“So that faith can exist it needs the evidence of the empty tomb. It is necessary like Peter and John to lose one’s own artificial certainties; then you will have the courage to enter into the void. It is necessary that we find the courage to enter into the “grave of God,” which we built as the alleged possession of the truth. The faith in the resurrection [sic] in and with Christ is the basis for the emptiness of ourselves.”

Italians, particularly the kinds of Italian who imagine themselves very deep and modern and important, all talk like this. As long as it doesn’t make the least sense, it’s considered tremendously insightful. If you live here for any length of time, you will have the unfortunate experience of hearing an Italian politician talk, or reading an Italian newspaper editorial. They all sound exactly like this. It’s one of the reasons most normal Italians think the entire political world is a complete sham.

But these aren’t politicians, they’re the Churchmen who have been put in charge of the Franciscans of the Immaculate.

Yeah, remember those guys? They’re still out there, and, though bled nearly dry, still fighting feebly for their lives. A bunch of them have simply left. I think there were a bunch who weren’t yet in final vows who have tried in a small way to form a little group to keep doing their spiritual mandate. They and the Vatican know, however, that their Passion isn’t over.

The message above is the weird little thing the three Vatican commissioners for the FFI have produced for the order for Easter.

The thing is, though, even if it seems like totally nonsensical gibberish, it does actually mean something. It just doesn’t mean anything Catholic. It’s why these guys are all doing so well under Francis. I am commenting on it here because it is such a good nutshell version of the New Religion.

It’s weird, and contradictory and garbled, but let’s see if we can make some sense out of it:

“So that faith can exist it needs the evidence of the empty tomb.”

Yeeeeessss… And what does this mean in Catholic theology? That the eyewitnesses who went to the Sepulchre found it empty. Jesus, whom they had seen suffer an appalling death, had risen from the dead and had left the tomb. That’s what Christianity holds, and no matter how many Churchmen say Satanic things like, “It was only a metaphor,” if you don’t believe it as a really real historical reality, as a “certainty,” one might say, you can’t be a Christian.

The trouble is, this simple, factual explanation: the tomb was empty because Jesus had risen from the dead and left it, is just a little too… well… earthly for guys like this.A little too “real.” It just isn’t spiritual enough. So, like all Modernists, they have taken the words and simply applied new meanings to them. What Modernists mean is the thing you hear pretty often from the secular culture, that religious belief is belief “in spite of” reality or in the face of there being no evidence. It’s just belief-as-fantasy. So, having adopted this secularist definition of religion, they assert that “faith = the void”.

“It is necessary like Peter and John to lose one’s own artificial certainties;”

Ummm… can you please be more specific? Which “certainties” are these, exactly? By “artificial certainties” do you mean, “errors”? “Belief in untrue things?” Because I’m pretty certain (heh!) that that’s not what you mean. I think what you mean is what Pope Francis means when he complains that the main problem with the Church and us Bad Catholics is that we believe the things the Church teaches are actually true. One might be tempted to ask, “How certain you do sound about this assertion you’re making! How do you know that what you say is ‘necessary’…? Are you sure – certain – that you’re not trapped in the ‘grave of God’ because you’re clinging to your ‘alleged possession of the truth’?”

When someone tells you that you have to abandon belief that there are objectively true things to believe, you know that the conversation is over, and it’s time for the beating and the burning:

“Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned.”

Actually, in reality that is, if the apostles lost anything, it was their limited, human and natural understanding of what Jesus had said to them and intended to do. He had told them many times that He was going to be handed over to the authorities and crucified and then on the third day would rise from the grave. I guess at the time they took it as a kind of “metaphor”… boy were they surprised when they figured out that He’d actually meant literally and exactly what He had said. Ooopsie! They were being “spiritual,” you see.

“…then you will have the courage to enter into the void…”

Is that actually what the Faith is about? Because, that’s not why I joined up. I’m pretty sure I’m not that keen on “the void”.

It is necessary that we find the courage to enter into the “grave of God,” which we built as the alleged possession of the truth.

Aaaahhhh… righty-ho. Now we get it. The “grave of God” is the thing “we built” with all the “certainty” that what you believe is actually “the truth.” The “void” is the Faith, with all that certainty and content and stuff, removed. The “void” that we’re supposed to go into with “courage” is the emptiness of the Faith devoid of reality and actual doctrinal content.

What this “faith of the void” would consist of is, naturally, left up to the individual to interpret. Once you’ve taken away the “certainty” of any kind of “possession of the truth” it really doesn’t matter what you make up for yourself to replace it, just as long – and here’s the hilariously ironic punchline – as you don’t believe it’s true! Just as long as we understand that it was our attempt to obtain reliable, factual information about God and His intentions for us that has “built” his “grave”. We killed God by trying to find stuff out about him and then believing it.

And, because we’re all gnostics now, that’s what we’re supposed to be doing as Catholics; ridding ourselves of our “certainty” of the contents of the Catholic religion, so we can have this “faith-that-is-a-void” instead. So Easter is all about entering the empty “grave of God” and staying there.

Because … there is no God! Because, nihilism!

“The faith in the resurrection [sic] in and with Christ is the basis for the emptiness of ourselves.”

Mmmm… I got nothin. Unless they’re trying to somehow incorporate the John of the Cross self-emptying, nada thing, and are somehow saying that belief… in …ummm…the Resurrection… is what you have to … empty yourself of… ummmm…

Nope, never mind… Still got nothin. Faith in the Resurrection in and with Christ is not the basis for the emptiness of ourselves or the “grave of God”. Sorry. It is the basis of all our hopes because we believe it’s true. That it’s real. That it really actually happened, really for realsies.

Anyway … The difficulty with all this sort of blither is that it only sounds good to people who aren’t believers. I sometimes wonder if Modernist Churchmen who talk this stuff are mostly playing to their old university professors who might be listening. It’s club talk. A kind of jargon that theologians learn in places like the Gregorian, surrounded by other academic churchmen who have just learned to nod sagely every time someone utters another bit of logically contradictory rubbish.

The rest of us just sit here thinking, “Do they know it doesn’t actually mean anything?”

Because, in essence, the message is this: “If you believe that the things the Church teaches are True you’re failing in Faith, which is emptying of these clingy needs to believe things are true.”

To which the only response possible is, “Do you believe that’s true?”

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