The Italian town of Sormano, about an hour from Milan, will soon wake again to the now controversial sound of church bells thanks to the generous donation of a 90-year-old grandmother. Whether the 650 or so inhabitants of Sormano will be grateful for the gift is perhaps another matter.

Maria Mazza, born and raised in the town, will fork over 20,000 euro to fix the bells in the parish church of St. Ambrogio which she feels have too long been silent.
In recent years, irritated citizens from all over Italy have waged wars against noisy church bells.

Although ringing from bell towers once regulated Italian daily life, since locals now rely on alarm clocks, cell phones and the Internet for important information there is much debate about for whom the bell tolls. The question of whether churches have the right to ring bells throughout the day — and sometimes at night — has split even practicing Catholics. While Italians may ‘listen to both bells’ (sentire tutte le campane) to mean giving equal consideration to both sides of an argument, many simply don’t want to hear bells, period.

After years of complaints, parish priest Don Bruno Ginoli was actually put on trial and fined about 150 euro in 2002 for disturbing the peace after ringing church bells ‘too vigorously.’ Part of the problem is that technology has also come to bell towers — they can now be set to ring automatically and with volume controls — so it’s a matter of trial and error before some overzealous priests strike a balance.

Sleepless Italians in numerous cities have called in the national health service to gauge the decibels of church bells — often finding that they are loud enough to be considered ‘noise pollution.’ Concern over the matter lead the Bishop of Bergamo to pen a decree about when and how often the bells can ring out, though he did reinforce the idea that bells would not be silenced because they are part of the traditional way that the church communicates with the parishioners.

Mazza, however is optimistic about her gift, “It’s a special way of thanking God for having reached this age,” said the former nurse. “I wanted to give something back to the town which has given so much to me.”

Whether the people of Sormano will remember her fondly or curse every time they hear the bells is perhaps a different story. 1999-2007 zoomata.com

Zoomata is the brainchild of a bilingualjournalist based in Italy who thinks out of the box. This brain is for hire.

32% Italians never go to confession
2.6% confess weekly
27.4% consider confession an ‘outdated’ sacrament
"indifference" "egoism" named as frequent sins

Italians are feeling less guilty and what they are feeling guilty about isn’t related to sex. In this Censis poll of 1,000 Italians aged 18-30, more than half either never ask for forgiveness or do so every few years.

"Most of those who confess could already be considered very religious," padre Alfredo Feretti of the youth center Giovanni Paolo II told newspapers. "Young people don’t talk about sex out of wedlock, they no longer perceive it as a sin. They’re more likely to confess that they’ve skipped mass or are egotistical."

It also appears that those who confess are doing so in part out of habit — only about half of young women and 40% of men say they are seeking guidance or advice from the other side of the screen. According to another recent poll, Italians were preoccupied with different kinds of "sins" like cutting a bad figure in public and smoking. Feretti isn’t giving up hope though, pointing out that youth groups like the "Apostles of Confession," launched during the Jubilee year have made some progress in the ‘rediscovery’ of the sacrament for young people.

Related resources:
Italy by Numbers: Modern-day sins?

Italians Boycott ‘Broadcast’ Confessionals

Bed and Blessings Italy: A Guide to Convents and Monasteries Available for Overnight Lodging

www.publiweb.com
What are today’s Italians confessing? Take a look with this ‘confessional’ forum…

Residents in the Northern Italian town of Valmadrera, about 30 miles from Milan, are protesting new confessionals that sit too close for comfort to nearby pews. After a series of rumors about peccadilloes of the parishioners spread through town, Catholic churchgoers are refusing to ask for pardon via the confessionals.

The parish church, built in the late 1700s, recently underwent restoration and the old built-in confessionals were done away with — the new ones jut about three feet closer to the pews. Despite the local saying ‘the mouth is made for talking,’ some elderly residents now prefer to keep their sins to themselves. Parish priest Massimo Frigerio has further raised the ire of residents by refusing to hear confessions in the sacristy, where total privacy is guaranteed.

"It’s a change," said Father Frigerio. "And like all changes it takes a while to sink in, but they’re going to have to get used to it."

Perhaps the priest would do better to try to encourage churchgoers. Statistics show a large number of slumbering or disinterested members of the country’s predominant religion — although 98% of Italians are baptized, only 36% attend mass regularly and over 14% never attend at all, according to data from Italian National Statistical Institute (ISTAT).

Related resources:
Bed and Blessings Italy: A Guide to Convents and Monasteries Available for Overnight Lodging

Italian Catholics Can Get ‘Unchristened’

Priest beats Pinups for most popular calendar

by Nicole Martinelli posted: Thu Dec. 5 8:24 am

Disgruntled Catholics have come a step closer to washing off holy water they were baptized in as tiny children. Upon request, priests in Italy must note alongside baptism information the will of adults to leave the Roman Catholic Church. Bowing to pressure from lobby groups who call the act ‘unchristening,’ the Italian Bishops Conference (CEI) recently outlined the procedure.
Both sides disagree on the scope of the phenomenon — one activist group claims 10,000 people have presented unchristening requests; the Church says it is trying to do right by a ‘few dozen’ people who wish not to be counted as Catholics.

Statistics, however, show a large number of slumbering or disinterested members of the country’s predominant religion — although 98% of Italians are baptized, only 36% attend mass regularly and over 14% never attend at all, according to 1999 data from Italian National Statistical Institute (ISTAT). Baptism records are used for Church statistics and influence whether last rites and religious funerals are administered.

Cardinal Camillo Ruini, CEI president, made it clear that the Church considers the issue an entirely bureaucratic one. “You can’t cancel a sacrament any more than you can cancel the act of being born,” he told newspapers.

For Catholic writer Vittorio Messori, the matter is just an adjustment by the Church to avoid legal woes. “In the same way a priest can leave the church but never de-priest himself, people can decide not to live as Catholics, but if baptized they will always be Catholics,” he told zoomata. “These pressure groups have made a big issue out of nothing and the Church is simply trying to avoid additional problems.”

Bureaucratic or not, the policy change is a David-versus-Goliath type victory for small but persistent groups like the Italian Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics (UAAR) that has been campaigning for unchristening since 1995. At first, they made little headway with parish priests who refused requests to modify or cancel baptism records.

Lobby groups took the Church to court finding an ally in Italy’s strict privacy law. Judges ruled that the Church must adhere to the law forbidding organizations from keeping sensitive personal data on an individual without consent or the possibility to modify that information.

Giorgio Villella, secretary general of UAAR, 66, admits he hasn’t had time to have himself de-christened yet. He’s too busy with the next item on the group’s agenda — ‘de-cruxifixing Italy,’ removing the ubiquitous symbol of the Church from post offices, courtrooms, schools and hospitals. “For too long the presence of the Catholic Church was taken for granted in Italy, but not anymore.”

1999-2007 zoomata.com

The Shroud of Turin, one of the most sacred objects of the Catholic Church, has been liberated from centuries-old patches and backing cloth in a top-secret restoration.

Restoration efforts were carried out in secret by Mechthild Flury Lemberg and Irene Tomedi from June to July of this year with approval from the Vatican.

Custodians of the cloth said the restoration had to be carried out in secret to avoid security risks after Sept. 11. Patches had been tacked onto the cloth by nuns in 1534, after a fire had blackened parts of it.

The gauze, said to show the imprint of Christ’s face and body after he was taken down from the cross, has been called both a religious artifact and a medieval hoax. Housed in the Turin cathedral, the linen strip spans around 14 feet long and 3 1/2-feet wide. Remnants of the cloths removed have been catalogued and kept for future study.

"There is no mystery. The interventions and new tests on the Shroud have been carried out in agreement with the Holy See," Marco Bonatti, spokesperson for the Shroud’s custodian, cardinal Severino Poletto, told reporters.

To get a closer look at the shroud, which has been on display only five times in the past century, believers and skeptics are in for a long wait: it isn’t likely to be on public view again until 2025.

Related Resources:
For a closer look at the work — the photo gallery & video

http://sindone.torino.chiesacattolica.it/it/scient/restauro_gallery.htm

www.sindone.org/it/scient/restauro_filmati.htm