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A love story[A review of "Sin Tapujos", from the "El Tribuno" newspaper, Salta, Argentina, July 24th, 2004]
"Loneliness is worse than
blindness, From "Drops of infinity" [poems by José Guillermo Mariani]
Mariani's frankness lays bare everything the Catholic Church tries to keep hidden under the argument of "avoiding scandal". His book stands out in sharp relief, seen in the context of the shame of paedophile priests appearing all over the world. But the transparency of the Córdoba parish priest also lays bare the tawdriness, the sensationalism, and the shallowness of those who blew up two relatively insignificant episodes – a one night-stand with a woman on a ship, and a frustrated intimacy with a young homosexual – and ignored the crux of all this story which is, most importantly, an expression of the reality of the Church today. The book does tell a real love story. A 25 year old man falls in love with a girl, a leader in Catholic Action. When he has decided to leave the priesthood to build a life together with her, the girl's family intervene and take her far away. They never see each other again. Twenty years later, a letter arrives from Goya to tell him that the young woman has died, that she loved him all the time but had been convinced that he had wanted to her out of his way. Long after, totally unexpected, the man meets his lover's daughter. Because Mariani loved that woman all the time, and probably even today. And it's a love story because this priest represents a sector of the Church that does not accept the Faith as a kind of power of extortion and does not believe that the Church is Holy when it shelters abusers, hides suffering and denies feelings. Mariani speaks of the Córdoba of Luciano Benjamín Menéndez [the military governor and torturer] and of the Argentina of Jorge Rafael Videla [the military dictator]. He tells of exile, of complicity and persecution. A permanent presence in his book, "Sin Tapujos" ["Frankly Speaking"], is the figure of the assassinated bishop of La Rioja, Enrique Angelelli, a friend of the author and of many other committed priests of that time. The tale is authentic and contains not a single unhealthy sentence, although he does not conceal the issues that upset the bishops so much when they pop up before the public opinion. That is the reason the anger this autobiography has provoked is not to be wondered at. The argument of the bishop's spokesman, Guillermo Marcó, says it all: "There is no reason to speak about it". The question that naturally arises from this is: "Why not talk about it?" "Sin Tapujos" is Mariani's twelfth book, but it is the first that is on its way to become a best seller. And it is a love story: love for a woman, for humanity, for the Christian Faith. Love for life. For this reason, it is a powerful argument against celibacy, dehumanized religiosity, and a Faith understood as a tool for power. (FS) http://www.eltribuno.com.ar/2004/nacionales/20040724_190742.php |
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