“In recent times, a substantial transformation of Christian doctrine itself has been added to the struggle of secularists against Christianity. Christianity becomes secularized, it becomes humanism. In the end, it commits suicide as a religion.” This was the forceful diagnosis of the situation of the Church made by the Italian senator Marcello Pera, also a philosopher and politician with a long career, in an event that on January 31 brought together important personalities from the political and intellectual world in the Italian Senate.
The conference was titled “The Suicide of the West” and Card. Angelo Bagnasco (Emeritus Archbishop of Genoa), Alfredo Mantovano (Undersecretary of State in the Presidency of the Council of Ministers of Italy), Marco Invernizzi (National Director of Alianza Catholic) and Domenico Airoma (judge and vice president of the Rosario Livatino Study Center), under the moderation of Francesco Pappalardo (head of the Senate Library).
It is appropriate to note that such a statement by Senator Marcello Pera is much more forceful when we remember that he was co-author of two books written with Pope Benedict XVI in which he had already warned of the risk of suicide. West: “La Europa de Benedicto en la crisis de las culturas” (The Europe of Benedict in the crisis of cultures, 2005) and “Sin raíces” (Without roots, 2015).
The Catholic Alliance association, one of the promoters of the event, recalled in the press release that “The Suicide of the West” is not a new phenomenon: “in 1964 it was the title of a text written by James Burnham, an American political scientist who spent progressively from Trotskyism to conservatism, which criticized the “liberal” ideology, considering it too weak in the face of communism and, therefore, causing the serious weakening of the West, which manifested itself in the early 1960s.
Almost fifty years later, in 2010, in a profoundly changed cultural context, the title was proposed again for an interview by the essayist Luigi Iannone with the British conservative philosopher Sir Roger Scruton, who denounced how Western man is hostage to a tendency to deny one’s own historical and cultural identity, to denigrate themselves and seek references in an unidentified universe of “new rights.”
A trend that seems more evident and unstoppable every day, to the point of leading us to a moral drift that is evident in the spread of gender ideology and in the contempt for the family as the core of our societies. How to counteract this trend? According to the books written by Senator Pera, the answer lies in the need to return to Christian principles and above all to the Catholic faith as a decisive cultural factor for the moral reconstruction of our societies.
But is the West really at risk? What are your enemies and how to face them? To delve deeper into the topic, we spoke with the philosopher Marco Invernizzi, national regent of the Catholic Alliance movement and scholar of the social doctrine of the Church.
Why talk about the suicide of the West?
Because the West is not only threatened from without, for example, by radical Islam or the despotism of Russia or China, but it is also threatened from within by the dictatorship of relativism that Benedict XVI spoke of, which penetrates its universities, in editorials, in culture, in common sense. And that is why today, for example, in the United States in the name of ‘cancel culture’ they try to cancel the roots of their own civilization, their own history. Therefore, the West must not only look outward, but must protect itself against internal enemies who want to undermine its bases.
When we talk about internal enemies we also talk about the gender ideology that is permeating schools. How can the laity save the Catholic roots of the West?
The true recipe is only one and that is to tell the truth, it is to form people in the truth, starting with young people and children, also placing them in happy environments, where there is an authentic, Christian and human life. Then also telling the truth, in the sense of judging errors, taking care that errors exist, evil exists and it must be denounced, it must be fought. The recipe is always the same, the problem is having the courage to go against the current, to risk one’s freedom, perhaps one’s own well-being and one’s own time to do something that helps others live better.
It was also said at the event that there is a weak church in defending the truth, how can we help the Church?
The Church is all of us, but it has become a minority, that is why we cannot think of the Church in the terms, at least in Italy or in Europe, with which the Church was thought of 50 or 100 years ago, when the Church I was still strong. Today the Church is a minority that must assume the style of minorities, that is, the missionary style of the new evangelization, with humility and awareness that the vast majority of people do not think well; He must undoubtedly defend his own principles, but he must also go to recover all the people who have been negatively influenced by this climate, one by one, to try to bring them closer to Christ. A missionary Church is needed that can follow both paths, that defends its principles, but at the same time does not lose contact with people who make mistakes or have made mistakes, to lead them back to the truth and Christ.
Is there hope despite all the enemies of the West?
Yes, hope is a gift from God, we just have to open our hearts and then hope enters. Throughout history, the West has always risen up in the face of all the tragedies it has had to suffer; Just think of the two world wars of the 20th century that broke out in the heart of the West. And yet, in both cases, despite the wounds that occurred, despite the millions of deaths, the West was able to recover. So why shouldn’t I be able to do it this time too?
