Saint Rita Of Cascia magazine teaches homoheresy

The latest issue (November-December 2023) of the periodical Dalle api alle rose (From bees to roses), the magazine of Saint Rita of Cascia, a bimonthly edited by nuns, priests and lay people, has a title that is practically a programme: "All Children of God. An inclusive Christmas with Saint Rita". A monothematic issue, which essentially argues that the Church is wrong, doing what is has been doing for two thousand years, in condemning homosexual acts and should make a mea culpa.

The magazine - published by the Augustinian Monastery of Saint Rita of Cascia, the same place where 'the Rose of Roccaporena' lived her last forty earthly years - even goes so far as to involve Saint Rita herself in its own worldly cause, effectively offending her memory.

It starts with an editorial by Sister Giacomina Stuani (title: "Shall we forgive ourselves?"), in which the nun mentions the story of the couple with a homosexual son, which is the bimonthly's 'highlight' and thus recalls the 'todos, todos' (all, all, all) spelled out by Pope Francis at the WYD in Lisbon. Which would be "the promise that a new Church is possible", capable of shaking off "the prejudices that lead us to think that the Lord's love is for some and not for others, that it is limited", writes Sister Giacomina.

In reality, it is the Augustinian who is prejudiced against the Church, which has always taught that God's love is infinite: a God who loves and came to save sinners, but does not love their sin. On the contrary, Jesus hated sin so much that He let Himself be crucified for it, in order to offer all sinners salvation, which nonetheless everyone must deserve, by reciprocating His love. And to achieve this, there is only one way, which Jesus Himself pointed out: "He who accepts my commandments and keeps them, he loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will also love him and manifest myself to him" (John 14:21). Thinking instead of being saved in defiance of the commandments, as unrepentant, is therefore a diabolical illusion.

The bimonthly continues with an interview with theologian Rosanna Virgili, who, clutching at straws, delves into a series of interpretations of the Bible. According to the biblical scholar, no condemnation of homosexual relations can be deduced from the Holy Scriptures because the various biblical passages that speak of them, from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (whose main sin would be "inhospitality", says Virgili) to the Letter to the Romans ("a criticism of the individualistic culture of the Greeks"), should be reinterpreted in a modern key. For Daily Compass readers, these gay-friendly reinterpretations of the Bible are nothing new. Nor were they new in 1986, when the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, denounced "a new exegesis of Sacred Scripture, according to which the Bible either has nothing to say about the problem of homosexuality, or even somehow gives tacit approval of it, or finally offers moral prescriptions that are so culturally and historically conditioned that they can no longer be applied to contemporary life. Such views, seriously erroneous and misleading, therefore require special vigilance" (Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, No. 4).

Among the most active groups promoting the LGBT agenda in the Catholic Church in Italy  is La Tenda di Gionata, an association that we find mentioned in another article on the personal story of a couple from S. Ilario d'Enza (Reggio Emilia), Mara and Agostino, and their son Giovanni, who has homosexual tendencies. After the discovery of Giovanni's homosexuality, the parents are said to have tried several times to help their son live according to the teaching of the Church and thus the natural moral law, but over the years, also thanks to an encounter with a pro-gay parish priest and La Tenda di Gionata (of which they are now vice-presidents), they moved on to embrace the opposite cause, homosexuality. A 20-year-long journey that they now describe as "a blessing, because it has changed our eyes and hearts". It’s difficult not to feel sorry for these parents, who, having found bad teachers along the way, are now deceiving themselves.

It is right, as it says in the magazine, to be close to our children if they are going through this trial, but by guiding them to embrace the truth (which is Jesus himself), according to those guiding principles indicated by the Catechism of the Catholic Church (nn. 2357-2359) and which, according to the albeit different state of life of each one, are basically applicable to every person: chastity, prayer, sacramental grace, the call "to carry out God's will in their lives" (CCC, 2358) and "to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's cross the difficulties they may encounter as a result of their condition" (ibid.).

Another article that confuses welcoming the sinner with welcoming sin is by Father Luciano De Michieli, Rector of the Basilica of Saint Rita. Title: "If it does not become Home, the Church betrays itself". For the priest, the Church must be a place where "you have the freedom to be who you are" (without conversion?) and where "you can discover the spiritual resources of relationships, even homosexual ones, and confess the wounds inflicted by the Church". It would be necessary to overcome "some inexorable prohibitions", to recognise "the signs of the times" so as not to make the faithful turn away: and all this, Father De Michieli concludes, would be a "profoundly Saint Rita" challenge. It is a pity that the Augustinian priest mistakes the recognition of the signs of the times for conformity "to the mentality of this century" (Romans 12:2), which Saint Paul warns us against and which is precisely the error into which the Cascia-based magazine has fallen. It should also be noted that the Church loses as many believers as its attempts to adapt to the world, that is, when it stops proclaiming the truth of the crucified and risen Jesus, with all that this entails for eternal life.

Moreover, it is an indication of the crisis of faith of our Church that an entire Catholic magazine (sent abroad in over 300,000 copies) is devoted to the LGBT cause. And that the name of Saint Rita - supreme model of wife and mother, even before being a nun - is abused to advance demands that are directed, like it or not, to destroy marriage and the family according to God's plan.