Manifest

In these times when all institutions, including the Church, are experiencing a profound identity crisis, we believe it is necessary to put Christ back at the centre of society in order to restore order and justice to the current chaos.

To do this, we intend to organise ourselves on the principle of monasticism along two lines:

• Individual monasticism: the monk as one who becomes monad, unique, with Christ, who conforms his life to the teachings of Jesus and sets out, with firm resolve, on the path to holiness, his own and that of others.
• Communitarian monasticismThe community, particularly the family community, seen as the place where one grows in faith and love and experiences Christ, becomes the founding principle of a network of local communities, living, operating and acting in the territory, forming a network in which they participate by giving and receiving.

Although we are convinced that it is faith in Christ that is one of the principles necessary for order and justice to return, we also appeal to those who do not profess it. We appeal to them as men and women of goodwill, following the example of Jesus who welcomed everyone by asking each one to do his or her part (“soldiers … be content with your wages” – Lk 3:14), not forcing anyone to change their convictions.

For this reason, we intend to open up the network of faith communities by expanding it to include non-denominational communities that share, from time to time, some of the goals of hope and charity that we will set out to achieve.

We ask communities of faith to base themselves on prayer, individual and collective, and on sacramental life, grafted into the Universal and Local Church, without creating parallel sects or parishes.

To all communities, faith and non-faith, we ask:

1. Think missionary: each community that reaches a certain maturity helps neighbouring communities to grow or establish themselves
2. Training in secular ethical principles such as: civil resistance and non-violent struggle, autonomy of judgement and action, civic education, capacity for self-reliance

We want to follow St John Bosco’s motto of being ‘good Christians’, for those who believe, ‘and honest citizens’.

First Signatories

Luca Lezzerini, Wanda Massa, Teresa Palazzolo, Domenico Romaniello

Subscribers

Michela Lazzè

If you would like to subscribe to this manifesto, please send an e-mail to info@lucesveritatis.it

Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash

To find out who we are, you can click on the About Us menu or on this link.

To find out about the Code of Ethics, you can click on menu Code of Ethics or on this link.

To find out about our Project, you can access the Resources menu or this link.