Word: ardito
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...priests, says Don Ardito. "Compromise, moderation, restrained zeal, a constant effort to be 'human' and please the general public, all these mixed in with personal greed and jealousy-isn't that the portrait of the average priest? . . . How many of us priests ... act as if the truth we preach were a spiritual reality, not a mere symbol...
...Ardito's Expiation. Heaven and Earth describes Don Ardito's pilgrim's progress toward the spiritual reality of his faith. When he arrives at the rectory in his small mountain parish and is warmly welcomed by the lusty young woman who was his predecessor's housekeeper, he boots her out. When a rich parishioner commits adultery, Don Ardito ignores his cash value to the parish and bars him from Communion till he breaks off his affair. When he sees that he needs more learning to make his message effective among the educated, he drives himself...
...Ardito is deplored, detested, vilified. But he is also adored: even anticlerical partisans call him "the saint." The flaw in his character is that he is so intent upon his crusade that he cannot pause to deal with individual problems. Even as he climbs to fame as a preacher, he shrinks as a human being; he cannot give simple love to those who need it from...
Heaven and Earth ends with an act of expiation. Don Ardito persuades a German officer to execute him for acts committed by the partisans. In this way, Author Coccioli attempts to bring all nations, creeds and parties within the sphere of his theme-to throw Don Ardito's girdle of love around the earth...
...surprising that Coccioli fails to bring off this master throw. "How incapable I am of explaining!" writes one of his characters of Don Ardito. "What was there about his words that makes them ring with such intensity? ... I could weep over my own ineptitude. It is all the crueler because as soon as I stop writing I can see the essence of his secret in absolute clarity...