COVID-19 has been isolated and it has been discovered that it is so small that it is nearly invisible. And yet it has upended our existence. For five hundred years it has been claimed the only things that exist are those which our senses can perceive. Everything else is superstition. We now know we’ve been lied to and that empiricists, Enlightenment, materialists and romantics were wrong.

In the comments of politicians and commentators just as in the reaction of the people, there is the perception that the war against the coronavirus justifies the suspension of civil liberty. It is an old debate that has engaged many philosophers, but the reality is that when power takes away liberty it does not guarantee either safety or life.

A pandemic is the ideal thing that can be used to suspend democracy and civil liberties, often invoked by the same people who are presently removing them. Fictional stories of similar catastrophes teach us that this is so. Planetary emergencies are the ideal thing for those who want to have a world government of “technicians.” Everything started in China, which is a totalitarian regime.

Well, if the widely-read New York Times columnist David Brooks believes the family is an institution created in the 1900s and destined to fail, then surely it must be in crisis. Yet, sociology affirms (even more so than the Catholic Church) that the family is a valuable social institution founded upon marriage protects society from various forms of violence, educational and social failures, and poverty.

There are now four suicides connected to the British reality show “Love Island”: its former host, Caroline Flack, was found dead, and before her two other contestants and a boyfriend had also killed themselves. Used to being in front of the cameras 24 hours a day, when they leave they repeat it on social media. The same thing happens in Italy, and is spreading as if happiness depended on the love you receive from the world, but results in despair.

A Spanish Plastic Surgery Specialist, Bernardo Hontanilla Calatayud, says he has studied the image on the Shroud and can affirm that it shows “the typical gesture of a person trying to rise from the supine position”. Even the facial muscles are those of someone alive. But this statement, on the trail of the Resurrection, is refuted by science and also by the Shroud itself because the image is not the image of a body about to rise.

A rapper is invited to the most famous Italian song Festival by the director because of his desire to live despite being confined to a wheel chair with ALS. The young male sings a hymn to life with words of the beauty of sacrifice (the affection of his loved-ones) and the rosary that keeps the devil of desperation away. Anyone suffering can’t help but be struck.

The Doomsday Clock, the imaginary clock that indicates how close we are to Judgment Day, has just been moved at the beginning of 2020 to “100 seconds from midnight.” Are we really living in the most dangerous moment of history? The continuous top-tier news coverage of the Chinese coronavirus is keeping us in a continual state of fear, a fear that is unjustified but which “serves a purpose.”

At the University of Pisa it is now permitted for a student to change his or her name even if it has not been changed on his or her birth certificate, all in an effort to end discrimination. But behind the mantras of gender freedom, globalization, multiculturalism, “ecu-mania” and environmentalism is an assault on the identity of the person and of nations, cultures, and the Catholic faith – it is an assault against reality itself in order to replace it with a constructed ideal. But if you try to take away the sides of a square, the result is that its reality disappears and becomes nothing.

In the latest film by the American director, The Irishman, there is a notable repetition of the same autobiographical thread also found in Silence and The Last Temptation of Christ: The remorse of having turned his back on Christ to follow lust. It is no coincidence that his adviser was the Jesuit James Martin, for whom one can live in sin and be saved anyway.

Sir Roger Scruton, the British philosopher who died last week, was known for being a tenacious defender of the absolute importance of beauty. From his point of view, in the last century, all western forms of art have gradually renounced the pursuit of beauty, mainly because of atheism.

After the publication of the book by Vanessa Springora, France is shaken. But the sexual experiences of the writer Gabriel Matzneff, with children between 10 and 15 years old, were known, described in his books and even told 'playfully' on TV. Yet he has received multiple literary awards, political support (right and especially left) and collaborations with leading newspapers. It was he who wrote the Petition of 1977, which in fact asked for the decriminalization of pedophilia. And that was signed by many famous French intellectuals, already protagonists of the 1968. A case that once again confirms the lucidity of Benedict XVI's analysis on the spread of pedophilia.