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Rating: Welcome everyone to the interior section! Today, thanks to the reading of an instant book of good commercial success, we address a theme that intersects the events of "minor" Italy with more general and, I would say, complex issues: I am referring, as clearly shown by the cover here beside, to the story of (Father) Sante Sguotti, and the related issue of priestly celibacy, a cornerstone of the official doctrine of the Church and canon law itself.
Don Sguotti's book - now we should simply call him Mr. Sguotti, to be honest, although I am told the sacrament of consecration is indelible - describes in a simple, spontaneous, and straightforward way the inner turmoil of a priest from the Padua area who, almost an emulation of a nearby character by Goffredo Parise, or a local version of Father Ralph from "The Thorn Birds," discovers love for a parishioner, going as far as loving her in the biblical sense (here, more in reference to the Song of Songs, I would say, than to other pages of the Old Testament and later patristics!), oblivious to the fact that the Bible is a complex text with various possible interpretations: with the obvious and almost inevitable consequence that, once the fruit of love between priest and parishioner was born, and the truth simultaneously came to light, the Ecclesiastical Institution could only apply its rules and remove Father Sguotti from his position, despite protests and solidarity from some of his faithful.
The text, short and almost a pamphlet, reads quickly and enjoyably, having no literary ambitions but the simple expressive urgency of someone who wants to give voice to his protest, to his condition as a man of faith who barely recognizes himself in the Institutions and their harshness, as well as in the severe and relentless character of rules perhaps conceived in an abstract, cold manner, far from daily experience and the complex nuance of individual feelings: Which, on reflection, presents in a Catholic context the ancient and archetypal conflict masterfully treated by Sophocles in Antigone, namely the contrast, irresolvable and thus tragic in the proper sense, between the laws of the State (here of the Church, also intended as an ordinance) and the laws of the heart, to which the Scriptures also respond, partly. A conflict that, truth be told, even Jesus of Nazareth had the chance to address when he questioned the Sabbath, highlighting how "Man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for Man." Although He also said - I quote from memory - to "give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's," with all the related problems of applying such dictum considering that, compared to his own laws, the Pope can well be likened to Caesar as the Sovereign of his own ordinance. Dizzying problems, these, that no one has really managed to solve, relieving me of the responsibility to solve them with and for you.
Leaving aside the philosophical, canonical, and religious implications of the themes that this apparently innocuous booklet raises in the reader most ready to grasp the torment of the author (or his editors), I note how, in the end, the book highlights the inner turmoil of those who, while abstractly sharing the militant character of the ecclesiastical mission, which imposes, for a greater good, the sacrifice of sentimental freedom and even the carnal fulfillment of one's impulses, struggle to accept such torment when faced with concrete events that shake one's certainties: with associated difficulty in recomposing the split soul of someone who, on one hand, does not want to give up his vocation and, on the other, finds it difficult to accept the renunciation of a concrete affection, a life experience that could enrich his cultural and religious background. A conflict that finds its synthesis in the evocative title of the book itself.
Personally, I don't even know whether admitting, hypothetically, that even parish priests could have a family, or non-clandestine relationships in the light of day, would solve a problem without opening others: because the concreteness and problems of family life, the relationships that, in turn, family members can weave with a religious or social community (think of the wife and children of the parish priest) would make the picture no less complex and the problems a similar situation might create no less dizzying, potentially distracting the parish priest from his mission or casting doubt on the practical efficacy of his teaching (e.g., if the parish priest's daughter became infatuated with a wayward young man in the town, or the son cohabited 'more uxorio,' bringing other creatures into the world, or, again, if the wife decided to separate and run off with another). These are problems well known in the Protestant world, so much so that comparison teaches us that by eliminating one problem, many others, sometimes unforeseen, open up.
In the end, we are left with the beautiful face of Don Sguotti, sincere in questioning his previous life, his new life, and the gamble of Eternal Life in which our protagonist, a castaway in a "minor" Italy but not an "innocuous" one, still believes, moving from the pulpit of a countryside church to that, more vast, of this book and some television appearances.
Interrogatively Yours
Il_Paolo
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