Lucetta Scaraffia
q:it:Lucetta Scaraffia (1948) is an Italian historian and journalist.
Quotes
[edit]- (About Maria Montessori) Italians know her as a maternal and reassuring lady who appeared on the thousand lire banknote for a long time, the only woman depicted on our banknotes, but in her long life she was a transgressive and restless woman, so much so that when asked what nationality she was, she replied: “I live in the sky, my country is a star that revolves around the sun and is called Earth”.
- Francesca Cabrini, in AA.VV., Italiane. Dall'Unità d'Italia alla prima guerra mondiale, vol. I, Dipartimento per l'informazione e l'editoria, Roma, 2004, p. 18
- [...] Maria Goretti was also greatly admired for her humble origins, redeemed by the strength with which she defended her dignity as a human being and daughter of God. Her cult therefore had social significance, as Palmiro Togliatti understood when he cited her as an example to young communists in a speech in the 1950s.
- Maria Goretti, in AA.VV., Italiane. Dall'Unità d'Italia alla prima guerra mondiale, vol. I, Dipartimento per l'informazione e l'editoria, Roma, 2004, p. 105
- (About q:it:Francesca Cabrini) Not only her relationship with space, but also her relationship with time was modern, so dominated by haste and speed: “Hurry, hurry and cheerfully, my daughters,” she wrote to the nuns, even urging them to act “ardently and quickly”, a phrase with an almost futuristic flavour, which perfectly conveys the sense of her movement in the world.
- Francesca Cabrini, in AA.VV., Italiane. Dall'Unità d'Italia alla prima guerra mondiale, vol. I, Dipartimento per l'informazione e l'editoria, Roma, 2004, p. 18
- The scientific justification for this choice[1] lies in a peculiar definition of the nervous system, now being challenged by new research that questions the very fact that brain death causes the disintegration of the body. As demonstrated in 1992 by the sensational case of a woman who entered an irreversible coma and was declared brain dead before it was discovered that she was pregnant, it was decided to allow her to continue with the pregnancy, which proceeded normally until a miscarriage occurred. This case and other similar ones that ended with the birth of a child have called into question the idea that in this condition the bodies are already dead, corpses from which organs can be removed. It therefore seems that Jonas was right when he suspected that the new definition of death was motivated more by interest, i.e. the need for organs for transplantation, than by real scientific progress.
- «I segni della morte», l'Osservatore Romano, 3 September 2008; reported in InternEtica.it[2]
- I would like to nominate [for the title of Doctor of the Church] women of the twentieth century who have not even been declared saints: such as Adrienne von Speyr, who accepted with simplicity and profound humility her role as a mystic and at the same time a doctor, wife, woman of her time, and who wrote beautiful texts that are now almost forgotten.
- From an interview of Laura Badaracchi, Scaraffia: la Chiesa dia più voce alle donne, Avvenire.it, 1 November 2014
- Osservatore Romano, 16 June 2017
- Mulieris dignitatem had the merit of introducing a new point of view: at a time in history when women's emancipation was achieved through the adoption of male behaviour patterns and a consequent denial of the value of motherhood, the Pope's proposal seemed to suggest that emancipation should and could take place while keeping alive the specificity of women, finally recognised as a value, as a form of genius.
- The discovery of female genius was the work of John Paul II, who made it the heart of his apostolic letter Mulieris dignitatem, published in 1988 as the conclusion of the synod on lay people.
- [Philosophers and psychologists] have revealed the sense of openness that motherhood brings towards the transcendent, towards the “infinite world”, to use the words of Clotilde Leguil, who writes that recognising that the female body is radically different from the male body “implies a transition from a closed world to an infinite universe”. Leguil quotes the verses of the poet Antoine Tudal, much loved by Lacan: “Between man and love, there is woman. Between man and woman, there is a world. Between man and the world, there is a wall”.
- Ilmessaggero.it, 14 September 2017
- Regarding the Finnish girl who was raped in Rome the other night, one feels like asking her: didn't anyone ever teach you not to accept lifts from strangers, especially at 4 o'clock in the morning? I'm sure it's dangerous everywhere, even in Finland.
- It also makes one think that the myth of equality with men is having perverse effects, and that many girls now go out at night without taking the most basic precautions. It would be nice, of course, if men changed and accepted this new freedom for women, but we know that this is not the case, and perhaps never will be. A little realism therefore does no harm, and it is better to avoid dangerous situations. It is certainly not by forcing reality and trying to bend it to our desires that we change the world.
- The ancient idea that men must protect women is perhaps one of the first customs that feminism has erased, since it meant that women had the illusion of protecting themselves. Women, especially young women, need a social context that surrounds them with a protective shield, and they need supportive eyes to watch over them and perhaps even warn them in case of danger.
References
[edit]- ↑ In 1968, the ‘Harvard Report’ changed the definition of death, basing it no longer on cardiac arrest, but on a flat electroencephalogram and therefore on brain death.
- ↑ The article published in L'Osservatore Romano, which cast doubt on the Harvard report, caused quite a stir. Ignazio Marino, for example, criticised the piece in an un-atto-irresponsabile.html article in La Repubblica, calling it ‘an irresponsible act’, while Sandro Magister, in an article on Espresso.it, and q:it:Stefano Lorenzetto in an article on “'Il Giornale.it”' supported the historian for bringing the issue to public attention.
- Interviewer: Isn't there an underlying tone of extreme pessimism? Is it so absurd to think that technology can be used for good? Scaraffia: Jacques Ellul didn't think so. For him, it was simply impossible. He even lived in the countryside to protect himself from the effects of progress. His observations on technology are certainly marked by pessimism. But his conception of the world is animated by Christian optimism. He was convinced that God acts in history and that, therefore, He will intervene to save man from himself. There is a tendency to separate his philosophical and sociological writings from his theological ones. But for him, the relationship with technology is inextricably linked to that with God. And, in particular, to the function that God has entrusted to man in the world: that of knowing but not destroying, of dominating reality while respecting it, of aspiring to the best while preserving a sense of limits.
- From an interview with Paolo Nessi, “'Ellul: against relentless technicality, faith in Providence”', “'ilsussidiario.net”', 13 February 2009.
- Interviewer: Isn't there an underlying tone of extreme pessimism? Is it so absurd to think that technology can be used for good? Scaraffia: Jacques Ellul didn't think so. For him, it was simply impossible. He even lived in the countryside to protect himself from the effects of progress. His observations on technology are certainly marked by pessimism. But his conception of the world is animated by Christian optimism. He was convinced that God acts in history and that, therefore, He will intervene to save man from himself. There is a tendency to separate his philosophical and sociological writings from his theological ones. But for him, the relationship with technology is inextricably linked to that with God. And, in particular, to the function that God has entrusted to man in the world: that of knowing but not destroying, of dominating reality while respecting it, of aspiring to the best while preserving a sense of limits.