The meaning of politics

Guido Bodrato passed away a few weeks after turning ninety. Deputy, MEP, minister, Christian Democratic leader. A survivor of politics. Piedmontese from Monteu Roero, Turin by adoption, consistent by vocation. Once upon a time, young Catholics left parishes, oratories and Catholic Action to engage in politics according to the needs of the social doctrine of the Church. It was a question of rebuilding Italy after the disasters of the twenty years of fascism and the Second World War. A sort of unarmed call to arms, to serve communities and the common good.

Many responded, and Bodrato among them. Starting an extraordinary experience of Christian and secular testimony. The inspiration comes from the gospel, the practice is personal. He once said: "Politics is risk, those who don't want to take risks shouldn't take them." Bodrato had to live as a protagonist the ferocious time of the kidnapping and killing of Aldo Moro. He was the right-hand man of Benigno Zaccagnini, secretary of the DC. He shared the amazement, fear, anguish, impotence and unpopularity of the fifty-four most horrible days of the new Italy.

It remains, today - in the days of nothingness of politics - a beacon of culture, reflection, faith and coherence. «Every right refers to values. For a Christian, the assumption that whatever others say is an objective right and therefore he must feel it as a value cannot be valid. In the face of the demographic crisis, it cannot be said that one solution is a rented womb. Aside from moral judgment, rationally it doesn't hold up.
Let's stop with this rhetoric of rights, rights require respect for duties and if there are no duties, how can rights be maintained?".

This is what Guido Bodrato spoke recently. Lucidly indicating the drift of politics that has become "law-making", as poor in values as it is swollen with pretensions. From service to the common good to dispenser of money, favors and powers. Sort of one-way ATM, from which you can only withdraw money. He remembered the prophetic words of Aldo Moro: «This country will not be saved, the season of rights and freedoms will prove ephemeral, if a new sense of duty is not born in Italy». And he commented: «Exactly, just like that. Instead today we are faced only with a rhetoric of rights. I don't enter into judgments on sexual behavior, but the problem of sexual behavior cannot be made central to politics."

Renzo Agasso
NP June / July 2023