On silence

In the first lessons of Christian doctrine, when contemplation is spoken of its positive charm is emphasized. Nevertheless no one denies similar value to those who initiated various activites: charities, hospitals and other things

Giulio Andreotti

<I>Liberality</I>, the enclosed monastery of the Augustinian nuns, Santi Quattro Coronati, 13th century, Rome

Liberality, the enclosed monastery of the Augustinian nuns, Santi Quattro Coronati, 13th century, Rome

I have often heard expressions of comparison between the life in big cities – especially Rome – and in small towns. There are opposing positions: those who believe the multiple experience prevails, and those who return to the old praise of “blessed solitude” (although there is also the saying “woe to the lonely”).
Personally I am not too attracted by the subject. There are people capable of keeping themselves clear of city uproar, and others who get only barrenness from silence.
In the first lessons of Christian doctrine, when contemplation is spoken of, its positive charm is emphasized. Nevertheless no one denies similar value to those who initiated various activities: charities, hospitals and other things.
The visits I make from time to time to Sister Paola, a Carmelite nun, daughter of a former fellow parliamentarian, always stir me deeply. Aside from the fact that the nun is as informed as me – or perhaps more – on what is happening in the world, they are moments of profound impact. I come away strengthened.
About contemplation, those who are not within a spiritual vision, are mistakenly led to a reductive evaluation. And it’s difficult to change it.
Thus, while no one has reservations about seeing a child in a Salesian courtyard, positive assessment of merely contemplative vocations is not easy to acquire. The argument is sometimes the topic of ordinary conversation, but it’s rarely gone into, even within religiously qualified circles.
In the tradition of papal Rome (I have experienced the final phases), there was instead respectful attention for those who were not companions in the faith, but lived exemplary lives. The detailed history of Pius IX is full of episodes and acknowledgements of the kind. There are very indicative reports in this regard. Always in Rome, analysis of the current language frequently found such expressions as “go and get slaughtered”. It was a saying, but it is nevertheless true that statistics for the last decades of the nineteenth century show an impressive number of murders. Serious quarrels took place particularly in the taverns, which were almost the sole locus for life outside the family for men after the day’s work.
For that matter the argument is still open, in jurisprudence, about the “alcoholic origins” of certain crimes against the person. They are aggravating or (the minority view) mitigating circumstances in terms of the willingness to commit crime. The argument about drugs, which seem to be continuously growing in scale, comes in here. The high price of drugs does not stop their spread, indeed it causes a parallel spread of other criminal behavior. A problem affecting many students also comes into the drug question: the use of sympamine (or similar) especially while studying for exams.
And as for that, in our political world there was from the beginning no lack of pharmaceutical products that... helped people keep awake and eloquent during the exhausting rounds of campaigning. The autopsy on a colleague of ours who died very young showed his body was worn out by the drugs he abused. One of the most difficult (and futile) questions that you can ask is what these stimulants lead to in the organism. I remember by analogy that the autopsy done on a colleague, an avid smoker, who died suddenly showed the lungs reduced to two heaps of sawdust.

A shot of the Lecceto hermitage, Siena

Perhaps the recent warning of a learned priest should be taken up: not to forget the duty of temperance, which is not easily come across today.
I avoid, not only from lack of personal expertise, the question of the comparative assessment to be given on the present moment as against the past. Statistics can help little in this regard, not least because of their inevitable limitations (quantitative and qualitative). However, while profoundly changing sensitivity and behavior, a certain progression in permissiveness cannot fail to have serious implications. I am often led to mention what I read on increasing excitability as women’s fashion gradually diminished the... consumption of fabric.
I wouldn’t like to bore the reader by citing again my aunt Mariannina (class 1854) in whose house I grew up. Apart from hat and veil she wore two or three underskirts, all coming down to her ankles.
However, caution in making judgments is encouraged by the observation that a certain reserve may arise from a desire not to advertise, rather than failed observation of rules.
Summary judgments are not difficult, but impossible.