The fire that doesn't let you sleep

 

Paolo Cugini

 

 

 For the children of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light (Luke 16:8).

At night, when the houses close their eyes and the streets return to silence with the footsteps of the last traveler, certain questions breathe again. During the day, we had kept them occupied: a word, a commitment, an answer learned long ago. Now they are here, sitting beside the bed. They don't ask for reassurance. They ask for someone to have the courage to listen to them. It is at this hour that religion reveals one of its most subtle temptations: to become a place of refuge not only from fear, but also from the effort of thinking. A roof under which to shelter one's anxiety, until it is forgotten. The answers are already there, neatly arranged on the shelves. Beautiful, smooth, ready for any circumstance. All we need to do is pick one up and place it over the wound. It doesn't matter if the wound continues to bleed: at least we have found the words to not look at it.

The danger isn't having a tradition, identifying with a faith, or receiving a word that precedes us. The danger begins when what we've received exempts us from being present. When an answer is used to close a question before we've even grappled with its pain. When we say we believe and, without realizing it, mean only that we no longer want to seek. Then even the Mystery becomes manageable. We give it a name, a place, a time. We frequent it without allowing ourselves to be touched. We know what to say in the face of death, injustice, a loneliness that finds no voice. But knowing what to say doesn't mean we've understood; sometimes it simply means having created a distance beyond which nothing can hurt us. Night, however, shortens distances. It leaves the empty glass on the table, a photograph, the message to which we have not responded. And no formula, however precise, can respond for us.

A soul can fade away like this, silently. Not from a lack of religious words, but from their excess, when they become an impervious shelter to life. Thought flattens, loses its prominence and cracks; it no longer encounters anything that forces it to change. It repeats what it's always said, it approves what it's always approved. And slowly, it ends up resembling everyone else, not in the brotherhood of differences, but in the anonymity of dormant consciences. This is not an accusation to be leveled at a particular group of people. It's a possibility that passes through each of us. Even those who love questions can transform them into a pose; even those who proclaim themselves free can inhabit rigid answers. No one is immune from the temptation to turn their convictions into a cushion. Yet, when this happens to faith, the contradiction stings: we entrust ourselves to the Mystery so as not to have to encounter it again.

The Jesus of fire, evoked by this quest, interrupts that very slumber. The fire he brings to earth is not like a lamp lit to make a closed room more comfortable. It is a presence that sets us moving again. It illuminates what we preferred to leave in the shadows, warms our stiffened hands, makes it impossible to call simple self-preservation life. The woman and man of faith, then, are not figures without tremors. They carry an ember within them. They have eyes capable of focusing on what others pass by distractedly: a tired face, a childish question, a door left closed. Their desire to know is not born from the desire to possess more answers, but from the awareness that every life they encounter demands a new listening.

That fire is not fanaticism. It does not authorize burning others, imposing oneself, dividing the world between those who know and those who must obey. If it turns into contempt, it has already betrayed the life it claims to defend. The holy fire makes us more attentive, no longer blind; more open to being questioned, no longer greedy to be right. It burns, above all, our pretense of having arrived. The truth, on this journey, is not an object to be clutched in the fist. It comes to us and surpasses us. We recognize fragments of it: in a finally sincere word, in a forgiveness that costs, in the gesture of someone who stays when it would be easier to walk away. We gather them, we try to bring them together. Something illuminates. But empty spaces remain, and those voids are not necessarily the failure of the search: they can be the place where the search begins again. For this reason, the Christian with the fire within does not confuse fidelity with immobility. He can cherish a word and continue to ask himself how to live it. He can recognize a path and discover that he has traveled it poorly. He can admit he doesn't know, without that ignorance becoming a shame to hide. Authentic research doesn't erase what he's found: it lifts it from the dust of habit, exposing it once again to the test of existence.

There's effort in all this. There are nights when no fragment seems to fit together and prayer remains an unanswered voice. There's no need to feign enthusiasm. The fire, sometimes, is just an ember beneath the ashes: the desire not to lie, the decision not to turn away, the question that persists even when we're too tired to utter it. Walking can only mean guarding that ember until morning. Not all stillness, however, is death. There is the rest that restores our breath and the silence in which a word can finally mature. We are not called to relentless agitation, nor to make restlessness a new measure of our worth. What kills the soul is another tranquility: the one that no longer wants to be disturbed by anyone, that has placed even God in a place from which he can ask nothing.

Living peace leaves the door open. Dead stillness closes it. The former allows us to pause and then set out again; the latter persuades us that there is no longer any place to go. This is the difference that the night makes visible, when silence can be listening or escape, waiting or anesthesia. Perhaps faith begins to find its breathing space when it stops offering itself as an exemption from life. When it doesn't promise to spare us all questions, but helps us bear their weight. When it doesn't make us identical, but calls us by name and exposes us to the singularity of others. When an answer, rather than concluding everything, opens up a responsibility: if I believe this, what changes in the way I will look at those around me tomorrow?

Outside, the city still sleeps. One window remains lit. We don't know who watches behind that glass, what pain it harbors, what question keeps it from closing its eyes. But we can recognize something of ourselves in that stubborn light. Life hasn't stopped calling. Mystery hasn't stopped eluding us and offering itself. We don't have all the answers. We have a few fragments, a path that can only be seen for a moment, and the fire. Just enough to keep our souls from surrendering to the slumber of things already decided. Just enough to get up, approach the window, and wait for the first glimmer without ceasing to search.

 

Inhabiting new words: tradition, identity, and intercultural dialogue

 

Paolo Cugini

 

 

What allows a legacy of ideas to enter into dialogue with new contexts without losing its identity? The question contains a tension that shouldn't be resolved too quickly. On the one hand, a tradition lives because it preserves a memory, an orientation, something it recognizes as essential. On the other, that same tradition risks becoming incomprehensible if the words with which it expresses itself no longer resonate with the experience of those who listen to them. Fidelity and change, then, are not necessarily adversaries: they can become two dimensions of the same responsibility.

We are often tempted to think that preserving means repeating. From this perspective, every new formulation appears as a loss, every encounter as a risk, every unexpected question as a threat. But repeating the same words does not, in itself, guarantee continuity of meaning. A formula can remain identical and yet cease to communicate, because the questions, images, and experiences through which it is understood have changed. It is therefore necessary to distinguish what a tradition wishes to transmit from the forms through which, in a given context, it has learned to transmit it. This distinction does not justify considering forms irrelevant. Words are not empty containers: they guide thought, making some aspects of experience visible while leaving others in the background. This is why renewal requires discernment. Not everything new is more appropriate, just as not everything old is now obsolete. The criterion cannot be merely novelty or habit, but the ability to make what we wish to preserve comprehensible, without impoverishing it or removing it from the demands of the present.

Dialogue between cultures can be thought of as a work of translation, provided that translation is not reduced to the substitution of one term for another. Understanding a language also means approaching the questions that generated it. What experiences does it seek to name? What relationships does it consider important? What limits does it recognize to its own explanations? An authentic encounter begins when the other is treated not simply as a recipient of ready-made answers, but as an interlocutor capable of asking questions that deserve to be listened to. Embracing different conceptual tools should therefore not mean mechanically applying them to a pre-existing heritage. The task is more demanding: verifying their possibilities, recognizing their limits, and reworking them when necessary. A category can illuminate one aspect and obscure another; a metaphor can open up understanding and, at the same time, suggest a misunderstanding. Dialogue requires this critical patience. Neither preemptive rejection nor indiscriminate acceptance allows us to truly understand what the encounter makes possible.

If we recognize the value of this work, it becomes inevitable to ask why it is sometimes so difficult to undertake. There is no single explanation that applies to every situation. We can, however, identify some tensions worth examining: the fear of losing coherence, the difficulty of distinguishing the essential from its usual expressions, the resistance to acknowledging the value of questions formulated outside one's own framework. In each case, the problem is not simply the presence of a difference, but how that difference is interpreted. Another obstacle emerges when a particular language is assumed as a universal measure of every experience. At that point, the encounter risks turning into an exercise in adaptation: the other is asked to express themselves in our categories before even hearing theirs. Even a seemingly open exchange can remain unilateral if only one party determines which questions are legitimate and which answers can be considered comprehensible. Dialogue, however, requires a willingness to also question one's own criteria, without sacrificing reasoned judgment.

However, we must not imagine cultures as homogeneous, closed, and perfectly recognizable blocks. Different sensibilities, memories, and perspectives coexist within the same context. Speaking of an encounter between cultures also means paying attention to this internal plurality. Otherwise, we end up replacing listening to concrete experiences with an abstract image of the other, constructed precisely while declaring our desire to understand them. A fruitful dialogue requires time, listening, and the opportunity to revise our formulations. It requires making explicit what we consider essential, but also explaining why we consider it so. It requires examining whether new words truly foster understanding or merely produce the appearance of closeness. Above all, it urges us not to confuse clarity with simplification: making an idea accessible does not mean eliminating its complexity, but offering the listener a path through it.

The initial question can then be reformulated: not only how to preserve an identity while entering new contexts, but how to recognize what, through encounter, becomes clearer even to ourselves. A living tradition is not one that changes to chase every novelty, nor one that shields itself from every question. It is one that knows how to take responsibility for its own words and seek new ones when the old ones no longer suffice. Inhabiting new languages, in this sense, does not necessarily mean abandoning one's home: it can mean learning to open its doors without forgetting what makes it habitable.

 

Learning to see the dawn

 

 

Paolo Cugini

 

 

You know how to discern the appearance of the earth and the sky; but why do you not discern the present time? And why do you not judge for yourselves what is right ? (Luke 12:56).

 

Dawn arrives silently. Before the sun appears, something changes in the contours of things: the darkness loses its solidity, distances become visible again, what seemed indistinct begins to take on a face. This happens in life too. Light doesn't always present itself as a definitive answer. Sometimes it's a discreet sign, a presence that imposes nothing yet opens a door. To recognize it, we must pause, let our eyes adjust, accept that reality holds more than what we can immediately see.

We are not alone on the journey of life. This insight does not erase the loneliness we sometimes feel, nor does it claim to explain every wound. Rather, it says that our existence is not limited to what we possess, measure, or control. There is a mystery that precedes and accompanies us: we can think of it at the origin of the universe, at the dawn of humanity, within the questions that every person carries within them. It is not simply the name of what we still ignore. It is the depth of what we encounter, that source of meaning that no explanation can consume.

Mystery doesn't necessarily reach us through extraordinary events. It can emerge in the ordinary fabric of everyday life: in a hand that supports without holding back, in a word that restores dignity, in a gesture of justice made when it would be more convenient to turn away. These are signs of life and love. They don't remove us from the responsibility of choosing, but rather reawaken it. They point us in the right direction: where someone is welcomed rather than excluded, where fragility is heard, where truth isn't sacrificed for convenience, something of the light can be glimpsed.

Perhaps one of the great tragedies of existence is precisely this: going through an entire life without recognizing the signs placed around us. Not because they were missing, but because our gaze was focused only on what produces an immediate result. We can see so much and understand so little. We can accumulate information without learning to read an encounter, a silence, a cry for help. When everything becomes an object to be used or an obstacle to be overcome, even the most immediate beauty risks remaining invisible.

We must therefore develop an inner sensitivity. Not a refuge separated from history, but a space where history can be deeply heard. Our inner life grows when we learn to pause before what questions us, without immediately drowning it out with an answer; when we distinguish authentic desire from the need to appear; when we allow the pain of others to interrupt our indifference. Silence, in this sense, is not the absence of the world. It is the ability to welcome it without reducing it to the noise of our busy lives.

Seeing into history does not mean attributing a hidden message to every event, nor transforming the Mystery into an easy explanation. There are sufferings in the face of which the most honest words remain questions. Discernment requires humility: not every glimmer is light, not every certainty opens the way to the truth. A sign must also be recognized by its fruits, by the life it preserves, by the freedom it respects, by the justice it makes possible. The light we imagine shining from eternity does not distance us from the concreteness of things: it helps us to look at them without possessing them and to judge our choices without hiding.

This is where the educational task of a father, a mother, and anyone who accompanies a person's growth begins. Educating cannot simply mean preparing someone to function in the world, achieving results, and adapting to demands. It also means helping a child, and then an adolescent, discover that within themselves lies a depth worth exploring and nurturing. Before even showing them a path, we must give space to their questions. Before filling every silence, we must show them that silence can be inhabited. Before offering explanations, we must teach them that wonder is not a weakness to be overcome.

This education takes shape in everyday gestures. In the adult who listens to a question without mocking it, who acknowledges a mistake, who knows how to apologize. In shared time without the urgency to fill it. In attentiveness to a person left on the margins, in caring for something that offers no immediate benefit. In this way, we learn to see beyond things, not to despise them, but to encounter their meaning. Material data tell us much about reality; however, they do not exhaust the questions about the value of a life, the meaning of a bond, the responsibility that arises from an encounter.

There is hope in the world when we encounter someone capable of recognizing the signs of the times. Not someone who possesses all the answers, but someone who can distinguish what opens life from what impoverishes it. Their gaze sees possibilities where habit sees only limitations; their presence makes perceptible a goodness that others had stopped waiting for. In these encounters, the path of a light that comes from afar, from the very origin of existence, seems to re-emerge, a light that continues to seek space in history. Hope does not deny the night: it recognizes that the night is not everything.

We have an infinite need for this light. We need it to avoid mistaking indifference for clarity, harshness for strength, resignation for wisdom. Darkness isn't just what scares us: it can also be what we become accustomed to, until we no longer feel its weight. Light unmasks it because it restores a face to those we had reduced to numbers, a history to those we had hastily judged, a possibility to what we considered lost. It doesn't promise a path without shadows. It allows us to pass through them without giving them the last word.

Recognizing the signs of life, love, and justice that the mystery places before us is therefore not an exercise reserved for the few. It is a way of inhabiting existence, a care that can be cultivated and shared. And what we recognize calls us to a response. A welcomed light becomes listening, caring, and the courage to do the good we can. We are not called simply to walk in the light, but to let it pass through us, so that others too can find the way. As happens at dawn: the first light does not yet illuminate everything, but it is enough to show that the journey can begin again.

 

Ecclesiology of the margins

 

Paolo Cugini

In contemporary theological debate, the geopolitical and existential space of the periphery has ceased to be a mere geographical coordinate and has transformed into a generative theological site. The ecclesiology of the margins does not represent a pastoral extension of the institutional Church to the peripheries, but rather the process by which the Church is realized and constituted starting from the very margins of society. The Church of the margins manifests itself primarily as a historical fragment of the People of God, embodied in small communities formed by those experiencing social exclusion. Jürgen Moltmann has astutely observed how the true identity of the Church is measured by its ability to divest itself of power structures to rediscover its original communitarian dimension: "The Church of Christ is not a society of privileged people, but the community of those without rights, of the poor and marginalized, who find in it their original dignity" (Moltmann, 1975, p. 112).

These communities are composed of people without academic qualifications, positions of power, or institutional recognition. Their existence is marked by daily routines, by exhausting work aimed at pure survival. In this context, time takes on a radical ontological status: there is no room for the superfluous or for abstract doctrinal disputes. As Gustavo Gutiérrez notes in his essay on liberation theology: "The poor have no time to waste on abstractions; their temporality is tied to the concreteness of daily bread and the need for rest as redemption from toil" (Gutiérrez, 1972, p. 84).

For these people, time is precious because it is structured around the anthropological need to rest from the day's toil, making every fragment of generosity an act of existential resistance. The liturgical celebration in a marginal community distances itself from the ritual formalism of cathedrals to become a vital event. It is characterized by a vibrant corporeality: gestures, intense songs, and a visceral faith in the Lord who hears the cry of the poor. The celebratory dynamic is grounded in a profound epistemological certainty: the daily humiliation suffered in social structures finds refutation and consolation in the mystery manifested in Jesus of Nazareth. Jon Sobrino, analyzing the holiness and liturgy of basic ecclesial communities, writes: "The prayer of the poor is a protest against oppressive reality and, at the same time, total entrustment to a God who takes upon himself their suffering by incarnating himself in the impotence of the cross" (Sobrino, 1984, p. 203).

Faith lived on the margins is a sensitive faith . The afflicted possess a singular trust in the mystery because they have already experienced, in the gratuitousness of grace, that their cry of pain does not fall on deaf ears. The evangelical promise to console the afflicted, raise up the fallen, and embrace the humiliated is not a future utopia, but a soteriological experience present in the very act of gathering. Alongside the Church that arises spontaneously from the margins, the ecclesiology of the margins is realized through a movement of institutional conversion: the Church that deliberately chooses to inhabit the margins. This involves a radical exodus from the episcopal palaces and the legal-institutional strongholds historically erected to defend itself from the people and preserve its sacred isolation.

This ecclesiological journey seeks a Jesus who, historically and theologically, "became poor among the poor, marginal among the marginalized, excluded among the excluded." From this perspective, the theology of journeying finds fundamental support in Yves Congar's reflections on ecclesial renewal: "A Church that does not emerge from itself and its temporal certainties risks becoming a museum; only by walking with the people does the Church rediscover the breath of the Spirit" (Congar, 1953, p. 341). By authentically listening to the People of God who inhabit the peripheries, outgoing believers experience a conversion of the spiritual senses. They perceive, sensitively and immediately, the real and mysterious presence of the Crucified One in the suffering bodies of the marginalized.

The culmination of this process is not exclusively pastoral, but strictly theological. It is at this level of sharing and listening that the qualitative leap occurs: the transition from an ecclesial practice to a theology of the margins. The excluded are no longer considered mere recipients of the Church's charitable action, but become the primary theological locus through which God speaks to the world. Seeing the crucified Christ in the excluded means recognizing the sacramental character of innocent suffering. As Leonardo Boff stated in his study on ecclesiogenesis: "The margins of society become the center of theological reflection because it is there that the crucified Christ continues to suffer the passion of the world, challenging the authenticity of all discourse on God" (Boff, 1977, p. 67).

The theology of the margins, therefore, deconstructs the claims of a universal and abstract theology, configuring itself as a situated reflection, capable of interpreting the mystery of God through the wounds of history and the gaze of the outcast. The ecclesiology of the margins is not a peripheral or secondary ecclesiology, but represents the recovery of the subversive memory of the Gospel. It is fully realized at the intersection between the spiritual resilience of those experiencing exclusion and the itinerant conversion of a Church that abandons its privileges. Only by taking root where humanity is wounded can the Church rediscover its profound identity as the People of God, transforming the cry of the poor into the starting point for an authentic understanding of the divine mystery.

 

Bibliographic References

• Boff, L. (1977). Ecclesiogenesis: Basic Ecclesial Communities Reinvent the Church . Assisi: Cittadella Editrice.
• Congar, Y. (1953). True and False Reform in the Church . Milan: Jaca Book.
• Gutiérrez, G. (1972). Liberation Theology: Perspectives . Brescia: Queriniana.
• Moltmann, J. (1975). The Church in the Power of the Spirit . Brescia: Queriniana.
• Sobrino, J. (1984). Resurrection of the True Poor: The Content of the Preferential Option . Bologna: EDB.

 

The sovereign order of the patriarchate: the alliance between biblical literalism and identity politics

 

Paolo Cugini

 

 

Introduction:
A subtle alliance exists throughout contemporary history, leaving behind social ruins and broken rights. It is the ideological bond between traditional political systems, which brandish the identity triad of God, Homeland, and Family, and Christian traditionalist movements, both Catholic and radical evangelical. This neoconservative axis elevates the literal interpretation of the Bible to a geopolitical and dogmatic bulwark. When these two worlds converge, the patriarchal order reinstates itself as a sovereign and unstoppable structure, erasing historic achievements in gender equality. In this article, I intend to analyze the theological-political mechanisms of this restoration, contrasting ideological literalism with the critical tools of contemporary feminist theology.

1. The myth of original subordination: the rib and guilt in biblical literalism

The theological core on which the political and patriarchal reaction is based rests on two pillars of biblical literalism, drawn from a decontextualized and intentionally flat reading of the first chapters of the Book of Genesis .

The first is the chronological and biological argument: the male human being created first, and the woman fashioned later from one of his ribs ( Genesis 2:21-22 ). The second, even more coercive and guilt-inducing, is the imputation of original sin: the woman described as the first sinner and temptress of man ( Genesis 3:6 ). As feminist theologian Mary Daly notes in her seminal text Beyond God the Father , this narrative structure is not neutral, but operates as a formidable device of psychological and social submission: «If God is male, then the male is God. The divine order thus legitimizes the patriarchal social order, making the submission of women a cosmic and moral imperative» (Daly, 1974, p. 19).

When the sacred text is removed from historical exegesis and reduced to a literal code devoid of cultural stratification, women's inferiority ceases to be a sociological legacy and becomes "divine will." If women are proclaimed the origin of sin and, at the same time, ontologically derived from the male body, the political order merely translates this supposed cosmic hierarchy into laws. Deprived of their own ontological autonomy in fundamentalist narratives, women have no choice but to obey, confined to a role of perpetual emotional and reproductive guardianship.

2. The pseudo-Pauline turning point: the imposition of ecclesial and political silence

The literalism device is not limited to the archetype of Genesis origins, but finds a ruthless pragmatic codification in the New Testament, particularly through the ideological use of pseudo-Pauline texts. The pivotal passage in 1 Timothy 2:11-12 ( "A woman should learn in silence with all submission. I do not permit a woman to teach, nor to have dominion over a man, but to be in silence" ) is regularly wielded by traditionalist movements to justify the exclusion of women not only from ecclesiastical ministries, but from the space of public speaking and political leadership.

Contemporary feminist hermeneutics has largely deconstructed this usage, demonstrating how the Letter to Timothy, considered by historical critics as a late Deutero-Pauline text, reflects the gradual assimilation of the early Christian community to the patriarchal domestic codes of the Roman Empire ( pater familias ), in clear reaction against the original egalitarianism of the Jesus movement. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza highlights how fundamentalism uses these texts for an authoritarian "normalization":

The injunction to silence does not reflect the core of the evangelical message, which, on the contrary, recognized women's roles of apostolate and prophecy, but represents a historically situated attempt to contain the female emancipation that threatened the surrounding political and domestic order. Elevating this historical contingency to a perennial dogma means engaging in hermeneutic violence aimed at social control (Fiorenza, 1985, p. 57).

Reading literally the subsequent reference in 1 Timothy 2:14 ( "and Adam was not deceived, but the woman, being deceived, fell into transgression" ), the reactionary theological-political axis welds the New Testament to the condemnation of Genesis. Silence and submission imposed through dogma thus become, in the public discourse of modern identity movements, the correct social position of women, whose only path to redemption is reduced, as the biblical text itself literally prescribes, to the sole biological function of generating children ( 1 Timothy 2:15 ).

3. Exegetical Deconstruction: The Response of Contemporary Feminist Theology

Contemporary feminist theology has amply demonstrated that literalism is not faithful exegesis, but rather an ideological operation of textual selection and censorship. Through the historical-critical method and the hermeneutics of suspicion, theologians like Phyllis Trible have undermined the patriarchal use of Scripture.

The literalist approach deliberately ignores the existence of two different creation accounts in Genesis . The oldest account, that of the priestly tradition ( Genesis 1:27 ), clearly affirms the contemporaneity and original equality of the sexes: "God created man in his own image; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them ." Furthermore, Phyllis Trible, in her famous study God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality , offers a radical rereading of the second chapter of Genesis (the narrative of the "rib"), demonstrating how the literal patriarchal translation betrays the philology of the Hebrew text. The Hebrew term 'Adham does not originally indicate the male man, but rather the indistinct earthly creature, drawn from the earth ( 'adamah ). Only with the separation of the rib/side are the man ( 'ish ) and the woman ( 'ishshah ) born simultaneously:

The creation of woman is not an act of secondary subordination, but the culmination of creation that allows the birth of reciprocity. In the original text, the "rib" ( tsela ) indicates the flank, the side: woman is created to stand beside man, not beneath him. Patriarchal literalism commits a philological deception to justify political submission (Trible, 1978, p. 94).

Finally, the blaming of Eve in Genesis 3 is overturned by feminist theology. The act of eating the fruit is not described in the Hebrew text as an innate perversion of women, but as a path towards knowledge and moral self-awareness. The literalist interpretation, which puts in God's mouth the thesis that woman is the primary source of sin, serves only to legitimize the historical punishment of the female gender through the institution of husbandly domination ( Genesis 3:16 ), mistaking a theological description of the effects of the fall for a perennial normative command.

4. Geopolitical convergence and the ruins of law in international current affairs

The exploitation of distorted biblical passages finds its greatest sociological effectiveness when it abandons its strictly theological context and becomes embedded in the agendas of nationalist, authoritarian, and conservative parties. The defense of traditional values ​​becomes the ideal meeting ground between religious literalism and the preservation of state political power.

In the dynamics of right-wing populism and global fundamentalist movements, this theological-political fusion is not a theoretical abstraction, but translates into a specific normative offensive aimed at dismantling reproductive and civil rights. Current international events offer dramatic confirmation of this process.

The rhetoric of protecting the family and religious identity is being used globally as a regulatory tool to block legal equality. As highlighted by reports from international organizations such as Equality Now, a worrying legislative asymmetry exists: while laws aimed at protecting the traditional family or combating sexual minorities are being passed under emergency procedures in several African parliaments (such as the Family Values ​​Bills in Ghana and Kenya), family law reforms aimed at ensuring women's equal rights in marriage, divorce, and child custody remain paralyzed or suffer significant setbacks. This same trend is evident in Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries, where personal status codes, rooted in traditionalist interpretations of religious law, continue to bind women's economic and legal autonomy to male guardianship, effectively excluding them from full citizenship.

In this dangerous convergence, the rhetoric of "man first, then woman" justifies the patriarchal reaction against emancipation. If the state proclaims itself the guardian of a natural and divine order founded on a rigid and literal reading of Scripture, any call for equality is branded not as a legitimate civil claim, but as a direct attack on the social order, the security of the nation, and the sovereignty of God himself.

5. The erasure of the female subject

When the theology of submission translates into legislative practice and mass consensus, women's substantive equality dissolves. This is not an abstract academic dispute, but a material historical process that materializes in the limitation of civil liberties and fundamental rights. Philosopher Adriana Cavarero, reflecting on the persistent structures of patriarchal power in her essay " Despite Plato ," highlights how the male symbolic order has historically expropriated women's bodies, reproduction, and speech, confining them in a conceptual prison: "Patriarchal logic assigns women the place of imperfect origin, of flesh that deviates from the straight path of male reason. When politics adopts this metaphysical and religious scheme, it erases women as autonomous political subjects, reducing them once again to a mere biological function or a constant moral and existential threat" (Cavarero, 1990, p. 45).

The alliance between literalist dogmatism and traditional political systems reactualizes this identical repressive mechanism: the literal interpretation blames and subordinates women on a metaphysical level, and reactionary politics institutionalizes and legalizes that blame on a social level.

Conclusions
The symbiotic bond between biblical literalism and traditional identity politics constitutes one of the most effective mechanisms for preserving the contemporary patriarchal order. Through the ideological and ahistorical use of the texts of Genesis and the Pauline corpus , Christian traditionalist movements and conservative political systems construct a sacred superstructure that justifies discrimination.

However, as highlighted by the deconstruction carried out by feminist theology, this framework is not based on true fidelity to the sacred text, but on its hermeneutical distortion. Uncovering the historicity of Scripture and restoring centrality to narratives of reciprocity and liberation is not only a theological task, but an act of political resistance essential to preventing women's equality from being sacrificed on the altar of identity dogma.

 

Bibliography

Cavarero, Adriana. Despite Plato: Female Figures in Ancient Philosophy . Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1990.

Daly, Mary. Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation . Milan: Editori Riuniti, 1974.
Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth. In Memory of Her: A Feminist Reconstruction of Christian Origins . Turin: Claudiana.
Trible, Phyllis. God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality . Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978, p. 94.

 

The relevance of a myth: why we should remember Che Guevara nearly sixty years after his death

 

Paolo Cugini

October 9th marks the anniversary of the death of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, a figure who, decades after his execution in Bolivia, continues to occupy a central place in the global collective imagination. Remembering Che today means not simply celebrating an icon printed on T-shirts or flags, but engaging with the complexity of a man who radically embodied the tensions, hopes, and contradictions of the twentieth century.

The enduring power of his message lies primarily in his profound sensitivity to social inequality. A trained physician, Guevara discovered his calling not within the confines of a bourgeois clinic, but while traveling across Latin America on a motorcycle as a youth. It was his direct impact with the poverty of Chilean miners, the desperation of leprosy sufferers, and the exploitation of indigenous peasants that transformed the young doctor into a revolutionary. That journey sparked his visceral passion for the rights of the most vulnerable and the conviction that the status quo was not an inevitable fate, but an injustice to be fought.

Among his most significant actions, in addition to his crucial role in the Cuban revolution that overthrew the Batista dictatorship, is his concrete commitment to literacy and public healthcare. Guevara firmly believed that the emancipation of a people depended on culture and healthcare, fundamental pillars for restoring dignity to those who had always been marginalized by history. His humanity often emerged in his correspondence with his family and in his diaries, which portray a man driven by a profound love for humanity—the same love that, according to him, should be the driving force of every authentic revolutionary.

However, Che's memory cannot be separated from a profound reflection on the theme of violence. His choice to embrace armed struggle and guerrilla warfare as the only effective means of overthrowing oppression represents the most problematic and divisive aspect of his legacy. It is a doctrine that, with today's democratic and pacifist sensibilities, cannot be shared. History has taught us that the use of force, even when motivated by the best intentions of social justice, brings with it a legacy of pain and authoritarianism that risks contaminating the very ideals of freedom from which it originates.

Yet, rejecting the method of violence does not mean nullifying the value of his moral testimony. Remembering Ernesto Guevara on the anniversary of his death is a necessary exercise precisely to separate the nobility of his goals—the end of human exploitation, equality, international solidarity—from the tragic means of his time. In a contemporary world still plagued by profound economic inequalities and indifference, his intransigence against injustice remains a powerful warning not to give up.

Guevara's historical and intellectual importance lies in his ability to combine guerrilla warfare with profound reflection on the economic structure of society, uniting action on the ground with a utopian yet rigorous vision of a new world. To understand Che's relevance today, it is necessary to analyze the context in which he operated. Twentieth-century Latin America was considered the United States' backyard, a vast, fragmented region subjected to an extractive economic system. Large US multinationals, such as the United Fruit Company, dictated the policies of local governments, keeping populations in a state of poverty and illiteracy. Guevara understood that political liberation could not exist without economic sovereignty. The American model, based on the free market and private profit, could not be exported to underdeveloped contexts without generating further inequality and subordination. His critique of capitalism was not merely ideological, but was based on a material observation: global financial capitalism inherently tended to impoverish the world's periphery in order to enrich the center.

Appointed Minister of Industry and Director of the National Bank of Cuba after the 1959 revolution, Che faced the daunting task of translating Marxist theory into managerial practice. He rejected predefined economic models, even openly criticizing the Soviet Union, which he considered too inclined to employ capitalist concepts (such as the law of value and material incentives) in the transition to socialism.

Guevara proposed and implemented the Budgetary Financing System ( Sistema de Financiamiento Presupuestario ). This economic vision was based on pillars radically opposed to those of the West: businesses should not compete for profit, but rather operate as subsidiaries of a single, large state-owned enterprise, coordinated to meet the collective needs of the population. The goal was to break the sugar monoculture, imposed by the colonial market, and create a self-sufficient and technologically advanced economy. Money was to cease being a commodity and return to being a mere tool of accounting and exchange.

The most revolutionary aspect of Guevara's proposal, however, lies not in the mathematical formulas of planning, but in its ethical dimension. In his famous essay "Socialism and Man in Cuba ," Che argued that an economic revolution would not succeed unless it were accompanied by a spiritual and cultural transformation of the individual.

While capitalism thrives on individualism, selfishness, and competition, Che's alternative proposal was based on the creation of the "New Man." This new citizen was to be guided by feelings of solidarity, empathy, and social duty. For this reason, Guevara strongly advocated the adoption of moral incentives over material ones. Workers were not to produce more to accumulate personal wealth (the logic of the capitalist bonus), but for the good of the community, finding gratification in collective progress. Volunteer work, of which Che himself constantly exemplified in the sugar cane fields or on construction sites, was the primary tool for forging this new consciousness.

Today, in a world facing systemic global crises, from extreme economic inequality to climate change, accelerated by hypertrophic consumption, the search for an alternative to capitalism is no longer merely an ideological debate, but a necessity for survival. Guevara's proposal demonstrates that the Western economic order is not the only possible natural order, but a historical construct that can be renegotiated. Its long-term practical failure, due both to the suffocating US embargo and internal bureaucratic rigidities, does not erase the value of his insight: the economy must be subordinated to human dignity, and not vice versa. Ernesto Che Guevara remains immortal not for how he died, but for how he lived and what he dared to dream. His greatest legacy is the invitation not to resign ourselves to single-minded thought and to continue seeking a path where the value of a society is measured by the well-being of its most vulnerable, and not by the balance sheets of large corporations.

 

The homily between the Word and life: meaning, demands and risks.

 

 

 

 

Paolo Cugini

 

 

The homily occupies a unique place in the liturgy: it is not an explanatory interlude between the readings and other rites, nor a religious lecture added to the celebration. Its purpose is to make audible, in the concrete present of the community, the power of the proclaimed Gospel. Therefore, the fidelity of the preaching is not measured only by the correctness of the ideas, but by the ability to bring the Word closer to life without reducing one to the other. The homily must interpret the biblical text from the perspective of the Church's faith and, at the same time, listen to the questions, the wounds, and the hopes of the people gathered.

To speak of an updated reflection on the Gospel demands critical attention. Updating does not mean making the message convenient, softening its demands, or subjecting it to cultural trends and the personal preferences of the preacher. It means recognizing that the Word, although received from a living tradition, is addressed to people situated in specific historical circumstances. A good homily brings out the relevance of the text without instrumentalizing it. It avoids both literalism, which repeats formulas without illuminating existence, and accommodation, which uses the Gospel only to confirm previously established opinions.

The assertion that the homily should spring from the heart does not authorize sentimentality or the indiscriminate exposure of the preacher's inner self. Rather, it indicates that the proclaimed Word needs to have been received, meditated upon, and confronted with one's own life. The preacher does not speak as an external observer, but as someone also judged, comforted, and converted by the Gospel. Without this inner work, the homily risks becoming a rhetorical exercise: correct in form, but devoid of spiritual depth.

However, the authenticity of the testimony should not shift the focus of the celebration to the personality of the speaker. Personal experience only serves the homily when it becomes a discreet mediation of the Word, and not when it transforms the pulpit into a stage for self-reference. The preacher shares something of his journey not to present himself as a finished model, but to testify that he too remains on a journey. His authority arises less from the display of certainties than from the coherence between what he proclaims and the willingness to be transformed. The spiritual journey of the preacher is inseparable from his presence among the people. A homily prepared only in the office may be cultured and organized, but remain detached from the real community. Knowing the people does not mean presuming their needs or speaking on their behalf in a paternalistic way; it means living with them, listening to them, and perceiving the concrete signs of life: work, family conflicts, poverty, mourning, joys, injustices, and everyday forms of hope. This closeness prevents preaching from being reduced to abstractions and allows the Gospel to be proclaimed as a word that touches recognizable situations.

 

This sensitivity also demands prudence. The homily loses its pastoral quality when it offers easy answers to complex sufferings, transforms social problems into individual guilt, or uses fear as an instrument of persuasion. Similarly, it fails when it avoids any demanding word so as not to cause discomfort. The challenge lies in uniting truth and mercy: denouncing what dehumanizes without humiliating people, calling for conversion without imposing hasty condemnations, and announcing hope without concealing the gravity of suffering.

Rejecting a purely aesthetic presentation does not mean disregarding language, preparation, or knowledge. A confusing, excessively long, or improvised homily can obscure the message as much as a vain speech. Form serves communication: clarity, brevity, appropriate imagery, and coherent flow help the community to listen. The problem arises when verbal beauty becomes the end goal, when erudition creates distance, or when quotations replace a living encounter with the proclaimed text. Responsible preparation, therefore, needs to integrate study, prayer, and pastoral listening. Separated, these elements produce predictable distortions: study without prayer can generate coldness; prayer without study can favor arbitrary interpretations; and both, without listening to the people, can result in a word incapable of reaching the assembly. A mature homily is born from the encounter of these dimensions and accepts the limitation of not saying everything. Its task is not to exhaust the Gospel, but to open a door so that the community continues to meditate on it and live it.

The homily, understood within the pastoral horizon of the Church, is a service of mediation between the proclaimed Word and the concrete life of the community. It demands interiority, study, closeness, and humility from the preacher. It cannot be a spectacle, a self-sufficient lecture, or a moralizing discourse; nor can it be reduced to personal impressions. Its power appears when the Gospel permeates the life of the one who proclaims it and encounters, through simple and responsible language, the life of the one who listens. In this encounter, preaching ceases to be a demonstration of knowledge and becomes a sharing of faith: a human word that seeks to serve, faithfully, the Word that precedes and surpasses it.

 

The Icon and the Invisible: Educating the Eye Beyond Appearance

 

 

 

Paolo Cugini

 

 

The distinction between idol and icon does not simply concern two types of image, nor can it be reduced to a difference between a false and an authentic object. More profoundly, it describes two opposing ways of seeing and relating to reality. The idol corresponds to a gaze that stops: it finds before itself a form capable of satisfying it and adopts it as the fulfillment of its desire to know. The icon, on the other hand, does not allow vision to be confined to what appears. It makes the visible a threshold and invites the gaze to transcend its own claim to possession.

For this reason, the icon is not simply a richer or more evocative image. Its peculiarity lies in altering the viewer's position. Before the idol, the subject tends to feel in control of the vision; before the icon, instead, he discovers he is being addressed. He is no longer simply the one who sees, but the one who is touched by a surplus of meaning. The icon thus inaugurates a relationship in which seeing becomes listening, availability, and transformation.

An idol arises when the gaze confuses what it sees with the totality of what is. It offers an immediate, clear, and seemingly self-sufficient presence: the gaze recognizes itself in it, finds confirmation, and ceases searching. In this sense, an idol is not defined primarily by the material it is made of, but by the function it assumes. Even an idea, an image of success, a representation of power, or even a religious conception can become idolatrous when they claim to exhaust the mystery they evoke.

The idol thus restores to the gaze the measure of its desires. It shows what the subject is already willing to see and, precisely for this reason, reassures it. It does not create a distance, but erases it; it does not raise a question, but offers a definitive answer. Its strength lies in saturation: everything seems present, available, definable. Yet, at the very moment it promises a full presence, the idol impoverishes reality, because it reduces it to the human capacity to represent and control it. This risk is particularly present in contemporary culture, dominated by the proliferation of images. The abundance of the visible does not necessarily equate with a greater depth of vision. On the contrary, the rapid succession of figures, screens, and messages can generate habituation: we see a lot, but contemplate little. When everything must appear immediately comprehensible and consumable, the visible loses its depth and becomes superficial.

The icon interrupts this dynamic because it cannot be reduced to an available object. It certainly possesses a visible form: colors, lines, material, and composition. However, its meaning is not limited to these elements. The form does not hold the gaze within itself, but directs it toward that which cannot be contained in any form. The visible then becomes a threshold: not a barrier that conceals, but a passage that manifests without exhausting.

 

To affirm that the icon is not the result of a vision, but rather provokes it, means recognizing that it does not simply reproduce something already possessed by the gaze. The icon brings about a new way of seeing. It destabilizes perceptual habits, frees the observer from passivity, and leads him toward a depth that cannot be grasped in a single act. Vision becomes a journey: it requires time, silence, and a willingness to be surprised. In this experience, distance is not a defect to be eliminated. It preserves the otherness of what manifests itself. The icon is close because it offers itself to the senses, but remains distant because what it refers to cannot be possessed. This very tension prevents the gaze from transforming reality into an object. The icon allows itself to be seen, but does not allow itself to be dominated. The most radical transformation introduced by the icon consists in the reversal of the direction of the gaze. Normally, seeing means turning toward an object, analyzing it, and placing it within one's own categories. Before the icon, however, the subject senses that vision does not proceed solely by itself. What appears seems to appeal to him, to expose him and demand a response. The gaze is no longer a unilateral power, but the locus of a relationship.

Being looked at does not mean magically attributing consciousness to the image. Rather, it means recognizing that reality can exceed our intentions and call us into question. The icon removes the subject from absolute centrality: it reminds them that they are not the ultimate measure of what they encounter. Therefore, its action is also critical. It unmasks the illusion of neutral knowledge and demonstrates that every authentic vision entails responsibility. Those who accept this experience are not left unchanged. The gaze is trained not to consume what it sees, not to reduce the other to a pre-existing image, and to tolerate ambiguity and expectation. The transformation, therefore, concerns not only the way we observe a work, but the way we inhabit the world. Learning to see iconically means allowing things, faces, and events to retain a depth that does not depend on us.

The invisible to which the icon refers is not simply something that, by chance, has not yet been seen. It is not a hidden object that might one day become fully available. Rather, it is that which, by its very nature, exceeds any attempt at full representation. The invisible does not cancel the visible, but passes through it and gives it depth. In the icon, matter is not negated: it becomes the locus where a presence announces itself without allowing itself to be circumscribed. This relationship avoids two extremes. On the one hand, it prevents the image from being absolutized, as if it contained what it represents; on the other, it prevents the devaluation of sensible reality, as if the visible were a simple obstacle. The icon instead testifies that the sensible can be transparent to a further meaning. Its truth lies not in photographic resemblance, but in its capacity to make perceptible a transcendence that remains irreducible. The paradox of the icon consists precisely in this: it shows what cannot be fully shown. It does not resolve the mystery, but rather gives it shelter. Its visible presence does not replace the invisible; it maintains its distance. Therefore, the icon does not fulfill the gaze's desire once and for all, but purifies it, freeing it from the pretension of possessing what it seeks.

The dynamic of the icon takes on an ethical value when applied to the encounter with others. Even a person can be perceived idolatrously, if reduced to their appearance, their function, or the image we have constructed of them. In this case, the gaze merely confirms our own patterns. An iconic gaze, however, recognizes that the other's face manifests a depth that no definition can exhaust. Welcoming the invisible, then, means respecting what remains unavailable in the other: their interiority, their freedom, their history, and their potential for change. It is not a question of renouncing understanding, but of removing it from the logic of domination. Authentic knowledge does not eliminate the mystery of the person; it protects it. Therefore, the openness engendered by the icon translates into listening, attentiveness, and responsibility. In an age when individuals and events are often transformed into profiles, data, or images to be rapidly consumed, the icon proposes a discipline of the gaze. It invites us to slow down, to suspend judgment, and to make room for what doesn't match our expectations. This disposition isn't passivity: it's a demanding form of vigilance, because it requires us to abandon the safety of immediate representations in order to enter into a truer relationship.

 

The difference between idol and icon thus reveals two fundamental possibilities of the gaze. The idol arrests vision and brings it back to the measure of the subject; the icon opens it to an excess that cannot be possessed. The former offers a closed and reassuring presence, the latter makes every presence a threshold. For this reason, the icon does not simply add content to our vision: it transforms its structure. Before the icon, seeing does not mean dominating, but receiving; it does not mean exhausting, but recognizing; it does not mean appropriating, but allowing oneself to be questioned. The invisible is not opposed to the visible: it announces itself as that which makes it inexhaustible. Educated by this experience, the gaze becomes capable of contemplating without holding back and of encountering without reducing. The icon thus indicates a form of knowledge grounded in humility. It reminds us that the truest reality does not always coincide with what immediately strikes our eyes, and that, sometimes, we truly see only when we accept that we do not fully possess what we look at.