"The Crisis of the Sacred and the Church kneeling before the World"?

Sounds a bit "over the top." This, at least was the judgment of Marco Bongi in an article in Riscossa Cristiano about the "dreadful words" spoken by Alessandro Gnocchi on March 8, 2014 at the annual meeting of Civitella del Tronto. The Title of Gnocchi's presentation was "The Crisis of the Sacred and the Church kneeling before the World."

Translated by Francesca Romana, Bongi's article was posted by Adfero under the title, "Clear words, 'prophetic words'" (RC, May 15, 2014), and indeed the opening quotation from Gnocchi does verge toward the alarmist:

"We will find ourselves more and more faced with someone who professes to speak to us in the name of God by telling us that we have no need of Him.”

With that, Bongi turns his thoughts, "as a simple layman who observes what is happening around him."

Whatever the religious liberty envisioned in Vatican II's Dignitatis Humanae, he says, Rome hasn't done much to resist "the demand to remove every reference to the religion of the State from the constitution." What ever was envisioned by the Council fathers regarding ecumenism, the effect has been to suggest that "fundamentally the differences among the various Christian religions and non-Christian ones too, are -- all things considered -- negligible." Whatever the Council envisioned in Sacrosanctum Concilium, the "innovators" appear to "hate [the traditional liturgy of the Latin rite] because it attributes too much importance to God and the transcendent dimension of [our] relationship with Him." Whatever the Council fathers may have envisioned about upholding the rights of God, it now appears that the rights of man are much more important: "God is not important" and "there is no sense in fighting to defend Him ...." Whatever may have been envisioned, it looks more and more like "the law of God is not important," as it now appears that it may soon be possible for the divorced and remarried may be re-admitted to the sacraments. Likewise, the result of the "pastoral" approach following the Council has been "Communion in the hand, impeding, de facto, genuflections (since the kneelers have been taken away) expelling, de facto, sin, the last things, the objectivity of morality from catechesis as well as homiletics."

Finally, even Bongi finds himself asking, by the end of his article: "Will God accept being put to the side like a useless toy for much longer?"

[Hat tip to R.C.]