There have been many beatifications this fall – all such interesting people, such a diverse group of servants of the Lord. Most recent was now Blessed Antonio Rosmini, on whom we have blogged before – notable for many reasons, among which is the fact that some of his writings were on the Index for a long…time. Magister:
A beatification ceremony is approaching that is a miracle in its own right: the beatification of the priest and philosopher Antonio Rosmini.
It’s a miracle because just six years ago, the new blessed was still under a condemnation issued in 1887 by the congregation of the Holy Office, against 40 propositions drawn from his writings.
Absolution came on July 1, 2001, with a note from the then-prefect of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
And it was only after the removal of this obstacle that the cause of his beatification was put on the fast track.
Antonio Rosmini will be proclaimed blessed on Sunday, November 18, in Novara, the northern Italian diocese where he spent the last part of his life. Pope Benedict XVI has appointed cardinal Josè Saraiva Martins, the prefect of the congregation for the causes of saints, to preside over the celebration.
In addition to being a deeply spiritual priest, Rosmini was a profound thinker and a prolific writer. The complete edition of his works, being prepared by Città Nuova, will ultimately run to 80 large volumes. Fr. Umberto Muratore, a religious of the congregation that Rosmini founded, does not hesitate to compare him, as a philosopher, to giants like Saint Thomas and Saint Augustine.
Of his books, the one still most widely read and translated is “Delle cinque piaghe della santa Chiesa [Of the Five Wounds of the Holy Church].” One of the wounds that he denounced was the ignorance of the clergy and the people in celebrating the liturgy. But it is a mistake to view him as a standard bearer for the abandonment of the use of Latin. He wrote, instead, that “reducing the sacred rites to the vernacular languages would mean resorting to a remedy worse than the disease.”
He was also a great political theorist. He was a dyed-in-the-wool liberal during a period – the mid-19th century – when liberalism, for the Church, was synonymous with the devil. In his book “Filosofia della politica [Philosophy of Politics],” Rosmini expresses his admiration for “Democracy in America,” the masterpiece of his contemporary Alexis de Tocqueville, a founding father of faith-friendly liberalism.
Rosmini anticipated by more than a century the statements on religious freedom affirmed by Vatican Council II. He was a critic of Catholicism as a “religion of the state.” He was a tireless defender of the freedom of citizens and of “intermediate bodies” against the abuses of an omnipotent state.
It is not surprising, therefore, that those spreading Rosmini’s thought in the Catholic camp today are above all the proponents of a form of liberalism open to religion, which in Europe has its leading figures in the “Vienna school” of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek.
From the biography provided in Magister’s piece:
In 1848, with a mandate from the king of Piedmont, Carlo Alberto di Savoia, Rosmini returned to Rome on a diplomatic mission, with the aim of persuading Pope Pius IX to preside over a confederation of Italian states. But when the Piedmont government demanded that the pope join in the war against Austria, Rosmini resigned from his diplomatic post.
Under attack from the Jesuits, but bolstered by visits from his friends, including the author Alessandro Manzoni, Rosmini spent his last years in Stresa, guiding the two congregations he had founded and writing his loftiest work, the “Theosophia.”
But Pius IX ordered him to remain in Rome. He was spoken of as the next cardinal secretary of state, and after the foundation of the Roman Republic, as prime minister. But he refused to preside over a revolutionary government that stripped the pope of his freedom. On November 24, 1848, Pius IX fled to Gaeta. Rosmini followed him. But he quickly fell into disgrace by opposing the political line of cardinal Giacomo Antonelli, who wanted to use foreign armies in support of the pope. In 1849, Rosmini left the company of Pius IX.
During his trip back to northern Italy, on his way to Stresa, the news reached him that his words “The Five Wounds of the Holy Church” and “The Civil Constitution according to Social Justice” had been placed on the Index of forbidden books.
Tried by the Vatican for the first time in 1854, he was absolved. He died in Stresa on July 1, 1855. The Church’s condemnation came in 1887, against 40 propositions drawn from his works. The revocation of this condemnation came in 2001.
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