Berlinguer and the Right, Pope Wojtyla and communism better than capitalism

ROME – The open applause of the Fratelli d'Italia militants, requested by the President of the Senate, Ignazio La Russa, during the interview with Bianca Berlinguer at the programmatic conference which took place in Pescara. Some titles in summary: The right tries to steal from the Democratic Party and the left Enrico Berlinguer, the last […]

ROME – The open applause of the Fratelli d’Italia militants, requested by the President of the Senate, Ignazio La Russa, during the interview with Bianca Berlinguer at the Conference, caused a lot of discussion program that took place in Pescara. Some titles in summary: The right tries to steal Enrico Berlinguer, the last leader of the Italian Communist Party beloved by millions of Italians, from the Democratic Party and the left; Berlinguer and Almirante, historic leaders of the Italian Social Movement, respected each other and even met in secret to discuss how to beat terrorism; even the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, visited the exhibition on Berlinguer in Rome, and so on. For the 40th anniversary of Berlinguer’s death, which occurred during the electoral campaign for the 1984 European elections, the secretary of the Democratic Party, Elly Schlein, you never know, printed Berlinguer’s gaze on the card that those who join the party receive. Thinking about this, about how political forces then decide to communicate their message, I was reminded of an incredible interview given by Pope John Paul II to the journalist Jas Gawronski and published in La Stampa on 2 November 1993 (here the text
&lt ; a href=”https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/it/speeches/1993/november/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19931102_interview.html” target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener” > https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/it/speeches/1993/november/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19931102_interview.html

Here, precisely in this game of references and comparisons, also with respect to the current positions of Pope Francis, is the message of Pope Wojtyla, who with his pontificate accelerated the end of the communist dictatorship of the Soviet Union a, read today, turns out to be prophetic, as regards his judgment on war, on capitalism and communism, on the future of Europe. We start from war, here Pope Wojtyla is clear: “… In case of aggression the aggressor must be deprived of the possibility of harming… According to the traditional doctrine of the Church the just war is only that of defense. &lt ; strong> Every people must have the right to defend themselves. This is a principle already formulated by Saint Augustine, and which was then reaffirmed by the Second Vatican Council.” Then we get to the heart of politics. What do you think was your role in the collapse of communism? “I think that if there has been a decisive role it is that of Christianity as such, of its content, of its religious and moral message, of its intrinsic defense of the human person and his rights. And I have done nothing other than remember , repeat, insist  that this is a principle to be observed.” On communism: “Communism was successful in this century – states Pope Wojtyla – as a reaction to a certain type of excessive, wild capitalism, which we all know well… A reaction that has been growing and gaining much consensus among the people. .. Many of them thought that communism could improve the quality of life. In this way many intellectuals, even in Poland (the Pope’s homeland, ed.) abandoned themselves to collaboration with the communist authorities they realized that reality is different from what they thought…”. You fought with energy and passion against communism. Now moral degradation reigns in the countries that have freed themselves from it….do you ever wonder if it was really worth defeating communism “… Of course it was legitimate to fight the unjust totalitarian system, which defined itself as socialist or communist . But what Leo XIII says is also true, that is, that there are ‘seeds of truth’ even in the socialist program. It is obvious that these seeds must not be destroyed, they must not be lost…. The supporters of all-out capitalism, in any form, tend to ignore even the good things achieved by communism: the fight against unemployment, the concern for the poor… In system of real socialism, however, excessive protectionism by the State has borne negative fruits, private initiative has disappeared, inertia and passivity have spread…. In communism there was concern for the social, while capitalism It’s quite individualistic.” Holy Father when I hear you speak like this… I cannot help but think that you are more against capitalism than communism… “I repeat what I said, which is summed up in a line by the Polish poet Michiewicz: ‘Do not punish a blind sword but rather the hand’., that is, we must go back to the causes of the phenomena we experience. And in my opinion, the degenerate manifestations of capitalism are also at the origin of numerous serious social and human problems that currently torment Europe and the world. … Capitalism today is different, it has introduced social safety nets, thanks to the action of the unions it has launched a social policy, it is controlled by the State and by the unions, however, it has remained in its ‘wild’ state ‘, almost like in the last century”… On the one hand there is the developed West, but as you yourself observe, too attentive to economic issues; on the other, ex-communist Europe, which thanks to the suffering it has endured, still demonstrates less superficiality more, in terms of its identity, because Eastern Europe, through all its experiences imposed by the totalitarian system, has matured…”. Thanks to communism therefore… “It matured rather in the process of self-defense and the fight against Marxist totalitarianism. Another human dimension has been preserved in the East. Perhaps this was also one of the reasons why 15 years ago a Pope was elected from Poland. Certain values, in the East, had depreciated less. If a man lives in a system that is programmatically atheistic, even in a country like Poland, he realizes better, for example, what religion means. He realizes something that is not always noticed in the West: namely that God is the source of man’s dignity, the ultimate, unique, absolute source. The man in the East noticed it, and a prisoner in the gulag noticed it, Solzhenitsyn noticed it. In the West, man does not see this so clearly. He sees it up to a certain point. His conscience has largely become secularized. Not infrequently, he sees religion as something alienating”…