OTHER
Book review of an “unauthorized” history of Centro Culturale Lepanto marked by incorrections, inaccuracies and omissions
SORRY prof. de Mattei, BUT THE IDEAL LEGACY OF CENTRO CULTURALE LEPANTO IS not up for grabs, and even IF it were, it CANNOT BE yours
“Confusion” is a recurrent word in the scripts and messages of prof. Roberto de Mattei and his various organizations, such as Fondazione Lepanto and publishing house Edizioni Fiducia, to describe the crisis afflicting the Church in our time.
But if he is so concerned with this confusion, and rightly so, what about the confusion he is contributing to, and which reached an unprecedented climax with the latest book produced by his publishing house Edizioni Fiducia?
The book in question is CATTOLICI SENZA COMPROMESSI - Il Centro Culturale Lepanto (1982-2006) (UNCOMPROMISING CATHOLICS – Lepanto Cultural Center (1982 – 2006)) authored by Tommaso Monfeli,
The book recounts “the action in defense of the natural and Christian order carried out during twenty-five years (1982-2006) by Centro Culturale Lepanto (CCL), an association of lay Catholics, founded in Rome by prof. Roberto de Mattei”.
For those readers who may raise their eyebrows thinking hey, what’s the point of reviewing an Italian book for an English-speaking audience, the answer is that this is a topic with implications for them too.
However, as the only remaining founding member of CCL and its leadership still in office, I must regretfully note that this book has been published without my knowledge. Nonetheless, I acknowledge that the work aptly reminds us a number of important documents and public campaigns that, as also highlighted on the back cover, decried the pitfalls of an anti-Christian agenda based essentially on aspects such as the metamorphosis of communism, the European unification project promoted by the Maastricht Treaty, the threat of Islam and the rise of homosexualism.
Inaccuracies and incorrections
Unlike what is stated several times in the book, it should be noted that prof. de Mattei is not the only founder of CCL, but he was co-founder with six other people, including myself. I say “he was” because in 2006 he resigned as president and founding member of CCL.
But the main question though is another: in his foreword on page 4 prof. de Mattei writes that “starting in 2006, following problems that arose within the organization, I left the direction of the Center, to continue my activity as president of the Lepanto Foundation, established in 2000 in Washington to internationally develop our activity. The Lepanto Foundation, based in Rome, has therefore inherited the legacy of the Lepanto Cultural Center, continuing its activity vigorously...”.
This concept is taken up on page. 291, where it is stated: “In 2006 a series of controversies took place within the Lepanto Cultural Center which compelled prof. De Mattei to leave the association, which subsequently dissolved, and to continue his apostolate with the Lepanto Foundation which inherited the cultural and moral legacy of the Lepanto Cultural Center”.
But if one resigns as a founding member, how can this person lay claim on the legacy of the very association that he contributed to found? If words have a sense, when one resigns from founding member, isn’t he/she repudiating also everything the organization has done since the inception of its history, starting from its very name, “Lepanto”? And how consistent is it for prof. de Mattei first to resign, thus jeopardizing the very existence of CCL, and then lay claim on its cultural and moral legacy?
As a matter of fact, the existence of an inheritance presupposes the existence of a deceased, while CCL, which I am still honored to represent as the only remaining founding member still in office, has not deceased and has not dissolved. Unfortunately, the deceased, who died prematurely, were Fabio Bernabei, who had succeeded as president prof. de Mattei, and his brother Claudio Bernabei. For those who did not know these two brothers, they were two authentic pillars of the CCL, champions of a service to the Holy Mother Church that could not have been more exemplary and disinterested. With their full-time commitment to the cause of God, the two brothers perfectly incarnated the model of militancy that prof. de Mattei has always extolled as the maximum aspiration of any counter-revolutionary worthy of this name.
More specifically, prof. de Mattei says that the Lepanto Foundation was founded in Washington in 2000. In fact, if with his resignation he intended to break off with the old guard, viz. the other founding members of CCL leadership, and thus remaining as the de facto only owner of CCL, one small detail still remained: the presence of myself as a member of the board of the Foundation.
To solve this “problem”, it was enough to get rid of the previous Foundation and establish a new one, from which I was left out. As shown in
www.guidestar.org/profile/26-0505122
, the “ruling year” of this Foundation is 2007 (prof. de Mattei resigned from CCL in July 2006), whose “principal officer” is Virginia Coda Nunziante, a longtime associate to and collaborator of prof. de Mattei, and also former member of the previous Foundation’s board.
If these are the facts, once again how can one think that the Roman branch of the Foundation can somehow claim to be heir to CCL?
Moreover, prof. de Mattei was not compelled to resign, on the contrary he was repeatedly asked to reconsider his decision. But prof. de Mattei decided to reconfirm his irrevocable resignation, without fully clarifying the true nature of the above “series of controversies” and “problems”. A gap that still this book does not bridge. Maybe prof. de Mattei believes he was the victim of a conspiracy, but a conspiracy in which the alleged conspirators are left with almost nothing and the alleged victim retains virtually everything is quite strange.
Inconsistencies
Here is the greatest inconsistency in this book: avoiding to fathom the authentic reasons which prompted prof. de Mattei into resigning, a very serious decision and fraught with extremely negative consequences for the good cause and the forces of the Catholic counter-revolution at the service of the Church. It is natural to think that only reasons of exceptional gravity could have led prof. de Mattei to resign. But until a credible explanation is offered, the only reasonable hypothesis is that at some stage there might have been perhaps someone, or more than someone, of CCL leadership who had ceased to be an “uncompromising Catholic”.
Omissions
It is not clear then why in a note on p. 11 only 5 founding members are listed, who instead are seven, leaving out Fabio Bernabei and myself. But CCL activity and its extraordinary successes were the result of a joint, collective action of all its leadership, to which Fabio Bernabei has certainly given a primary and fundamental contribution.
Moreover, this book does not mention all CCL campaigns, although some of them would have deserved to be remembered, especially for their textbook success, in particular those based on a targeted parliamentary lobbying action.
Other aspects that were not mentioned include the important institutional offices held by prof. de Mattei, following his co-optation in the ruling center-right establishment. In particular I am referring to his role as consultant to the Vice-Presidency of the Council of Ministers, to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and to his appointment as Vice-President of the National Research Council (CNR).
These achievements were the consequences of the visibility and effectiveness of the CCL campaigns and can be considered extraordinary favors of Divine Providence, not only for legitimate personal gratification, but also and above all to primarily serve the interests of the good cause.
Although any coherent counterrevolutionary is well aware that certain politically-nominated institutional offices cannot be kept for a long time, for obvious reasons, this does not mean that they are not a "window of opportunity" offered by Providence. But since he could remain Vice-President of CNR for eight years (2003-2011), the book on CCL could have elaborated more in detail on what he actually did in this regard during his stint there, at least from 2003 to his resignation from CCL in 2006.
For those who experienced first-hand the tragedy of the break off within the CCL, there is still the bitterness and regret for the things that could have been and that have not been. For example, on page 153 the author mentions the fundamental role throughout Italy of the 221 Defense Committees of the Natural Family and Christian Order, which in 1995 managed to prevent the European Parliament's resolution of 8 February 1994 from being entrenched into Italian legislation. This resolution urged member states to legalize the so-called same-sex marriage. Had these committees, which were created, animated and coordinated by the CCL, continued their action and expansion, perhaps today in Italy the situation would have been different.
And last, but not least, this book is but the latest example of the insistence of prof. de Mattei in associating himself with CCL. A less recent example of this confusion is his latest books in English, “Love for the Papacy and Filial Resistance to the Pope in the History of the Church”, Angelico Press, 2019. Well, in this book the professor is profiled among other things as “…the founder and director of the Lepanto Cultural Center in Rome”. The Angelico Press replied to my clarification (incidentally, there has never been a position as director in CCL) with the following words: “We received the bio from the translator of the book, who received it I believe from the author”.
Again, I wonder, why is professor de Mattei insisting so much in associating with CCL and thus increasing such confusion? CCL had problems with this confusion since his resignation in 2006 and subsequently had to distance itself from certain stances and initiatives taken by him (see also the Wanderer of April 3, 2008, and June 26, 2008).
This confusion was particularly harmful also in connection with comments posted to this article
http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2019/05/rebuilding-authentic-catholicism-upon.html#disqus_thread ,
where professor de Mattei is said to argue in a booklet, “Faithful Children of the Church Catholic Obedience in Times of Apostasy”, for the invalidity of the Novus Ordo. Later on I was told by some contacts of mine that actually there is nothing arguing for the invalidity of the “ordinary rite” in the above booklet and I am glad to know that, but although after my clarification some of these comments were subsequently removed, the damage had already been done.
In fact, how many readers of the above Angelico Press book did come across the New Liturgical Movement blog comments prior to their removal? They may well have been led to believe that de Mattei’s reported stance on the novus ordo mass obviously reflects that of CCL as well. But CCL has never questioned the validity of the “ordinary” rite celebrated in compliance with its current rules and rubrics. So as CCL has never indulged into the kind of his anti-papal public tirades (see for example
https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2019/12/de-mattei-who-was-worst-pope-in-history.html).
August 15th,2020, feast of the Assumption of Our Lady
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