The Journey of Our Love: The Letters of Saint Gianna Beretta and Pietro Molla

 I recently read the book, "The Journey of Our Love: The Letters of Saint Gianna Beretta and Pietro Molla," published by Pauline Books and Media and edited by Elio Guerriero. Here are my thoughts.

The Letters

Everything that St. Gianna and her husband wrote is totally fine. It was cute, though I felt like I was reading a very private correspondence that was not my business. Perhaps I am just cold-hearted and can't enjoy romance but, that's fine I guess.
The larger part of the book are these series of letters from a time where St. Gianna and Pietro (her husband) spend a few months apart due to his work, and it felt like a novel for me almost, so much so that I felt let down because I couldn't experience when they finally got back together. It just moved on to the next series of letters for the next time Pietro left for a trip. It felt a bit jarring, but that's not the fault of this book, since it was not written to be like a novel anyway.

"The Church's 'Suspicious Silence' and 'No Room For Married Life'"

In one of the introductions, I was more than a little unsettled by this particular section here:
"..these letters are a convincing proof that the way of holiness does not necessarily pass through religious life or the priestly ministry, but can unfold in the midst of the world, living one's own vocation as a Christian called to holiness with Christ in married life. This ancient truth (as we can see in the Acts of the Apostles, 'saints' is synonmous with 'Christians') was hidden in oblivion during certain centuries which passed over in suspicious silence anything that had to do with the body and sexuality. Among the different types of saints (martyrs, confessors, doctors, virgins), there seemed to be no room for the many Christians who had embraced married life and had viewed it as as mission given to them by God, as the field in which to bring their talents to fruition. More often than not, the few married persons (Rita, Nicholas of Flue, Frances of Rome, Jane de Chantel, Louise de Marillac) whom the Church proclaimed as saints had more or less renounced their marriages."

Here's the thing... the last thing we need today are Catholic books that start to put doubt in how the Catholic Church has done things in the past ("in the past" meaning, of course, what some like to weirdly call the "Pre Conciliar Church" aka, the Catholic Church before the year 1962.) I get the point they are trying to make - there seemed to be less books on married Saints in the past. But here's the thing... in the past it was simply easier to get ahold of the documented private, and spiritual life of those who were in the religious life. Why was this so important? Because the Catholic Church was always, consistently careful about canonizing Saints. Just because a holy person was not canonized, it doesn't mean they didn't make it to Heaven, but the Church canonized certain holy people to both give the laity ROLE MODELS in the Faith, as well as to give them a higher honor in the Church as models of the Faith well-lived. This is actually why it took years (and years!) before She (Holy Mother Church) finally canonized anyone! It's also the reason why they used to have what was called a "Devils Advocate" during the canonization process - a person was hired to dig up any "dirt" on the servant of God, to make sure there was nothing that might lead anyone astray by their life choices, before they made them "official Catholic Role Models" so to speak. And if there was "dirt", the servant of God would of had to have shown total and complete rejection of their past bad deeds and have lived a life almost perfectly living Faith, Hope and Charity. Again, this was not done to show that it is impossible to make it to heaven, but if Holy Mother Church decided to give us laity a proper Role Model that we can imitate, these Role Models MUST be the very best. It doesn't mean that they are the only ones in Heaven - anyone in Heaven is a "Saint".
This book, I have found, had some areas that do not coincide with how the Catholic Church does things. Because of this, it showed leanings towards the idea that the Church's Teachings change with the Times (aka Modernism, which is a heresy that Pope Pius X spoke of in his encyclical "Pascendi Dominici Gregis (September 8, 1907)".) (For more information and a clearer explanation of the heresy, I highly recommend reading that encyclical as well as the A Catechism of Modernism which is extremely helpful in understanding it. Both can be found online to read for free.) "Modernism" is essentially the belief that Dogma, Scripture and Tradition, ect, can (and should) change simply because it is "old" and "not up to date". Modernists believe that the Catholic Church must "update" Herself in her Teachings and practices. Or, here's another good one, "Anything the Church has taught before Vatican II doesn't count anymore because.... Vatican II." Yeah no. that's not how this works.

The complaint that the Church "passed over in suspicious silence anything that had to do with the body and sexuality" is laughable. Barring scrupulous Catholics in History, the Catholic Church hardly stays quiet on "the body and sexuality", in fact, She took both of these very, very seriously. Just because one does not use syrupy or banal language concerning the topic of sex and the body, it hardly means that one is passing over it in "suspicious silence". Let me direct you to a few "Pre-Conciliar" writings on these very topics;
Casti Connubii: On Christian Marriage (Given in 1930) in which the first paragraph states, "How great is the dignity of chaste wedlock, Venerable Brethren, may be judged best from this that Christ Our Lord, Son of the Eternal Father, having assumed the nature of fallen man, not only, with His loving desire of compassing the redemption of our race, ordained it in an especial manner as the principle and foundation of domestic society and therefore of all human intercourse, but also raised it to the rank of a truly and great sacrament of the New Law, restored it to the original purity of its divine institution, and accordingly entrusted all its discipline and care to His spouse the Church."
Another encyclical from Pope Leo XIII Arcanum Divinae "On Christian Marriage" in 1880 states, "Marriage, moreover, is a sacrament, because it is a holy sign which gives grace, showing forth an image of the mystical nuptials of Christ with the Church. But the form and image of these nuptials is shown precisely by the very bond of that most close union in which man and woman are bound together in one; which bond is nothing else but the marriage itself. "
Pope Pius XII's 1958 Address to "The Large Family" is also another beautiful read. Here is an excerpt, "But you do not represent just any families at all; you are and represent large families, those most blessed by God and specially loved and prized by the Church as its most precious treasures. For these families offer particularly clear testimony to three things that serve to assure the world of the truth of the Church's doctrine and the soundness of its practice, and that redound, through good example, to the great benefit of all other families and of civil society itself." "(L)et the weak and selfish take their example from you; let the nation continue to be loving and grateful toward you for all the sacrifices you have taken upon yourselves to raise and educate its citizens; just as the Church is pleased with you for enabling her to offer, along with you, ever healthier and larger groups of souls to the sanctifying activity of the divine Spirit."
The Catechism of the Council of Trent (its compilation was completed in the year 1564!) states, "Thus when Christ our Lord wished to give a sign of the intimate union that exists between Him and His Church and of His immense love for us, He chose especially the sacred union of man and wife. That this sign was a most appropriate one will readily appear from the fact that of all human relations there is none that binds so closely as the marriage-tie, and from the fact that husband and wife are bound to one another by the bonds of the greatest affection and love. Hence it is that Holy Writ so frequently represents to us the divine union of Christ and the Church under the figure of marriage." And here it speaks directly about marriage as as path to sainthood, "Thus will they find the blessings of marriage to be daily increased by an abundance of divine grace; and living in the pursuit of piety, they will not only spend this life in peace and tranquillity, but will also repose in the true and firm hope, which confoundeth not, of arriving, through the divine goodness, at the possession of that life which is eternal."
Hmm... this doesn't sound much like the Church gave "no room" for married couples! In fact, it sounds more like the opposite. She gives a high place of honor to those who are given the vocation to raise Saints for Heaven! Some of the greatest Canonized Saints were married (and no, not all of them "renounced" their marriages! (see also this list of venerated couples)
I think a large part of this (perhaps unwitting) misinterpretation of the Church and the vocation of marriage is not only misreading the holiness of this sacrament that the Church always held, but the authors seem to be unaware that the Church teaches that it is not marriage that is considered "the best way" but the religious life, because it is in this vocation that the person gives themselves totally to God! However, it is an immature error to read this as something insulting, or demeaning to the Sacrament and Vocation of marriage, for the Church not only regards this as a necessary Vocation, but one that is very very holy. After all, it is from these holy Catholic marriages that come vocations to the religious life! It all works out for the best. (Photo below from the Baltimore Catechism)

Quoting Dubious Theologians

I wonder why so many Catholic's today seem to only quote "Theologians" that came after Vatican II. The Church always takes holy wisdom from all ages - simply because wisdom and Catholicism are not bound to any age, but to Christ, Who is God, Who is outside of time.

This book (not the saints, but those who wrote commentary to the book) go on to quote the dubious, modernist theologian "Cardinal Henri de Lubac." (See why I say this about Lubac here - https://bit.ly/3yDmzSt where they write, "In June of 1950, as de Lubac himself said, 'lightning struck Fourvière.' He was removed from his professorship at Lyon and his editorship of Recherches de science religieuse, and he was required to leave the Lyon province. All Jesuit provincials were directed to remove three of his books – Surnaturel, Corpus Mysticum and Connaissance de Dieu – because of 'pernicious errors on essential points of dogma.' 'In 1962, well after the death of Pius XII, de Lubac wrote the book Teilhard de Chardin: The Man and His Meaning, extolling the writings of the pantheist paleontologist whose notes he had studied along with his colleagues at La Fourvière. De Chardin himself had been censured and stripped of his teaching position already in 1925 for denying Original Sin and the existence of Hell. His writings are still officially proscribed, but remain, however, immensely popular today among Jesuits and even within some of the highest ranking circles of the contemporary Roman Catholic Church.' There's more too!! Yikes.)
In another part of the book, they also speak about Hans Urs von Balthasaar (on page 68, footnote 34) who is also known to have VERY problematic views that contract Catholic Teaching (see https://bit.ly/3RWYNrm , also Balthasaar wrote this in the forward to Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism , contrary to the teachings of the Church, "A thinking, praying Christian of unmistakable purity reveals to us the symbols of Christian Hermeticism in its various levels of mysticism, gnosis and magic, taking in also the Cabbala and certain elements of astrology and alchemy. These symbols are summarised in the twenty-two so-called 'Major Arcana' of the Tarot cards. By way of the Major Arcana the author seeks to lead meditatively into the deeper, all-embracing wisdom of the Catholic Mystery." This article also charitably puts into question some of the views held by Balthasaar https://bit.ly/3z0rkFV)

More Weird Footnotes

On page 82, footnote 59 rushes to explain St. Gianna's statement to her husband, concerning their future marriage. Here is St. Gianna, "We will be working with God in his creation; in this way we can give him children who will love and serve him." Beautiful! However, the commentators just couldn't help themselves, and they added a footnote stating, "Here is expressed a pre-conciliar theology of marriage, however, with feminine grace and delicacy typical of the saint: she often repeated almost verbatim statements in use at the time, but softened and transformed with her finesse." O...kay?? Since when did the Church change the "theology" of marriage to stop being about raising saints to worship God?? All I got out of that footnote was a rushed, confusing, word salad that seemed to disagree with St. Gianna while also agreeing with her at the same time. I can't stand this sort of writing.
Ooo! Here's another good one. Pietro, is writing to his wife, St. Gianna, while on a business trip. He writes that, "The songs and saints of our homeland speak much more powerfully to our hearts and our feelings when we see them in the frigid North, which is cold by nature, and also in regard to religion." Here, the commentators quickly add a footnote, "Mr, Molla was referring to the diversity of religious sentiment and practice between the Nordic and the Latin countries. It should be noted that the great majority of Swedes are Lutheran and that the veneration of the saints in not very common among them. One should also keep in mind that, at the time," wait for it... "Vatican Council II, with its emphasis on ecumenism," which, by the way, the Catholic Church has officially denounced as a heresy (more on than in a bit), "had not yet taken place." Yeah. Okay. Sure.
So, first of all, these footnotes almost read as if they see something totally offensive to non-Catholics and quickly try to fix it. But the thing is, there is nothing offensive in these letters. The only offensive thing here, are these weird, awkward footnotes. In my opinion.
Now, about Ecumenism. There is a difference between the Muslim route of "COVERT OR BE BEHEADED!!" and Catholicism. Remember all the martyrs and missionaries in the past? All the religious who gave their lives to care for the poor, sick, and needy, regardless of their creed? All the sacrifices these brave men and women made to bring souls to Christ - aka, converting them to Catholicism. Yeah. That's Catholicism. False ecumenism was condemned by the Church, see On Fostering True Religious Unity: Mortalium Animos , "(false ecumenism is) founded upon the false opinions of those who say that, since all religions equally unfold and signify- though not in the same way - the native, inborn feeling in us all through which we are borne toward God and humbly recognize His rule, therefore, all religions are more or less good and praiseworthy. The followers of this theory are not only deceived and mistaken, but since they repudiate the true religion by attacking it in its very essence, they move step by step toward naturalism and atheism. Hence it clearly follows that anyone who gives assent to such theories and undertakings utterly abandons divinely revealed religion. " "(S)ome are more easily deceived by the outward appearance of good when there is question of fostering unity among all Christians." "Furthermore, in this one Church of Christ no man can be or remain who does not accept, recognize and obey the authority and supremacy of Peter and his legitimate successors. "
One can spend a whole afternoon pouring over Papal Documents, Catholic Teaching, The Bible, writings of Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and writings of Saints that completely and totally uphold this statement by the Holy Father. And no, something this theologically weighty, carrying with it the weight of Tradition and Magisterium, is not something that can supposedly be brushed aside by one Council.

In Conclusion

I enjoyed reading the letters of St. Gianna and her husband, Pietro, however, the commentary from different Catholic's unsettled me very much. It only confirmed my belief that Catholic's today are very, very confused and improperly Catechized. I was too! I hope and pray that some day, anything that is published by a Catholic Publisher will be free of theological error and confusion. We Catholics should be promoting the Simple Truths, not modernist word salad. (Though to be fair, my writing can probably be defined as "word salad" at times). I cannot say that the intentions of these Catholics were to confuse; most likely not! But I couldn't leave a review on the book without talking about these issues that left me very unsettled.
I am not a theologian or even a very well-read Catholic, but I love the Faith and desire that Her Teachings not be confused. I hope that I have clearly expressed Her Teachings and not made anything more confusing.