by: "Five moral writings: when he enters the other," by Umberto Eco. ed.passaggi Bompiani.
"(...) And I come to the second story. I was still a young Catholic sixteen, and I happened to engage in a verbal duel with an older acquaintance known as "communist" in the sense that this term had in the terrible year fifty. And since I tease, I had asked the crucial question: how could he that believeth not, make sense of the senseless thing that otherwise would have been his own death? And he replied: "Asking the funeral before you die civil . So I'm not there anymore, but I left an example to others. "I believe that you [Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini] can see profound faith in the continuity of life, the absolute sense of duty that inspired that answer. And it's the way it has pushed many non-believers to die under torture in order not to betray friends, others to be to heal the plague plague. It 'also sometimes the only thing that drives a philosopher to philosopher, a writer to write, leave a message in a bottle, because somehow what they believed, or that there seemed nice, believed, or appears to be looking at those to come.
It 'really this feeling so strong as to justify ethics as determined and inflexible, so firmly established as one of those who believe in morality revealed in the survival of the soul, in press and punishment? I tried to base the principles of secular ethics on a natural (and, as such, even for you the result of a divine plan) which our physicality and the idea that we know instinctively that we have a soul (or something which makes it function) only by virtue of the presence of others. Where it appears that what I have defined as "secular ethics" is basically a natural ethics, which even ignores the believer. The natural instinct, led to correct maturation and self-awareness, is a foundation that contains sufficient safeguards? Of course we think it's not enough incentive to virtue, "so" can not say who believes "no one will know that I'm secretly doing evil." [Or distorting for me to perform]
But mind you, whoever does not believe that no one believes him, and then look down that well-known for this - there is not anyone who can forgive. If people know they have done evil, [and there was no remedy instead. The same is true for the believers] will be without limits his loneliness, despair and death. Attempt rather than the believer, the washing of public confession, ask forgiveness of others. This we know, from deep within its fibers, and therefore knows in advance which must forgive others. How else could one explain that the remorse is a feeling experienced by non-believers ?..."
I believer, I posted, not surprisingly, this piece of Umberto Eco wrote a letter to Cardinal Martini, in response to a question that they had given him.
One can not but admire the level of ethics espoused by Eco, the true lesson of intellectual honesty to our own fundamentalists, many Catholic writers.
The additions in square brackets are mine.
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