Archbishop Paglia's Moral Revolution Conceals an 'Unconfessable Interest' - Monsignor Melina
Melina responded on LaNuovaBq.it (June 20) to a May 21 interview Paglia gave to Settimana News.
“Cover for an Unconfessable Interest”
Melina’s most striking accusation comes near the end of his essay: “Paglia’s actions were not moved by theological reasons, but by an ideological criticism of the Institute.”
He suggests that ideology serves to hide deeper motives: “Ideology, as Karl Marx taught us, functions as a cover for an unconfessable interest.”
Melina suggests that the suppression may have stemmed from a conviction that the Church's traditional teaching on marriage and family is "unreasonable" and "impracticable".
"No Facts, Only Interpretations" - Nietzsche
Melina accuses Paglia's paradigm of resting on the "principle of immanence proper to Modernism," where interpretation takes precedence over objective reality.
Invoking Nietzsche's dictum, "There are no facts, only interpretations," Melina argues that doctrine becomes reshaped by historical circumstances rather than serving as a stable measure of truth.
For Melina, this is not merely a pastoral shift but the adoption of philosophical premises that previous popes identified as the intellectual core of Modernism.
Conscience As Source of the Moral Norm
The doctrinal heart of Melina’s attack concerns conscience. He argues that the new paradigm promoted by Paglia gives subjective conscience a role that Catholic moral theology cannot accept.
Instead of conscience judging an act according to objective moral truth, conscience risks becoming the source of the norm itself.
Melina calls this “a true hypertrophy of conscience.”
He says this approach absorbs the moral norm into conscience: “In this way moral absolutes are denied.”
Paglia’s paradigm undermines the teaching of Veritatis Splendor, especially the doctrine that some acts are intrinsically evil and can never be justified by circumstances.
“What morality does the Church want?”
Another target is the idea of the “possible good.”
Melina says that in Paglia’s approach, the “possible good” becomes the criterion for deciding what moral norm is actually binding. For Melina, this reduces Christian morality to what wounded man can currently manage, rather than what grace makes possible.
For Melina, the dispute is about the direction of the whole Church. Either the Church continues to proclaim the greatness of the human vocation in Christ, or it adapts that vocation downward to the limits of fallen man.
He contrasts the two possibilities: a lowered morality that justifies weakness, or a morality that trusts grace to transform the person.
For Melina, the suppression of the original John Paul II Institute was ultimately not about academic restructuring but about replacing a theology centered on grace, conversion, and objective moral truth.
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