Abri a janela e respirei ar puro...

...quando li este parágrafo da entrevista ao Carlos Silva da UGT.

"Aqueles que não conseguem assinar um acordo de concertação social, disfarçam a sua incapacidade atirando pedras aos outros. A UGT vive há 40 anos sobre estas pedras que nos são atiradas. A verdade é que, como não assinam, então acusam os outros de serem sempre a muleta do patronato e de todos os governos. Esta é uma leitura que, de uma vez por todas, tem de ser erradicada da sociedade portuguesa."

Leiam aqui a entrevista.

Morte ou Glória II

onde gastas os dias?

vives ou vais morrendo?

só há duas saídas.

Morte ou Glória.

inteiro

derramar-me

gastar-me assim por Amor

enfim descansar

nesse Sol dourado

que me banha a fronte

e sustém a alma

e lava o peso

e levanta o olhar

e me faz cântico vivo

de louvor e Glória

vives ou vais morrendo?

Morte ou Glória.

mas não a minha Senhor,

a Tua!

por J.B.

dos Pastores do Presépios.

Daniel Serrão, um homem para todas as estações.

por Walter Osswald

in Observador | 14.01.2017

"No seu conjunto, a multímoda obra de Daniel Serrão forma uma clara exposição, escorreita e una, de uma doutrina, de um exigente modo de julgar e sentir o mundo, numa fidelidade a princípios e a uma visão original, madura, solidamente fundamentada no raciocínio e conhecimento científico e amplamente iluminada pela transcendência. Ele, que singelamente confessava ser “ainda dos que acreditam no Menino Jesus”, não deixou de experimentar os seus combates de Jacob e do Anjo, de que saiu mais forte e confiante. Mas soube sempre intervir e argumentar, falando a linguagem universal da razão esclarecida e responsável, respeitosa e tolerante, a linguagem de quem quer ajudar o outro a ser mais feliz e mais justo, mais capaz de respeitar, amar e celebrar a vida."

[ler o artigo todo aqui]

FRANCE’S CATHOLIC MOMENT

por Samuel Gregg

no First Things

Since France definitively adopted a republican form of government in 1870, ardent Catholics have rarely occupied the Élysée Palace. It’s arguable that only two such people have been president of France: Marshal Patrice de MacMahon (1873–1879) and General Charles de Gaulle (1959–1969). Now, in our supposed secular age, there is a strong possibility that France may elect another devout Catholic as its president: François Fillon.

The 2017 presidential candidate of France’s mainstream center-right party Les Républicains, Fillon isn’t shy about speaking publicly about his Catholic faith. That includes how it shapes his decidedly conservative views on issues like euthanasia and his personal opposition to abortion. Even more remarkable, however, is that many cathos (slang for practicing Catholics in France) worked openly to secure Fillon’s victory over his rivals Nicolas Sarkozy and Alain Juppé during their party’s primaries.

Public and direct activism of this sort by Catholics hasn’t been characteristic of contemporary French politics. Even as serious a Catholic as Charles de Gaulle kept his faith in the background of his public life. Certainly, de Gaulle never hid his Catholicism. During World War II, the general relied heavily on fervent Catholics such as Admiral Thierry d’Argenlieu (a Carmelite monk) and General Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque (a prewar Action française supporter) while leading Free France. Several practicing Catholics such as Edmond Michelet (today, a candidate for beatification) served as ministers throughout de Gaulle’s ten-year presidency.

Nevertheless, de Gaulle never forgot that many French Catholics—including Catholic bishops—had supported Vichy after France’s catastrophic defeat in 1940. Nor did de Gaulle support France’s postwar Christian Democrat party, the Mouvement Républicain Populaire. This was partly because de Gaulle resented the MRP’s backing for what he regarded as the Fourth Republic’s flawed constitution. Yet his reservations about the MRP also owed something to de Gaulle’s sensitivities about Catholics participating as Catholics in political life. In his 2011 book Charles le Catholique, Gérard Bardy stresses that de Gaulle wanted to avoid being perceived as compromising the republic’s commitment to laïcité—the notion that the state should be neutral about religion and free from religious influences—so much so that he usually refrained from receiving Communion when attending Mass in any official capacity.

So what has changed? How has it come to pass that movements of young and politically active Catholics such as the Sens Commun were able to openly mobilize center-right voters to support the forthright Catholic Fillon against the self-described catholique agnostique Juppé during the primary runoff? Why did Fillon, Juppé, and Sarkozy all consider themselves obliged to appeal directly to practicing Catholics during the primaries? Is France experiencing what might be called its own Catholic moment?

As with most developments at the confluence of religion and politics, immediate concerns and long-term factors are at work. Among the former is deep angst throughout French society about Islam, something accentuated by Islamist terrorism and the spread of Muslim-dominated “no-go” areas for non-Muslims throughout France. As the Catholic intellectual Pierre Manent demonstrated in his bestselling Situation de la France (2015), many French citizens are consequently asking one of those existential questions beloved by the French: What gives France its distinct character? Some, including many nonbelievers, have concluded that France really cannot be understood without Catholicism, and that the legacy of the Enlightenment and French Revolution has not provided much of a bulwark against creeping Islamization. Fr. Jacques Hamel’s brutal murder by two Islamist terrorists in July 2016 underscored this in a particularly poignant way for many French Catholics, and no doubt for Jews, Protestants, and nonbelievers as well.

Mainstream conservative politicians aren’t blind to these concerns. But Fillon also recognizes that emphasizing his Catholicism can draw voters away from one of his major rivals: Marine Le Pen, head of the hard-right Front national. The FN’s unabashedly nationalist line on political and economic issues has capitalized upon worries about Islam and deep dissatisfaction with France’s political elites. Fillon’s references to his conservative Catholic views and the Church’s place in forging French identity, however, now draw attention to the FN’s rather secular character, which is more nationalist than Catholic. With the exception of Marine Le Pen’s niece, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen (another practicing Catholic who talks openly about her faith), the FN’s leadership was noticeably absent from the large demonstrations, mobilized by the Catholic-led movement La Manif pour tous, against the Socialist government’s legalization of same-sex marriage in 2013. In recent months, the FN has also blurred its once strong stance against abortion. Fillon has thus positioned himself to attract support from some of the ardent Catholics who, exasperated by the secularism and EU-philia of French elites, have shifted their allegiance to the FN in recent years.

Beyond immediate political considerations, the role played by les cathos in Fillon’s primary victory reflects developments within French Catholicism underway for some time. Following Vatican II, many French Catholics adopted an accomodationist stance toward society and politics. In practical terms, this “Catholicism of openness” meant flirting with notions such as Catholic-Marxist dialogue and adhering to positions conventionally described as “progressive” on matters ranging from liturgy to economics. Those questioning these trends, including the Jesuit theologians Henri de Lubac and Jean Daniélou, both of whom had played important roles during the Council, often found themselves marginalized.

By the early 1980s, it was obvious that progressivism could not reverse Catholicism’s visible decline throughout France, and may have been contributing to it. Yet at this low point for the Church, some extraordinary leaders emerged, most notably Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger. A teenage convert from Judaism whose mother was murdered in Auschwitz, Lustiger was elevated by John Paul II, first to the See of Orléans in 1979 and then, just two years later, to the Archdiocese of Paris. Known by friends and foes as le bulldozer, Lustiger turned Parisian Catholicism upside down. Among other things, he created his own seminary, supported the numerous lay movements that proliferate in France, and started his own television station. Lustiger was determined to shake French Catholics out of the mindset of managed decline.

Lustiger also made the Church visible in France’s public square. He encouraged lay Catholics, who were as uninterested in progressive accommodationism as they were put off by Lefebvrist intransigence, to participate in public debates. Lustiger did not hesitate to comment regularly and creatively on issues of the day. Sometimes this led to surprising results. After leading the Church’s successful resistance to the Socialist government’s effort to diminish the autonomy of Catholic schools in the early 1980s, Lustiger developed a good relationship with President François Mitterrand. An agnostic from a traditionally Catholic family, the socialist Mitterrand respected Lustiger for his integrity, convictions, and intellect.

Lustiger, and many of those who became priests (often known as génération Lustiger) during his time as French Catholicism’s public face, gave the Church presence in French society. Many of these men are now bishops: Dominique Rey in Fréjus-Toulon, Olivier de Germay in Corsica, Marc Aillet of Bayonne, the Paris auxiliary Éric de Moulins-Beaufort, the military bishop Luc Ravel, to name just a few. They come from professional families, and invariably possess credentials from France’s elite secular educational institutions as impressive as their counterparts in academia, business, and politics. These bishops are what the French call décomplexé. That means they are unintimidated by secular France and do not feel the need to acquiesce to the dwindling band of progressive Catholics and their views about how practicing Catholics and the Church should behave. In 2015, for example, Bishop Rey provoked controversy by inviting Marion Maréchal-Le Pen to speak alongside representatives from other parties in a discussion about Catholics in public life at his diocese’s summer university. In his response to criticisms, Rey pointed out the obvious: You can hardly have a serious conversation about Catholics in politics and exclude representatives of a political party which regularly receives millions of votes in France.

These génération Lustiger bishops, the priests they have formed, and their lay Catholic equivalents in leadership positions refuse to behave in accord with the expectations of the heirs of Voltaire and Rousseau who have been running French culture since the end of World War II. This independent and self-confident spirit helps explain the resilience of La Manif pour tous, which was more effective in mobilizing public opinion than pro-marriage groups in the United States, in large part because of its ability to put hundreds of thousands of people into the streets of Paris, many of whom are not Catholic. It was only a matter of time before this type of Catholic activism spilled over into party politics. Fillon’s ascendancy indicates that this time has arrived.

This does not mean that les néocatholiques, as the French press calls them—the Sens Commun’s formidable Madeleine de Jessey, the Manif pour tous’s president Ludovine de La Rochère, convert-intellectuals like Fabrice Hadjadj, or media-savvy priests such as Pierre-Hervé Grosjean, Pierre Amar, Guillaume Seguin, Antoine Roland-Gosselin, and others—dominate the French Church. A traditionalist Lefebvrism continues to exert a strong influence. Nor is it difficult to find “low-energy Catholicism” throughout France (or elsewhere in the West, for that matter).

Still, something has changed in French Catholicism. It is alive in ways one does not see in neighboring Germany, Belgium, or Switzerland. Conceptions of what it means to be a faithful Catholic in the French public square are light-years ahead of the awkward diffidence that characterized many politically active Catholics in previous decades. The hitherto-dominant secularist understanding of laïcité, it seems, is receiving a comeuppance from part of France from which it was never expected. Vive la différence!

Samuel Gregg is research director at the Acton Institute.

Dos símbolos e protocolos - ideias soltas e provavelmente irrelevantes.

Este não é um post sobre Mário Soares.

O país parou para o funeral de Mário Soares.
Manda a lei, e bem, que os antigos presidentes da república tenham direito a um funeral de estado.
Entram em cena o protocolo e os símbolos e começa o meu desconforto com a palidez com que o nosso estado se apresenta e se conduz a si próprio nestas funções.

Uma função destas pede uma presença assumidamente e abundantemente cerimonial e simbólica por significar, em teoria, a vontade de uma nação que quer honrar determinada personalidade.

Um funeral de estado pressupõem uma parada, uma marcha, uma viagem, a última, do homenageado, nos braços da Nação que, se espera, gastou a vida a servir. Essa marcha está a cargo das Forças Armadas que são o repositório dos valores e garante da própria existência da Nação, personificando-a para lá das facções políticas e demais "tribos indígenas". Nesse sentido, são o símbolo mais universal e inclusivo de todos os portugueses. É por isso que a urna é transportada num armão militar, que integrava em tempos idos as baterias de artilharia. Não há transporte mais honroso para alguém que supostamente se deu aos seus com o seu serviço.

Até aqui tudo bem. Mas depois o que vemos ser feito é um cortejo pífio, com uns batedores, um carro que tudo indica nada ter a ver com os usados nas baterias de artilharia, uma escolta de cavalaria que vai longe do escoltado, nenhuma infantaria, os orgãos do estado enfiados em carros, se é que iam integrados no cortejo e a tropa com as suas fardas "racionais" em vez de usar fardas de gala ou recuperar uniformes mais simbólicos e afirmativos.

Ora eu acho que o cortejo de um funeral de estado devia ser uma alegoria, um quadro vivo da nação a caminho com o herói para nós, o povo, podermos ver, para nos sentirmos "portugueses", juntos, acima das barricadas, a honrá-lo, a despedirmo-nos dele. Devíamos ver uma função que nos fizesse sentir essa pertença à comunidade que se junta e convoca os seus símbolos nacionais para dizer adeus e obrigado a quem partiu.

Para ajudar à festa, nos restantes momentos de este funeral de estado os símbolos nacionais aparecem errados com os castelos da bandeira nacional abertos e não fechados - vá lá que não eram pagodes chineses. Já os do regime aparecem em lugar de destaque à cabeceira do defunto. É verdade que tenho pouco saco para jacobinices mas, não percebo porque é que continuamos a ter de reafirmar o regime em vez de simbolizar a Pátria. Somos portugueses primeiro, não somos da república portuguesa, ou, republicanos portugueses.

Bem sei que o ar do tempo não está para simbolismos. A tropa, a pátria, a bandeira são para manusear com cuidado senão ainda te chamam facho. Eu sou um romântico. Mas será que alguém pode pôr uma dose, larga, de brio, cerimonial e orgulho nas nossas funções oficiais? Será pedir muito?

Grato.
Vosso,

o senhor do tamuitabom.

Do sentido das coisas.

Há lá por casa um puto que ultimamente só anda a galope e que me tem apontado o Sentido das Coisas. Vivo, por isso, abençoado.

How very British.

"Coronations... That's what the Norfolks do..."

Tommy Lascelles in The Crown

Da Mariquinhas.

A filosofia pelo fado (II)

Miguel Tamen | Observador | 9.12.16

"Há mais de sessenta anos que dezenas de fadistas contumazes lamentam a desaparição da casa da Mariquinhas. Fizeram-no de muitos modos: recomendaram que se afogasse as dores da mudança em licor de ginja; imaginaram a proprietária numa situação de obesidade; e cantaram a desaparição das pessoas que tinham cantado a desaparição da casa. A alteração mais ínfima fez-lhes sempre lembrar o fim do mundo, e sugeriu-lhes frequentemente que a actividade humana é vã. As voltas do conhecido fado-Midas transformam tudo o que tocam em ocasião de choradeira.

À Mariquinhas original são porém alheios esses modos de lamento. Continua a ser a mais filosófica de todas as versões. A senhora do título é uma Carmen afadigada, “altiva como as rainhas.” É verdade que mora numa rua bizarra, mas apenas porque era preciso encontrar uma rima para “guitarra.” No demais tem uma casa “muito mal mobilada”, onde se podem ver jarras sobre colunas e “quadros de gosto magano.” Nada que não se possa encontrar ainda em residências de secretários de estado, de professores universitários, e de vendedores ambulantes. O primeiro e o maior fadista que cantou a casa da Mariquinhas construiu com as suas mãos uma réplica da referida casa, hoje no Museu do Fado; parece-se mais com uma casa de bonecas vitoriana do que com o símbolo de um mundo desaparecido.

Na casa da Mariquinhas original pratica-se a prostituição com uma certa alegria. A heroína “é doida pelas cantigas.” É-nos informado que “vive com muitas amigas” mas a frase não quer provavelmente dizer isso. A letra consiste numa série de décimas que à primeira vista parecem monótonas. Há versos que dão a impressão de lapsos poéticos deliberados. São todavia os grandes momentos do fado: o dístico “se canta o fado à guitarra / de comovida até chora” contém uma observação profunda sobre a origem dos nossos desgostos, e mesmo da arte. Quanto ao melhor dístico de todos, chega a confortar os ignorantes, porque sugere um erro literário que nem nós próprios cometeríamos: “Limpa as mobílias com óleo / De amêndoa doce e mesquinhas.” Os eruditos arrepiam-se; mas o fadista sublinha-o com acinte e com deleite. O seu instinto era melhor, e era seguro: nunca ninguém voltou a pronunciar ‘falo’, ‘sala’ ou ‘coluna’ como ele.

Para as grandes cenas de lamentação gostamos de imaginar cenários condizentes: os últimos dias de Pompeia, entrevistas de vida de artistas idosos, e, no fado, o quadro do Pintor Consagrado. Ora na casa da Mariquinhas não há cenários desses. O ambiente é de domesticidade calma. As receitas são guardadas no cofre-forte; as vizinhas não sabem o que se passa lá dentro; há problemas com a conta do gás; exerce-se uma profissão; e, claro está, a mobília é limpa com óleo de amêndoas doces. A casa da Mariquinhas representa o triunfo da sociedade civil."

Ainda sobre o (In)Fidel Castro.

O Colapso da Decência

por Nuno Melo | JN, 01.12.16

A aprovação do voto de pesar pela morte de Fidel Castro na Assembleia da República, como alguém que "consagrou a vida aos ideais do progresso social e da paz", significou o derradeiro triunfo do ditador, sobre os valores de referência do regime democrático.

A extrema-esquerda que contesta a legitimidade da eleição de Donald Trump nos EUA teve sucesso na homenagem a um déspota cubano que, como é sabido, nunca contou um voto nas urnas, ao mesmo tempo que, na caricatura do absurdo, se manifestou sentada no hemiciclo, sem respeito nem educação, contra a visita amiga do rei legítimo de Espanha, acusado de nunca ter sido submetido a sufrágio.

Agiu a propósito, com a mesma facilidade com que grita "liberdade" de cravo ao peito em cada dia 25 de Abril, mas concretizou o 11 de Março e lutou para que o 25 de Novembro nunca visse a luz do dia.

Conseguiu para o tirano do Caribe o que negou por ocasião da morte de José Hermano Saraiva, perigoso doutrinador do Estado Novo nos "Horizontes da memória" da RTP, António Champallimaud, pecaminoso porque criou riqueza e empregos em Portugal, Jaime Neves, que do lado de Ramalho Eanes teve o topete de ajudar a consolidar a democracia nacional, ou Shimon Peres que, azar nítido, foi prémio Nobel da Paz a par de Yasser Arafat, mas era judeu.

Tratou-se também da mesmíssima extrema-esquerda que rejeitou o voto de congratulação pela libertação de Ingrid Bettencourt, sequestrada pelas FARC na Colômbia, sob argumento de que os terroristas é que estavam do "lado certo" da história.

Infelizmente, no centro-direita, não faltou quem tenha ido na conversa. Esqueceram-se, talvez, de que os "ideais do progresso social e da paz" descobertos no finado Fidel Castro podem ser medidos pelo número de opositores mortos ou desaparecidos, de partidos políticos que nunca puderam nascer, de cubanos impedidos de circular, de se expressarem livremente ou de se manifestarem, dos "balseros" afogados em condições miseráveis na esperança de se livrarem do jugo e da absoluta proibição da liberdade de Imprensa.

Em cada fotografia tirada ao lado de Fidel Castro, por líderes ocidentais fascinados pela ideia da moldura a ornamentar os armários lá de casa, o ditador foi ganhando anos de vida política, contados pela longevidade de um regime que Che Guevara ilustrou como poucos na ONU, em 11 de dezembro de 1964: Fuzilamentos? Sim. Fuzilamos e continuaremos fuzilando.

A Assembleia da República não se limitou a homenagear um tirano. Silenciou a justiça devida a cada uma das vítimas.

Leia mais: O colapso da decência http://www.jn.pt/opiniao/nuno-melo/interior/o-colapso-da-decencia-5528732.html#ixzz4RhAZHw7E 

do Plano Inclinado | No First Things.

ABOUT THOSE UNTHINKING, BACKWARDSCATHOLICS

by Charles J. Chaput10 . 13 . 16

"Back in 2008, in the weeks leading up to the Obama-McCain presidential election, two young men visited me in Denver. They were from Catholics United, a group describing itself as committed to social justice issues. They voiced great concern at the manipulative skill of Catholic agents for the Republican Party. And they hoped my brother bishops and I would resist identifying the Church with single-issue and partisan (read: abortion) politics. 

It was an interesting experience. Both men were obvious flacks for the Obama campaign and the Democratic Party—creatures of a political machine, not men of the Church; less concerned with Catholic teaching than with its influence. And presumably (for them) bishops were dumb enough to be used as tools, or at least prevented from helping the other side. Yet these two young men not only equaled but surpassed their Republican cousins in the talents of servile partisan hustling. Thanks to their work, and activists like them, American Catholics helped to elect an administration that has been the most stubbornly unfriendly to religious believers, institutions, concerns and liberty in generations. 

I never saw either young man again. The cultural damage done by the current White House has—apparently—made courting America’s bishops unnecessary. 

But bad can always get worse. I’m thinking, of course, of the contemptuously anti-Catholic emails exchanged among members of the Clinton Democratic presidential campaign team and released this week by WikiLeaks. A sample: Sandy Newman, president of Voices for Progress, emailed John Podesta, now the head of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, to ask about whether “the bishops opposing contraceptive coverage” could be the tinder for a revolution. “There needs to be a Catholic Spring, in which Catholics themselves demand the end of a middle ages [sic] dictatorship,” Newman writes. 

Of course, Newman added, “this idea may just reveal my total lack of understanding of the Catholic church, the economic power it can bring to bear against nuns and priests who count on it for their maintenance.” Still, he wondered, how would one “plant the seeds of a revolution”? John Podesta replied that “We created Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good to organize for a moment like this . . . likewise Catholics United” (emphasis added). 

Another Clinton-related email, from John Halpin of the Center for American Progress, mocks Catholics in the so-called conservative movement, especially converts: “They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations and must be totally unaware of Christian democracy.” In a follow-up, he adds “They can throw around ‘Thomistic’ thought and ‘subsidiarity’ and sound sophisticated because no one knows what . . . they’re talking about.” 

On the evening these WikiLeaks emails were released, I received the following angry email myself, this one from a nationally respected (non-Catholic) attorney experienced in Church-state affairs: 

I was deeply offended by the [Clinton team] emails, which are some of the worst bigotry by a political machine I have seen. [A] Church has an absolute right to protect itself when under attack as a faith and Church by civil political forces. That certainly applies here . . . 

Over the last eight years there has been strong evidence that the current administration, with which these people share values, has been very hostile to religious organizations. Now there is clear proof that this approach is deliberate and will accelerate if these actors have any continuing, let alone louder, say in government. 

These bigots are actively strategizing how to shape Catholicism not to be Catholic or consistent with Jesus’s teachings, but to be the “religion” they want. They are, at the very core, trying to turn religion to their secular view of right and wrong consistent with their politics. This is fundamentally why the Founders left England and demanded that government not have any voice in religion. Look where we are now. We have political actors trying to orchestrate a coup to destroy Catholic values, and they even analogize their takeover to a coup in the Middle East, which amplifies their bigotry and hatred of the Church. I had hoped I would never see this day—a day like so many dark days in Eastern Europe that led to the death of my [Protestant minister] great grandfather at the hands of communists who also hated and wanted to destroy religion. 

Of course it would be wonderful for the Clinton campaign to repudiate the content of these ugly WikiLeaks emails. All of us backward-thinking Catholics who actually believe what Scripture and the Church teach would be so very grateful. 

In the meantime, a friend describes the choice facing voters in November this way: a vulgar, boorish lout and disrespecter of women, with a serious impulse control problem; or a scheming, robotic liar with a lifelong appetite for power and an entourage riddled with anti-Catholic bigots. 

In a nation where “choice” is now the unofficial state religion, the menu for dinner is remarkably small." 

Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., is archbishop of Philadelphia.