The qoèlet teaches it: please the world is vanity. Francesco liked elite and left, but he disappointed his faithful
There is no best antidote to the fumes of the artificial society of reading the Qoeletth, or ecclesiast, rocky biblical text not by chance beloved by poets, who face it as an impervious peak is challenged. It is almost curative to browse it in the beautiful version that sends the publisher de plants to the bookstore with the translations of Stefano Arduini, Davide Brullo and a giant of Italian literature such as Massimo Bontempelli. It is in the sentences of the latter that the ruthless refrain resonates: “Vanity of the vanities, said the ecclesiaste; Vanity of vanity and everything is vanity. What useful does the man of immense labor has in which he struggles in the sun? One age passes, an age comes, but the world lasts eternal. The sun rises and sets, returns to its place; Here is reborn, after crossing the meriggio and folds in the north: by rising each plague, he brings around the winds and repeats his laps. All the rivers bloom at sea, and the sea does not overflow: whence they came out, the rivers are back to return to flow. Everything is an enigma, man cannot give reasons. (…) Nothing new under the sun; And it does not mean: “Here is a new fact” because it was already in centuries that before us they were ».
This is the terrible lesson of Qoeleth: the things of the world are smoke, useless to fade too much to own them. Indeed the world deceives, it is precisely a fair of vanity that deceives and clings and sometimes poisoned. A warning that returns to the words of Christ To the faithful: you are in the world but not of the world. As if to say that it is not to the artificial circus that the Christian belongs, but to a truth higher and often difficult to testify.
Somehow, therefore, it can be said that everything was already written. The attempt by the ecclesiastical institution to please the world to obtain consent was destined to prove to be in vain. Among the various companies in which Pope Francesco He ventured, this was certainly the loser. He searched, it was noticed immediately, to offer the mainstream media remarkable openings, and in fact those same media did very pamper him, but only as long as he dealt with issues that returned to the progressive political fence. When he talked about anything else, he came or simply ignored or harshly contested. In any case, all this does not seem to have brought great profit to Christianity.
It is fashionable to repeat that Bergoglio It was the pontiff of the last, one close to the people. But the feeling is that the proximity have perceived above all some intellectual and politicians who went to Solluchero when they felt it attack Donald Trump and sovereignty. On the large mass of the faithful it does not appear that certain liberal attitudes have had a powerful impact, indeed. In this regard, it is interesting to take a look at the SWG data published by Presswhich thus summarizes the budget of the Pontificate Bergogliano: “Italians increase in the Catholic Church, but those that go to Mass at least once a month decrease.” Yes, trust increases, but the Church lives on faith. And symbols and rites. According to Swg, “the percentage of citizens who still consider the teaching of the Church current has gone from 62% in 2013 to 51% in 2024. Instead, those who trust in the Church, went from 29% to 36% in the last ten years, are growing, while those who go regularly to mass have gone from 33% to 26%”.
This is not all: «The share of Italians who define themselves in Catholics, which in 2019 were 62% and today are 51%, while the non -believers pass from 18 to 27% and those who believe in other religions go from 11%, are also reduced. Then there is a residual part of citizens who define themselves in believers, but who do not recognize themselves in any religion (from 5% to 6%), while the agnostics were 4% in 2019 and are now 3% “. Always according to SWG data (this time, however, collected in 2023), “thinking about the Catholic Church 35% of Italians feel a feeling of indifference and another 35% of disappointment. 33% nourish hope and then there is a 19% who tries confidence and another 19% to which the Church evokes disgust ».
But even by examining the Istat data things are not better. All indicators show a fast and unstoppable secularization, the “desertification” feared by John Paul II. Religious marriages fall, donations of 8 per thousand fall: the Italians continue to expand the fault that separates them from the Catholic Church. Francescowith all the light of the media spotlights of which he has enjoyed and all his highly high friendships, from Eugenio Scalfari to Emma Boninonot only did he not be able to reverse the trends in progress, but he observed them significantly increase. It is likely that laity and secularists loved him very much, or that they loved certain outputs, but Catholics have not shared all this enthusiasm. Clear: you can’t load the weight of modernity and secularization on the shoulders of the last pope.
But it is possible that, among many, the experience of Francesco It also offers this inspiration: useless to please the world hoping to be reimblasting it. The world will take what he needs and will not change a comma. Everything is vanity, smoke and wind that barking. Chasing the wind is irritating before harmful.
