Friday, November 07, 2003

Can you see Clinton writing something like this?

This summer Francesco Cossiga, former president of Italy (a largely-figurehead position) wrote the following letter:
    In his letter of June 22, 2003, to the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, Luigi Giussani continues his intelligent, not abstract, but pastoral work of theological teaching, which speaks to both the heart and the mind of the transcendence and "fleshliness" of the Revelation and Redemption, beyond any "enlightenment"-type scheme or form of pious devotion. Thus, the focus is on the Motherhood of God, which took concrete form in space and time in the Motherhood of Jesus Christ in Mary, and what in it the proclamation of this dogma by the Council of Nicaea intended to mean: the divinity of Jesus Christ not only in Jesus the Logos, but also in Jesus the Man, and the unity of the two natures, divine and human, in one sole human-divine person who binds for all Eternity, the Eternal to time and thus the Eternal to history, the Infinite to the finite, and in this way guarantees the resurrection of man in his entirety. Only the virginity of Mary could be the unique method of incarnation of the Logos. If He were the son of one human seed and of a woman whose fertility was tied to a partial, individual "fleshliness," Jesus would not have been able to unite in one sole person the divine nature of the Logos, spiritual and eternal, spiritualizing and eternalizing in Christ a flesh that, no the fruit of just one seed, is the "universal," so to speak, "flesh" of mankind, which all in Christ will resurrect men on their earth, will recognize new heavens in itself; it will resurrect men in their time and in their history, which together will expand into the Eternal. This is the sense and the meaning of Mary's virginity: an "event" that is not a "truth of the philosophers," but an historical event to be accepted with Faith.
Now, there are some theological imprecisions present, but nonetheless, this is a letter than I cannot even imagine Bill Clinton or--to be honest--any other former US President writing.

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