faith. But without doubt, people of today can understand when we talk about hope, if we talk about the mystery of our existence and the meaning of our lives …
"I held Oriana Fallaci's hand as a priest, as a bishop, asking the Lord to look upon her with great mercy, if for no other reason than that she suffered so greatly, because she was so alone, and because in her last years, radically and with deep conviction, she defended the idea that this country belongs to the West. She defended like few others the profoundly Christian roots of the civilization to which we all belong, including the faith that, let's not forget, God forever offers to us as a great gift. We have to remember this woman for what she did, for what she said and wrote. She was a great woman, a great Italian, who deserves to be viewed with respect, and who now belongs to the history books." Fisichella drew a sustained standing ovation.
Whatever one makes of Fallaci's views on Islam or anything else, this deathbed friendship between a bishop and an atheist is a remarkable story. Among other things, it illustrates a perverse but seemingly ironclad law of human life: Sometimes the perception of a common threat can dissolve differences and open hearts to a degree that otherwise would have been difficult to imagine.
* * *
By all accounts, Fallaci was an earthquake of a human being. She was a perfectionist when it came to her work, Feltri said, often agonizing long into the night over single commas. She could also erupt at her closest friends and colleagues, and was never one to shrink from a fight, even with people she otherwise admired.
An occasional target of her scorn was Pope John Paul II, whom she regarded as naïve and weak regarding the Islamic threat. Once, when John Paul had devoted an Angelus address to urging hospitality for Muslim immigrants in Europe, Fallaci shot back acerbically: "Your Holiness, why don't you take them into the Vatican? On the condition, of course, that they don't smear the Sistine Chapel with shit ..."
During the Rimini session, Italian journalist Renato Farina revealed another, more personal reason why Fallaci had a beef with the late pope.
When Lettera a un bambino non mai nato appeared in the 1970s, it was an enormous worldwide success. Among the many places it was reprinted was the weekly newspaper of the Archdiocese of Krakow, Poland, led by then-Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, who would become John Paul II. When Fallaci wrote to the archdiocese to request payment, Wojtyla told his secretary, Fr. Stanislaw Dziwisz, who is today himself the Cardinal of Krakow, to write back informing Fallaci that because Poland was a Communist country it wasn't customary to pay copyright fees.
"After that, she decided Wojtyla was a bad guy," Farina laughed. "A great figure, but a bad guy."
* * *
There are no atheists in foxholes, and there are no atheists in hell...............
the National Catholic Reporter and its most celebrated hit-man writing a piece celebrating Europe’s most effective anti-jihadist? How odd...
...not surprised about the little snipe at JP2. By Allen, that is. I’m not at all surprised that Fallaci wouldn’t be impressed by JP2’s “Ostpolitick” with Islam.
(Ostpolitick was what JP2’s notorious predecessor, Paul VI, called his own attempts to make nice with Russia. JP2 knew there was no compromise with an evil out to destroy you, but he was very naive regarding Islam.)
God is merciful.
“...often they’re atheists whose deepest yearning is to be wrong.”
if such is the case, then why take a chance on being wrong? the consequences are eternal.
Why does John Allen CREEP me out?
if such is the case, then why take a chance on being wrong? the consequences are eternal.
Yes, one could believe in Christianity just in case the Christians are right. But which version of Christianityi is correct? And what if the Muslims are right? Or the Zoroastrians?
I happen to believe in God myself, but not as some afterlife fire insurance. I believe in God because I feel his presence and he has worked miracles in my life.
However, that's a personal experience, and if atheists have never felt anything like what I have felt, I have no empiricial data to convince them that God is real.
you are indeed fortunate to have personal experiences to guide you, but that is not necessarily true of other Christians. They have heard the “Good News” and make a deliberate decision.
Chistianity based on “feelings” does not get one thru the tuf times, when doubts pervade, and the world beats up on us. Christianity based on the facts as set out in the Bible will carry you through the peaks and valleys and provide the abundant life that a merciful God provides all who believe.
To believe in Christ is to believe there is eternal life. That’s what He promised!
I don’t know of any “version of Christianity” that doesn’t believe that fact.
“if such is the case, then why take a chance on being wrong? t’
Because if you can will yourself into believing something is true simply out of fear, there’s something wrong with you.
I grew up in Catholic and Anglican schools and as a Jew I sometimes think of the Golden Calf and wonder: what if G-d is indeed a jealous G-d, and Jesus is not the Messiah? Do you think that - just maybe - those who worship Jesus (by praying to him directly, by kneeling at the cross, etc.) may be incurring the wrath of “The One”?
That's why Christ exhorted His followers many times to "fear not."
In honor to Oriana whose opposition to radical Islam I found to be profoundly insightful, here is an excerpt from the manuscript; the uncle is responding to a letter from his nephew in which questions are posed by the nephew's teacher, a Greek Jew:
My great disturbance in soul was because of my being party in crucifying Rabbi Jesus. My guilt was overwhelming me. I sought diligently to find peace in the Jewish beliefs which gave rise to Rabbi Jesus as the Messiah savior of the people. I studied diligently and followed the ordinances of Jewish Temple rigorously for a time until God sent one of the Rabbi Jesus disciples to instruct me and my household in the faithe of Him. What follows now is a list of the attributes Jesus claimed and Simon son of John learned at the side of him. Over these attributes we ought not debate for he proclaimed them as truth and proved his authority to do so with his own resurrection from death and the miracles he performed before his execution and of which I have accumulated many witnesses to them.
+ Rabbi Jesus claimed he was perfect before God and affirmed to Jewish High Priest Caiaphas that he was God with us
+ Rabbi Jesus centered authority to do miracles and issue forgiveness in himself alone as God with us
+ Rabbi Jesus taught about heaven as one who knew of it from the inside much the way I would describe my house to you as one having lived and living in the house God with us
+ Rabbi Jesus placed himself at the center of the religious universe of the Jewish people from whom he was born in the flesh to be God with us
+ Rabbi Jesus taught that there is something wrong with the whole of the human family and even the earth itself and that only his death burial and resurrection to carry his atoning blood to heaven could cure this by the action of God with us | ask on atonement of your teacher
+ Rabbi Jesus taught his followers that he would pay the ransom to redeem all of humankind not just the Jews in whom the principle of kinsman redeemer was instructed and he taught that some would not accept this redemption by God with us
+ Rabbi Jesus taught his followers on several occasions and the Sanhedrin in particular at his trail before them that he would be killed and on the third day he would rise again from the dead to fulfill the sign given in Jonah of the Jewish scriptures and he did just that as I can testify to you by my own experiences in the events of his crucifixion and disappearance from the sealed tomb as death could not hold him being God with us
+ Rabbi Jesus taught his followers after his resurrection that he would ascend to glory and he did as God with us but leave us bodily but did not leave us without his presence whom he now gives in his spirit within the follower faithing in his atonement that spirit in us being God with us
We ought not debate these facts of God with us but I will gladly discuss these attributes as you and your teacher so desire me to do. Why do I say I will not debate these attributes of God with us? Because I have accumulated and I am accumulating facts in evidence that wholly confirm God with us. Here is a list of some of the truthful data I have accumulated.
+ Jesus surely lived. I helped to crucify him and I know that he died on the cross and was seal in a tomb in burial clothing
+ The Jewish Sanhedrin was completely convinced he was dead and proved their belief in that they demanded a guard to prevent stealing his dead body from the tomb
+ The Herod guard confirmed their belief that he was dead and buried as they were a panicked to find his body once he left the tomb. Jewish leadership authority which had declared him a blasphemer worthy to die depended upon finding the dead body to prove he was still in the grave he told them could not hold him for he would raise himself up if they killed him. If he arose he was no blasphemer
+ He really disappeared from the tomb as testified by my close friend Jacus who was on guard the hour the tomb was opened by a ghost and women saw it contained only burial shrouds
+ The followers of Rabbi Jesus became bold to preach his resurrection right after he disappeared and according to the witnesses I detained he did appear to more than five hundred in the Galilee over many days and ate with them there and they did touch him
+ The Jewish leaders tried to bribe my friend Jacus to say that the followers had stolen the dead body but Jacus and another of my Legion took their money and used it to start a new life beyond the reach of Caeser. Jacus testified not that the body was stolen but testified to me of what he truly experienced in the tomb garden. Jacus is a very large and powerful man bearing scars of battles yet he was stiffened like a stone until the ghost disappeared when the women fled the garden
+ The Jewish leaders are even today persecuting much the ones preaching of Rabbi Jesus of his life showing miracles of his death fulfilling prophesies and his resurrection and ascending proving he was God with us. The Jewish leaders by their zeal to silence the preaching testify that the truth is in the preaching for it harms not the traditions of the Jews but it proves the emptiness of the leaders that could not see God with us because of their emptiness
+ I have in me the proof of the real Jesus and his holy spirit promised and sent at the Jewish day of Pentecost. I have witnessed miracles at the hand of Simon son of John and spoken words of an unknown language by the power of God with us. I compile a list of the miracles wrought at the hands of the empowered followers of Jesus
In your letter you say that perhaps Rabbi Jesus is a good and wise man and perhaps a healer of the sick. If he taught his followers that he would raise from the dead then he is not a good man if he did not rise from the dead. If he taught his followers to be honest in all things and they are liars of this man then he is not to be seen wise for placing so many and so innocent a people in jeopardy for their professions faithing him | a great lie cannot hide forever and when exposed proves foolishness. Of his miracle healings I can testify to only the one I witnessed disputation over before the Sanhedrin the blind man from birth Jesus gave sight.
Tell your Jewish teacher to seek Rabbi Jesus in his prayer closet for he is ascended to glory and has left for us his spirit to be now God with us.
Sorry, I can’t be scared into belief.
Ping, if you’re interested in such writings.
That is a very interesting letter. Do you have a source for that?
life is full of choices
It certainly would show a lack of character.
Not if we accept the Holy Scriptures as the Word of God because God inspired their human authors and because God still speaks to us through the Bible.
“if such is the case, then why take a chance on being wrong?”
That is what the discussion is centered on. If you can make yourself believe something out of the fear of the repercussions of being wrong, there is, I aver, something wrong with you.
I’m a writer. I’m writing the fictional letters filled with factual data. The source for the letters is me.
Those who accept the calling, realizing that perfection is not possible in this life, nevertheless strive for those Christ-like qualities of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
This is a life in Christ, at times falling - yes, but getting up, dusting off the dirt and continually striving for the abundant life - and its reward, - and fear has no place it the whole scenario.
Willing oneself to believe something unprovable due to fear of the consequences of not doing so is given as a desirable thing for atheist/agnostics to do.
Wasn’t it Copernicus who said, “Here I stand, I can do no other.”
In other words, what I believe is real is not a choice on my part. I cannot choose to believe the unreal. Neither is it possible to delude myself into it, because I know it is a delusion.
ah my friend, what is real and what is unreal.
for me, I know my faith in God is very personal, goes to my very core, and very real.
But for another, it is for him/her to discover what is real in life.
2. Do you believe the Christians through the ages have been followers of Him in profession and baptism?
3. Do you have trouble believing He rose from the grave after three days dead due to crucifixion?
Which of these issues is your hang-up? Perhaps you would care to discuss the hang-up(s)?
1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Yes
The hangup would be with 3.
...and discuss it with you? No, thanks.
By your experiences in living you have learned that the things, conventions, and authorities you 'faithe' (the verb form of 'pistis', 'pisteuo') to function properly do in fact have a predictability to them born of repetative reliance upon them, building a confidence in you of their reliability. So you act in faith daily, hourly, minute by minute. Faith is action based upon belief sustained by confidence born of reliable repetition.
Some of your fellow human sojourners have come to faithe in a man named Jesus who made predicitons of what He would do and how He would be betrayed and put to death and then arise from death to show He was Whom He taught He was/is. This faithing is a transformative process through a relationship, as so many including myself can atest to you with their changed lives.
History proves through eyewitness testimonies that He, Jesus, lived. The actions and results following His resurrection testify strongly in full and credible assurance that He did vanish from His tomb and meet with His followers for a number of days afterwards then leave them to await Pentecost. He died on the Cross as testified by the Roman spear thrust into His side without His moving and with what the Romans of that day could not have known medically was physical proof of a dead body issuing forth(water and blood gushed forth due to the cause of death). It was common for a mallet bearer to come and break the legs of those on a cross so that they could not push up and breathe and they died quickly then. The Bible actually contains prophesies of Jesus legs not being broken, not a bone of His body broken. and He died before the mallet bearer came around so the spear was used to verify death.
The Jewish leaders of Jesus day had declared Him a blasphemer and if they could not produce His dead body when claims of His resurrection flowed out, then they had to stop the preaching of eyewitnesses. And they worked very hard to squelch the preaching. The disciples were obviously and astonishingly changed men once they met with the risen Lord following Resurrection. And their lives subsequent to this earth moving occurence show the strongest evidence of His true resurrection from death.
Perhaps that will give you sufficient grain over which to grind. Would you care to discuss this topic further?
I posted #27 before I read your rejection note. I will cease bothering you over the issue. Have a good evening, FRiend.
In writing his letters that we call the New Testament, Saul of Tarsus used a Greek word which means/was translated 'faith' and the verb form which means 'faithing'. The Greek word is 'pistis'. The root word means trust, or reliance. You exhibit this same trusting daily and could not live your life without exercising this 'pistis' to sit in a chair, ride in an elevator, drink your morning coffee, open your mailbox, or even drive to work. Living is to exercise faith that things will do as they are purported to do, act as they are designed to act, function the way they are designed and manufactured to function, and work to regulate (as with traffic laws and signals) as they are agreed upon in common to regulate a society.
By your experiences in living you have learned that the things, conventions, and authorities you 'faithe' (the verb form of 'pistis', 'pisteuo') to function properly do in fact have a predictability to them born of repetitive reliance upon them, building a confidence in you of their reliability. So you act in faith daily, hourly, minute by minute. Faith is action based upon belief sustained by confidence born of reliable repetition.
Some of your fellow human sojourners have come to faithe in a man named Jesus who made predicitons of what He would do and how He would be betrayed and put to death and then arise from death to show He was Whom He taught He was/is. This faithing is a transformative process through a relationship, as so many including myself can atest to you with their changed lives.
History proves through eyewitness testimonies that He, Jesus, lived. The actions and results following His resurrection testify strongly in full and credible assurance that He did vanish from His tomb and meet with His followers for a number of days afterwards then leave them to await Pentecost. He died on the Cross as testified by the Roman spear thrust into His side without His moving and with what the Romans of that day could not have known medically was physical proof of a dead body issuing forth(water and blood gushed forth due to the cause of death). It was common for a mallet bearer to come and break the legs of those on a cross so that they could not push up and breathe and they died quickly then. The Bible actually contains prophesies of Jesus legs not being broken, not a bone of His body broken. and He died before the mallet bearer came around so the spear was used to verify death.
The Jewish leaders of Jesus day had declared Him a blasphemer and if they could not produce His dead body when claims of His resurrection flowed out, then they had to stop the preaching of eyewitnesses. And they worked very hard to squelch the preaching. The disciples were obviously and astonishingly changed men once they met with the risen Lord following Resurrection. And their lives subsequent to this earth moving occurrence show the strongest evidence of His true resurrection from death.
Thanks for the ping!
I couldn't either.
I also refused to 'believe' just to escape the fate that was shown to me.
But somewhere inside me, there were questions.
And, in answering one of those questions; Something revealed Itself to me.
;^)
All the data can be found in most any Bible...
But you CAN 'choose to believe' the real.
Neither is it possible to delude myself into it, because I know it is a delusion.
I'll bet you DON'T 'know' it, but 'believe' it.
You are almost in the same boat that other famous doubter, Thomas, was in.
He also refused to believe until Jesus showed Himself to him.
I can guarantee (well, as much as it happened to ME, at least) that if you really want to know the truth, you can.
Thousands; no MILLIONS, can attest that THESE verses are true!
Proverbs 8:17
I love those who love me, and those who seek me find me.
Isaiah 45:19
I have not spoken in secret, from somewhere in a land of darkness; I have not said to Jacob's descendants, `Seek me in vain.' I, the LORD, speak the truth; I declare what is right.
Isaiah 65:1
"I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me; I was found by those who did not seek me. To a nation that did not call on my name, I said, `Here am I, here am I.'
Jeremiah 29:13
You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
Amos 5:4
This is what the LORD says to the house of Israel: "Seek me and live;
Romans 10:20
And Isaiah boldly says, "I was found by those who did not seek me; I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me."
I suspect he has made a good look at the ‘data’ about Jesus.
Just like some chemical reactions; sometimes a Catalyst is needed.
We’ve both heard the ‘pearls before swine’ thing before - usually directed AT us (oink!), but i tend to think of others who do not believe yet as lost souls, and am willing to sow even MORE seed, in hopes that some will find that Good Ground!
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