The Bell of San Remo

Growing up as a boy in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, there were nine Latin and three Eastern Rite parishes in our town. Most had bells, which meant they rang the Angelus at 6 a.m., noon, and 6 p.m. Every December 31, at midnight, they pealed to welcome the new year. And there was one other custom that involved bells: the passing bell.

Moderns may only know of the passing bell when they hear the Campanone of St. Peter’s Basilica on television tolling the pope’s passing. But not so long ago, many parishes used to do that for the ordinary Catholic. I remember many a time hearing the plangent toll of a church bell, the parish announcing it had learned a member of its “community” had died. We often stopped long enough to say a Hail Mary.

John Donne’s famous question—not to ask “for whom the bell tolls”—alludes to that custom. The aggiornamento of the Church means fewer contemporary Catholics remember this pious custom that once marked every man’s passing, when the bell “tolls for thee.”

Which is why the latest Italian bell controversy is worth noting.

I previously wrote about an Italian bishop who issued a decree regulating how loud and long church bells could ring in his fiefdom because, apparently, bells rung too lustily were bothering the sleep and conscience of secularized Italians not wanting to keep holy the Lord’s day. The latest example, however, seems worth emulation beyond the peninsula’s borders.

Ventimiglia-San Remo is a suffragan diocese in northern Italy, on one of the most beautiful pieces of real estate in the world: the road that runs from Italy past Monaco into the French Riviera. Its bishop, Antonio Suetta, launched an initiative on December 28, the feast of the Holy Innocents. Every night, at 8 p.m., a bell in the curia’s church tower in San Remo tolls for one minute to commemorate babies murdered by abortion.

You might say that, in the past month, unholy hell has broken out over the Bell of San Remo.

Abortion is legal in Italy in the first three months of pregnancy for any reason. It is more highly restricted (though sometimes still permitted) after the first trimester. That has been the arrangement since 1978 under Law 194.

The bishop of Ventimiglia-San Remo apparently has read the Second Vatican Council (including those parts we don’t often talk about), which called abortion and infanticide an “unspeakable crime” against God and one’s fellow man. He also apparently takes seriously the meaning of the feast of the Holy Innocents, which was about government-authorized murder, not immigration “rights.” And he decided to do something about it.

He decided to ring a bell.

The usual suspects with the usual arguments are, of course, up in arms. The Church is interfering in civil affairs. The Church is dividing society. The Church is wielding its influence.

The Church is ringing a bell…and sounding a wake-up call.

Bishop Suetta reminds his flock that abortion has been legal in Italy for 48 years. That means that it’s likely almost every day, for half a century, babies have died. His Grace wants people to think about that and to say a prayer for those unjustly deprived of life.

The Guttmacher Institute’s latest figures estimate there are about 2,800 abortions per day in the United States. That averages out to roughly one murder every three minutes. Let’s admit it: abortion is hardly a “preeminent” issue in America, even for some highly-placed hierarchs. It is, in fact, quite quotidian: in the eight minutes it takes the average American to shower, two babies die. Throw in time undressing and dressing and a third is in his death throes.  

And we probably don’t even think about it. It’s so “mainstream” it’s normalized.

Now, what would be the message if, every night in America, at least one church bell tolled for a minute, disturbing our intellectual slumbers for 60 seconds to think of the almost 3,000 fellow Americans that died that day?

As I’ve argued in these pages, a church bell is an aural sacramental. It reminds people that another order intrudes into the secularly sanitized society we have created, that time passes and eternity beckons, and that eternity is not ruled by human laws.

Is there an American Bishop Suetta?

I’ll admit to being not sanguine. Recently, Vincenzo Paglia, the president-emeritus of Francis’ “reformed” Pontifical Academy of Life, was asked what he thought of the bell of San Remo. He damned by faint praise: “I would like to ring the bells for the elderly, so that they are accompanied with serenity and love, so that no one is left alone. The bell of brotherhood must ring loudly.”

But I won’t say we ought to be ringing bells for the slain unborn.

Paglia’s response should not be surprising. That intra-ecclesial Mario Cuomo previously expressed his opinion that the status of abortion in Italy was settled, Law 194 was in place, and let’s move on. Paglia holds what I would call a warped reading of Pope John Paul II’s counsel about “imperfect” abortion laws. The late pontiff said a Catholic politician could support a law that was not comprehensively pro-life if political reality at a given moment prevented enactment of a better law and if a worse law might otherwise be adopted. Paglia tries to justify Law 194 in that way.

What Paglia (and bishops who prefer just lip service for the unborn) fail to add, however, is that political realities are not static. Political consensus does change: most legal experts said Roe v. Wade was made for the ages, but it has joined Dred Scott in the trash bin of junk Constitutional jurisprudence. But political consensus changes when one works to effect that change. It took almost half a century of work—including reversals—to bury Roe, and the abortion debate still continues. Changing hearts and minds is the etymological meaning of metanoia—conversion—which is certainly the Church’s job.  

If the consensus of the moment means an “imperfect” abortion law must be enacted, then we need to address the culture so that those impediments to a better law are removed. That doesn’t have to mean organizing a political action committee. It can be a bell, reminding people that 2,800 other human beings died today in “unspeakable crimes” against God and man.