DOM LORENZO MILANI: O SACERDOTE QUE ELOGIOU A DESOBEDIÊNCIA
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Os anos ‘60 do século passados foram, ao mesmo tempo, caracterizados por grandes contrastes e por um renovado fermento político e social. A cena internacional foi dominada por figuras de destaque como os irmãos John Fitzgerald e Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle, Indira Gandhi, Elvis Presley, os Beatles e os Rolling Stones.
Na Itália se afirmaram nomes importantes como os poetas Pier Paolo Pasolini (barbaramente assassinado em 1975) e Eugenio Montale, prémio Nobel pela literatura, junto com artistas como Bernardo Bertolucci, Sophia Loren, Gino Paoli, Domenico Modugno, Adriano Celentano e muitos outros. Nessa biografia gostaria de falar sobre um personagem, bastante controverso, basicamente desconhecido no Brasil: trata-se de um sacerdote, Dom Lorenzo Milani, nascido a Florença em 1923 e falecido na mesma cidade em 1967.
O pai de Lorenzo era um químico abastado e a mãe, judia, havia sido aluna de James Joyce; ambos se declaravam agnósticos e anticlericais e os filhos cresceram num clima cultural bastante aberto estimulante, tanto que Lorenzo, além do italiano, era fluente em inglês, francês, alemão, espanhol, latim e hebraico. Durante os anos da Segunda Guerra Mundial, o jovem estudou arte e, provavelmente devido o contato com a arte sacra, foi se aproximando ao cristianismo até se converter em 1943. No final do mesmo ano entrou no seminário e foi ordenado sacerdote em 1947. Nomeado capelão numa paróquia perto de Florença, Dom Milani se deparou com paroquianos pobres: operários, lavradores e pastores, quase todos analfabetos. Essa experiência com a miséria o levou ao convencimento que o dever primacial da Igreja era de cuidar da instrução dos fiéis, principalmente os proletários. Por isso fundou sem demora uma escola popular na qual ele mesmo lecionou de uma forma anticonformista, privilegiando a leitura dos cotidianos na sala de aula e o comentário das notícias principais. Além disso instiuiu uma comunidade sem diferenças de hierarquia. Embora considerasse o capitalismo, o autoritarismo e o militarismo como os grande males do mundo, nunca foi comunista e sempre condenou qualquer tipo de totalitarismo.
Dom Lorenzo Milani dava aula porque entendia que quem não tem cultura mínima para ler um jornal ou um contrato de trabalho não consegue se defender da exploração ou elaborar um pensamento crítico. Também percebeu que sem compreender as palavras, o horizonte da vida humana se reduzia à conquista de um prato de sopa à noite e que mesmo a escuta da Palavra corria o risco de se tornar mera continuação de ritos, cujo significado não era compreendido.
A Cúria diocesana de Florença não gostou nem um pouco da visão inovadora e progressista de Dom Lorenzo e, como forma de punição, exilou o padre na pequena aldeia de Barbiana, desprovida de água encanada e de energia, onde moravam apenas 124 pessoas. Apesar das dificuldades, o sacerdote começou uma experiência educacional única dirigida aos jovens daquela comunidade que, também por razões geográficas e econômicas, estavam em grande desvantagem com relação aos seus pares da cidade.
A escola levantou imediatamente muitas críticas oriundas tanto do mundo católico (nem João XXIII nem Paulo VI jamais intervieram a seu favor), quanto do ambiente secular. As respostas a estas críticas foram dadas com "Cartas a uma professora", um livro escrito pelos alunos da escola em conjunto com Dom Milani que explicava os princípios da Escola de Barbiana representando, ao mesmo tempo, uma denúncia contra a escola tradicional, definida como "um hospital que trata os saudáveis e rejeita os enfermos", pois não se comprometia a recuperar e ajudar as crianças em dificuldade, valorizando aquelas que já vinham de famílias culturalmente elevadas. O livro foi escrito em um italiano simples; o primeiro rascunho foi lido por um camponês encarregado de sublinhar as palavras que não entendia para que o autor pudesse fazer todas as alterações necessárias no texto para torná-lo acessível a todos. O livro, entretanto, recebeu uma recepção fria, com uma única exceção ilustre, a do poeta e escritor Pier Paolo Pasolini. Só depois da morte do autor o livro tornou-se um bestseller literário, passando a ser um dos textos sagrados de 1968 na Itália.
Para convencer os pais a mandarem os filhos para lá, o pároco usou todos os meios possíveis, até a greve de fome. A de Barbiana foi uma escola de vanguarda onde se estudavam as línguas estrangeiras: inglês, francês, alemão e até árabe. Foram organizadas viagens de estudo e de trabalho no exterior. Frequentemente, Dom Lorenzo dava aulas de recitação para ajudar os alunos mais introvertidos a superar a timidez. Naquela escola, os alunos estudavam doze horas por dia, 365 dias por ano, de regra depois duma dura jornada de trabalho. A educação religiosa nada tinha de ortodoxo; o Evangelho era lido, mas sem nunca tentar doutrinar as crianças. O filósofo do qual mais se falava durante as aulas era Sócrates e o lema da escola era: “I care”, ou seja, eu me importo, me interessa, eu cuido.
Antes de morrer, Dom Milani comprou uma briga com os sacerdotes do Ordinariato Militar italiano. Tudo começou quando, em 1965, um grupo de capelães militares votou, durante uma assembléia, um documento onde estava escrito que: «Um insulto à pátria e seus caídos é a chamada 'objeção de consciência' que, estranha ao mandamento cristão de amor, é uma expressão de covardia». Dom Lorenzo e os seus alunos responderam com uma carta aberta que causou grande clamor: colocaram - com rigor lógico - o problema moral do cristão perante as armas e à guerra e, em particular, à ordem de atirar contra civis desarmados. Na carta foram defendidos os direitos dos objetores, e se afirmava que “a obediência não é mais uma virtude”. Essa carta foi enviada a todos os principais jornais italianos, mas apenas o semanal comunista “Rinascita” teve a coragem de publicá-la. Como resultado, Dom Milani, junto com o diretor do semanal esquerdista, sofrem um processo por apologia de crime, mas acabaram sendo absolvidos.
Acometido por um Linfoma de Hodgkin, Dom Lorenzo Milani veio falecer em junho de 1967. Durante os últimos meses pediu para ficar perto de seus alunos para que eles “aprendessem o que é a morte”. A eles deixou o seu testamento espiritual no qual estava escrito:
«Amei mais vocês que Deus, mas espero que Ele não se importe com esses pormenores...»
Dom Milani, que sucessivamente foi comparado a Paulo Freire, foi uma das personalidades mais importantes do debate cultural pós-guerra e a sua vida ainda representa um grande testemunho de lealdade na opção pelos últimos e para combater todas as formas de injustiça social, numa revolução profética contra a pobreza.
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Vasculhando na net, consegui encontrar e baixar o texto integral, em português (de Portugal), do pequeno livro “Cartas a uma professora” que, por motivos de copyright, não posso publicar na minha escrivaninha. No entanto, quem desejar receber uma cópia, me escreva no formulário de contatos.
Segue uma tradução, em inglês, da carta "A obediência não é mais uma virtude" publicada no site italiano www.semisottolaneve.org
OBEDIENCE IS NO LONGER A VIRTUE
For some time now I would have liked to invite one of you to speak to my boys and girls about your life. A life they and I do not understand.
Nevertheless, we would have wanted to make an effort to understand and, above all, to ask you how you dealt with some practical problems of military life. I did not manage to organise this meeting between you and my school in time.
I would have preferred it to be in private, but now that you have broken the silence through the pages of a newspaper, I cannot forgo asking you those same questions publicly.
Firstly, because you have insulted citizens whom we and many others admire. And nobody, to my knowledge, had invited you to make a contribution, unless the thought were to arise that the very example of their heroic Christian consistency might be gnawing away at some of your inner insecurity.
Secondly, because you used words that are too big for you with excessive flippancy and without having a clear idea of their gravity.
When you answer me, mind that public opinion today is much riper than in days gone by and will not be happy with silence or a sweeping statement which evades the specific questions. Pompous sentimental words or vulgar insults aimed at the conscientious objectors or me are not argumentation. If you have good arguments I will be well happy to acknowledge them and change my mind if in the hurry to write I have let slip something unfair.
I am not going to discuss the idea of Fatherland itself here. I do not like such distinctions.
However, if you have the right to split the world into Italians and foreigners then I shall tell you that, according to your interpretation, I have no Fatherland and I claim the right to split the world into the under-privileged and oppressed on the one side and the privileged and oppressors on the other. The former are my Fatherland, the latter are foreigners to me. And if you have the right to teach, without being called to order by the Curia, that Italians and foreigners can legitimately, even heroically, butcher each other, then I claim the right to say that the poor, too, can and ought to fight against the rich. At least in their choice of means they are better than you. The arms you approve are horrible instruments for killing, mutilating, destroying, creating orphans and widows. The only arms I approve are noble and without bloodshed: the strike and the ballot box.
So, we have very different ideas. I can respect yours if you can justify them in the light of the Gospels or the Constitution. Show respect for others' ideas yourselves. Above all if they are men who pay in person for their ideas.
You will surely admit that the word "Fatherland" has been used amiss on many occasions. Often it is nothing but an excuse, believing we are dispensed from thinking, from studying history, from choosing, when necessary, between the Fatherland and much loftier values.
In this letter I do not wish to refer to the Gospels. It is too easy to demonstrate that Jesus was against violence and that he did not even accept self-defence for himself. I shall refer to the Constitution instead.
Article 11: "Italy repudiates war as an instrument of aggression against the freedoms of other peoples..."
Article 52: " The defence of the Fatherland is a sacred duty for every citizen."
Let us use these as the yardstick in order to get the measure of the wars the Italian people have been called to wage over a century of history.
If we see that the history of our army is all bound up with aggressions against others' Fatherlands, you shall have to make it clear to us whether in those cases the soldiers should have obeyed or objected to what their conscience dictated. Then you shall have to explain to us who defended the Fatherland and its honour more: those who objected or those who by obeying made our Fatherland hateful to the whole civilised world? Enough of high-sounding, vague speeches. Get down to the nitty-gritty. Tell us exactly what you taught the soldiers. Obedience at all costs? And what if the order was to bomb civilians, reprisals against a harmless village, the summary execution of partisans, the use of atomic or biological or chemical weapons, torture, the execution of hostages, summary trials for simple suspects, decimation (choosing some soldier of the Fatherland at random and shooting him in order to strike terror in the other soldiers of the Fatherland), a war of obvious aggression, orders from a rebel officer to the sovereign people, to put down popular demonstrations?
Yet these and many other similar things are common practice in every war. When they happened before your eyes you either lied or kept quiet. Or do you want us to believe that on every single occasion you told your "superiors" the truth to their faces, defying prison or death? If you are still alive and keep your rank it is a sign that you have never objected to anything. Besides, you have given us proof by showing in your communiqué that you do not have even the most elementary notion of the concept of conscientious objection.
You cannot avoid giving your opinion on recent history if you want to be, as you should be, our soldiers' moral guides. Apart from anything else you are paid by the Fatherland, i.e. us and we have paid you to do that. And if we maintain the army at a very high cost (a trillion lire per year) it is only so that it should defend the Fatherland along with the lofty values this concept contains: the sovereignty of the people, freedom, justice. So then (historical experience at hand) it was more imperative that you educate our soldiers to object rather than obey.
As for objection, they have known far too little during these one hundred years of history; as for obedience, they have known far too much, unfortunately for them and the world.
Let us run through history together. Each time you shall tell us what side the Fatherland was on, which direction we should have shot in, when it was time to obey and when it was time to object.
1860. An army of Neapolitans, brimming with the idea of Fatherland, tried to force back into the sea a handful of brigands who were attacking their Fatherland. Among those brigands were various Neapolitan officers who were deserters from their Fatherland. In point of fact it was the brigands who won. Now, here and there in squares in Italy, there are statues to every one of them in their capacity as hero of the Fatherland. ( Garibaldi, for example. The context is the unification of Italy - translator's note ).
A hundred years on and history repeats itself: Europe is at our gates. The Constitution is ready to welcome her: "Italy consents to the necessary limitations of her sovereignty...". Our children will laugh at your concept of Fatherland, just as we all laugh at the Bourbon Fatherland. ( The House of Bourbon ruled many territories and were Kings of the two Sicilies - formerly the kingdom of Naples and the kingdom of Sicily - translator's note ). Our grandchildren will laugh at Europe. Soldiers and armed forces chaplains' uniforms will be seen only in the museums.
The war following 1866 was another aggression. Rather, a pact was made with the most quarrelsome, warmongering nation in the world ( the Prussians - translator's note ) to attack Austria together.
The wars against the people of Rome (1867-1870) were certainly aggressions. The people of Rome did not love their age-old Fatherland much, in point of fact they did not defend it. But they did not like their new Fatherland which was attacking them much either, so much so they did not rise up to help it win. In his diary Gregorovius writes: "the uprising due to take place today has been called off because of the rain".
In 1898 our "Good" King ( Umberto 1 of Savoia - translator's note ) conferred The Grand Military Cross on General Bava Beccaris for his merits in a war which we would do well to remember. The enemy was a crowd of beggars who were waiting for soup in front of a convent in Milan. The General fired on them with mortars and cannon just because the rich demanded the privilege (then as they do now) of not paying taxes. They wanted to substitute the tax on cornmeal for something worse for the poor and better for them. They got what they wanted. Eighty dead, numerous wounded. Among the soldiers not one wounded, not one objector. After their period of military service was over they went back home to eat cornmeal mush (polenta) . Just a little, though, for the price had gone up.
And the officers kept on making them cry "Savoia" even when they led them in attacks twice (1896-1935) on a peaceful people far away ( Ethiopia - translator's note ) who were certainly not threatening our Fatherland's borders. They were the only black people who had not yet been infected by the plague of European colonialism.
When whites and blacks are fighting are you on the side of the whites? Is it not enough for you to force the Italia Fatherland on us? Do you want to force on us the White Race Fatherland, too? Are you the sort of priests that read "La Nazione"? Be very careful because that paper considers a white person's life more than that of a hundred blacks. Have you seen how it gave prominence to the killing of sixty whites in the Congo, forgetting to describe the appalling massacre of the blacks, which was happening at the same time, and without looking for those pulling the strings behind the scenes here in Europe? The same goes for the war in Libya.
Then we are in 1914. Italy attacked Austria with whom she had been allied this time. Was Battisti a Patriot or a deserter? It is a small detail that needs to be cleared up if you wish to talk of Fatherland. Did you tell your young men that it was a war which could have been avoided? That Giolitti ( Prime Minister -translator's note) was certain to be able to secure gratis what was then secured with 600,000 deaths? That the vast majority of the Chamber of Deputies was with him (450 out of 508)? Was it, then, the Fatherland that issued the call to arms? And even if it was, did it not call them to a "useless massacre"? (it was not a cowardly conscientious objector who used the expression, but a Pope).
It was in 1922 that the Fatherland under attack needed to be defended. But the army did not defend it. They were waiting for orders that never came. If their priests had taught them to let their Conscience guide them instead of "blind, prompt, absolute" Obedience how much harm the Fatherland and the world would have been spared (50 million dead). That is how the Fatherland ended up in the hands of a gang of criminals who violated every human and divine law and, their mouths full of the word Fatherland, brought the Fatherland to ruin. In those tragic years those priests whose minds and mouths were only filled with the sacred word "Fatherland", those who had never wanted a deep understanding of its meaning, those who spoke like you do, did immense harm to the Fatherland (and, incidentally, let it be said, they dishonoured the Church).
In 1936 fifty thousand Italian soldiers found themselves embarked on a new, vile aggression. They had received the call-up papers to "volunteer" to attack the ill-fated Spanish people. They hurried to the aid of a general who was a traitor to his Fatherland, who rebelled against his legitimate government and sovereign people. With the help of the Italians and at the cost of a million and a half lives he managed to secure what the rich wanted: wage freezes but not price freezes; abolition of the strike, the unions, parties, of every civil and religious liberty. Still today, in defiance of the rest of the world, that rebel general imprisons, tortures, kills (or rather, garrottes) whoever is guilty of defending the Fatherland back then or trying to save it now. Without the obedience of the Italian "volunteers" all of this would not have happened. If in those sad days there had not been Italians on the other side, we could not look a Spaniard in the face. In point of fact those Italians were rebels and exiles from their Fatherland. People who had objected. Have you told your soldiers what they should do if they happen to have a general like Franco? Have you told them that one must not obey officers who disobey their sovereign people?
Then from 1939 onwards it was downhill all the way: Italian soldiers attacked one after another six other Fatherlands that had certainly not attacked theirs (Albania, France, Greece, Egypt, Jugoslavia, Russia). It was the war in which Italy was fighting on two fronts: one against the democratic system and the other against the socialist system. They were and are for now the two most noble political systems that humanity has given itself. One represents the loftiest attempt by humanity to give freedom and human dignity to the poor, right here on this earth. The other is the loftiest attempt by humanity to give justice and equality to the poor, right here on this earth.
Do not trouble yourselves to reply accusing one or the other of these systems of their considerable defects and errors. We know they are human things. Tell us rather what was happening on this side of the front. Without a doubt the worst political system that unscrupulous oppressors have ever been able to come up with. Negation of every moral value, of all freedom except for the rich and the wicked. Negation of every justice and religion. Propaganda of hate and extermination of the innocent. Amongst others the extermination of the Jews (the Fatherland of the Lord, dispersed all over the world and suffering).
What had Fatherland got to do with all this? And what meaning can Fatherlands at war have anymore from the moment that the last war was a battle between ideologies and not Fatherlands?
But in this hundred years of Italian history there has also been a "just" war (if such a thing exists). The only one that was not an aggression against others' Fatherlands, but a defence of ours: the partisan war. On one side there was the civilian population, on the other, the military. On one side soldiers that had obeyed, on the other, soldiers that had objected.
According to you which of the two contenders were the "rebels", which the "regulars"? It is a notion that demands clarification when you talk of Fatherland. In the Congo, for example, who are the "rebels"?
Then by the grace of God our Fatherland lost the unjust war it had unleashed. The Fatherlands that had been attacked by ours managed to repel our soldiers.
We surely have to respect them. They were wretched men who worked on the land or as labourers transformed into aggressors by military obedience. That obedience you chaplains extol without a hint of any distinction (distinguo) which could reconnect you to St. Peter's words: "Does one owe obedience to God or to men?" And in the meanwhile you insult a few brave men who ended up in prison for doing what St. Peter did.
In many countries (in this more civil than ours) the law honours these people by allowing them to serve the Fatherland in other ways. They are asking to sacrifice themselves for the Fatherland more than the others, not less. It is not their fault if in Italy they have no other choice than to serve by idling away their time in prison.
Moreover, in Italy, too, there is a law which recognises a form of conscientious objection. It is that very Concordato you wanted to celebrate. Its third article gives its blessing to the fundamental conscientious objection of the Bishops and Priests.
With regard to the other objectors, the Church has made no pronouncement, neither against them nor against you. The human sentence which condemns them only says that they have disobeyed the law of men, not that they are cowards. Who authorises you to make bad worse? And then when calling them cowards doesn't it occur to you that nobody has ever heard tell that cowardice belongs to only a few and heroism belongs to the majority?
Pause before you insult them. Maybe tomorrow you will discover that they are prophets. It is true that the place for prophets is prison, but it is not very nice to be on the side of those that keep them there.
If you tell us that you chose your mission as chaplains to attend the wounded and dying, we can respect it. Gandhi himself did it as a young man. Later on in life he harshly condemned this error of his youth. Have you read his life story?
But if you tell us that the refusal to defend yourself and your family according to the example and commandment of the Lord is "extraneous to the Christian commandment of love" then you do not know which Spirit you belong to! What language are you speaking? How can we understand you if you use words without weighing them? If you do not want to honour the objectors' suffering, at least keep quiet!
We hope, then, for the very opposite of what you hope for: we hope to see an end finally to all discrimination and partisan division of Fatherland in the face of all the soldiers on all fronts and of all uniforms who by their death sacrificed themselves for the sacred ideals of Justice, Freedom, Truth.
Let us respect suffering and death, but before those young people who look to us let us avoid making a dangerous confusion between good and evil, between truth and error, between the death of an aggressor and that of his victim.
If you agree, let us say: we pray for those wretched men who, poisoned through no fault of their own by a propaganda of hatred, sacrificed themselves for the misunderstood ideal of Fatherland inadvertently trampling on every other noble human ideal.