Source: http://www.geocities.com/priyasai108/cd/catholic.htm

Foreword

Many of my friends were alarmed when they learned of my intention to write a book about Sai Baba. They were aware of my convictions about this being who is human only in body. With brotherly concern, they variously advised, begged or beseeched me to publish it under pseudonym, imagining the unhappy consequences I might encounter from the ecclesiastical hierarchy.

I asked myself that I should have no fear in saying what my own eyes have seen. Why should I be afraid to make known what this poor heart of mine experiences before an extraordinary presence? Should I feel guilty for what I have discovered during these years, and be afraid to announce it? Certainly not! On the contrary, I feel quite fortunate. Necessitas enim mihi incumbit: it is not possible to resist the impulse of Truth, and woe to me if I should remain silent!

I write this book dedicating it above all to the Church preciously because I could not let pass, without pointing out to Her who is my Mother, a piece of news which can no longer remain unknown, hidden by indifference, fear, or by general confusion. This work is an undertaking which has made use of me, I would say, only as hired manual labour: I consider its contents the work of Another. It has been written above all for my bishop, Pope; and then for all my fellow bretheren, for my superiors, and for all those who throughout the centuries try to work in the services of, and in the search for, Truth.

Contrary to what those friends of mine fear, I hope - and my heart is certain of it - that these reflections will sound like a call and a warning for a greater spiritual re-awakening.

This era - the era of Sathya, the era of truth - is, in my opinion, a unique moment, which will change the historical and religious order of nations. Certainly the most extraordinary characteristics of this study, in an age in which there is so much talk about sects and religious factions, is that in all the things I have discovered these years, I have found nothing which would prompt an aversion to our religion, nothing which would obstruct our faith. On the contrary! Everything I have meditated on has brought me that much closer to the mysteries I had been celebrating, often without knowing them thoroughly. And it is precisely to Sathya Sai Baba that I owe the renewal of my life as a priest!

In short, my hope is this: that the same thing might happen for many of my fellow bretheren, whom I have found tired, strained and disappointed.

I am grateful to all those who have offered me precious suggestions, in particular to Professor Pierantonio Di Coste, who encouraged and supported the drafting of this book.

I place this book at the feet of Him who inspired it - the only begotten son of yesterday, of today, and of always, the immutable Truth - in the hope that this fruit which He alone has the right to gather will be pleasing to Him and that He will accept it as an offering for His greater glory.

November 23, 1990

Don Mario Mazzoleni

The author would now like to narrate some of the incidents from the book :

Forgetting that I was sick, I rushed to a travel agency to book a flight to India. Final destination; Puttaparthi, the place where even now Sai Baba spends most of the year.

If what I had understood was true, I could not afford to reach the end of my life without having seen at least in the flesh. 'Him who called Himself' the mother and father of the whole human race.

The best thing to do, after discovering Sai Baba, is to study Him. Nothing in my life has given me as much joy and filled me with so much bliss as studying this person. This in itself is extraordinary. When in school I was forced to study such personages as Napoleon, Cavour, Mazzini, the emperors of ancient Rome, or the Popes throughout history. All I got out of it was an overwhelming boredom and a fervent desire for the end of class. But when I devote myself to the study of Sai Baba, His work, and His teaching, I never get tired of it, even when studying things that I already know (or think I know). In fact I always benefit from it: it is always uplifting and refreshing.

For me, to study Sai Baba meant, first of all to see Him, then to investigate His activities and third to understand His thought, His message. Although I expected to take these steps one at a time, I soon discovered that they are not separable. Sai Baba began to be a message from the moment I first saw Him. Because of this, someone who sees Him has already an enormous gift. I don't say this rhetorically, because the things you understand upon meeting Him may be enough to revolutionize your life, but they still are only an infinitesimal part of what you did not understand at that time and will gradually discover in the course of subsequent events.

Just as in the case of Jesus, His identification as the Messiah did not come simply from His declarations, but mostly from His work of salvation. In the same way Sai Baba does not worry about making everybody know who He is right away, but He works in the hearts of men, redeeming them.

In the same way there are many people who charge Sai Baba with indifference to the sorrow that weighs upon the world, and they ask themselves, "If He is so powerful, why doesn't He eliminate all suffering there is in this world?"  These people would like to change the mission of the divine incarnation. Jesus Christ did not change the sorrowful state of the world either, neither in His own time, nor afterwards. Everything that had to happen: bloody revolutions, wars, destruction, prosecutions, poverty, epidemics, etc., it all happened to schedule.

Even at His birth all the children under two years of age were slaughtered, by the insane command of a criminal king who was afraid he would loose his kingdom. The same kind of thing had already happened at the time of Krishna: Kamsa had all his sister's children killed, because she had been told that her eighth son would suppress - his wicked uncle.

It is never the task of the Redeemer to resolve human errors with a magic wand. Doing so would ensure that the errors would continue to be committed. It is not the mission of an elementary school teacher or of a parent to do the student's home work. If that were to happen laziness would triumph, diplomas would be given unjustly and degrees would soon prove deleterious to the whole society. No one amongst us would willingly go to a doctor who had received his certificate by buying all his degrees: The project to perfect society is based on understanding one's own errors and on the efforts we make to avoid them.

Don Mario was given an appointment with the Bishop on 16^th March, 1992, to have a dialogue with him. In the end of the conversation Mario told Bishop, "I would like to tell you (and I meant in the plural) one last thing, before we end this conversation; this conversation which demonstrates how that divides is always how the truth is interpreted, not the truth itself, which is pure. Why don't you take into consideration the fact that many people who have gone to Sai Baba have felt an impulse to renew their own Catholic religions faith, which is what Sai Baba himself  suggests.

Bishop : "I will make a comparison which, of course, is perhaps inappropriate for your position: even an assassin can be the instrument of salvation for someone. This does not make him any less an assassin."

The Bishop of Bergamo has informed the Vicariate of Rome, in a note of December 17,1991, that the writings, the public declarations and the - to say the least - disconcerting ideas upheld by the Priest Don Mario Mazzoleni in regard to the Indian teacher Sai Baba, whose convinced follower he declares himself to be, excite significant astonishment and scandal among the faithful;

The Priest, on November 23, 1990, dedicated the book entitled 'A Catholic Priest Meets Sai Baba' to the Catholic Church, a book which, though it begins with the praiseworthy intent of seeking the action of the spirit of God in every man and in every religious experience, ends up disowing the truths of the Catholic faith;

An attentive reading of the book reveals that the author has lost his Catholic faith in the holy trinity and in Christ as the only saviour, and, specially in the letters addressed to a friend (pp. 210-213 & 216-217), the unicity of Christ the saviour is expressly denied;

The assertions more ever that accept Sai Baba's claim to be a divine incarnation, that defends his works, miracles, sayings, doctrines, are grave affirmation against the faith;

The public declarations of  Don Mario Mazzoleni have caused confusion and scandal because of the fact that they come from a priest who continues to exercise his ministry in the name of the Catholic Church;

Since the good faith of the writer shows clearly from the tenor of the book's dedication, it is all the more necessary to call the priest back from error with an urgent request to cease causing scandal and to return to the doctrine of the Church.

 INVITES

The Priest Mario Mazzoleni to retreat from his heritical doctrinal positions, to cease causing scandal and to explicitly retract his error within the suitable time of 3 months; with the warning that if the retraction is not forthcoming the cardinal will have to proceed to declare excommunication latae sententiae (in the broad sense) for heresay according to Canon Law 1364, and subsequently to bar the priest from the exercise of the power of his office, until he returns to the Catholic doctrine.

He further invites the same priest to a personal interview on the subject, in his office at the Vicariate of Rome on the day June 3, 1992 at 10 a.m. or else on June 6, 1992 at 12 noon.

Camillo Card Ruini

Vicar General

Don Mario Mazzoleni replies:

Most revered Eminence,

In the present letter, I intend to entrust to writing what perhaps will come out less clearly in our meeting.

First of all I would like to express my gratitude for the attention that has been bestowed on me, and for allowing me to clarify in person the reasons for what I have done. One might say that I was anxiously awaiting this call, because regardless of the decisions that my superiors may make in my case, I wish to communicate to them an experience which continues to leave a beneficial mark in every day life.

Sri Sathya Sai Baba's message is based on an unlimited ecumenism, where ecumenism does not mean the suppression of the different religions in order to make one chaotic hodge-podge religion, but rather the constant search for the points that different religions have in common. The goal of this search, as the greatest Master says, that there be only one religion, the religion of love.

When one studies Sai Baba's teachings, as I have been doing for 12 years, one constantly sees that his goal is not to find another religion, but rather to elevate the level of human consciousness. He does this by directing everyone who comes to him toward a life full of truth, righteousness, peace, love and non-violence. He tells the devotees who come to his Ashram to put into practice intensely the fundamental principles of their respective religions. Often the people who have turned to him are not practicing any religion, or else they have strayed away from their own church. The real miracle that I see constantly repeated, is the desire those people experience is to return to practicing their faith.

I beg you, Eminence,  let us not shut the door on these people: they are living rather through  a delicate moment, and for our Church it would surely be a gesture of noble outreachy, as well as practical evangelism, to include them in our fold. Sai Baba does not want new churches, He wants to fill the ones that already exist.

I know that the Church is seriously worried about the formation of new sects. But I can unconditionally  guarantee that Sai Baba has given clear directives that new religious communities should not be created in oppositions to the official ones. If groups of devotees gather in centres, this is to be only in order to carry out charitable works and to study sacred scriptures. Let me point out that Hare Krishna or Jehovah's Witness or the Seventh Day Adventist will never set foot in a Catholic church to participate in Sunday worship, but I assure you that there are many devotees of Sai Baba who are praying in our Parish churches with renewed fervour, and that they take communion with a mystical zeal rarely found among normal Christians. Sai Baba's devotees gather once a week in order to pray and sing, but their worship is directed towards the same God that is worshipped in the Churches.

I am acquainted with all the Sathya Sai Baba centres in Italy. Many times I have exhorted there members to simplify their exterior rituals, which derive from their sympathy for the exotic world of India, and to ask their parish priests for permission to meet in the parish church to pray and sing the praises of the Lord. Unfortunately, misunderstandings and prejudices keep them away, nevertheless there are now many priests who contact me in order to find out more about Sai Baba and his teachings. In these last months I have received innumerable letters of appreciations, most of them from Catholics. The dissenting voices (which as always, are the noisiest) make up a tiny minority.

What grieves me most in this whole experience that I am going through, is to see the extreme superficiality with which Sai Baba and his message are being addressed by the Church. Meanwhile millions of people of every nation, race and religion are continually overwhelmed by his astounding greatness, and I see the most erudite and intellectual people surrender one after the other to what they have seen with their eyes and felt in their hearts.

Eminence, I do not want to get involved in defending the theological positions I have expressed in my book. I realise that they are open to discussion, and that they may be "disconcerting". Believe me, it was not at all my intention to create scandal. If this has happened, it is due to my ingenious zeal, I shall try to make amends. I promise that if I am allowed to continue my ministry as a priest I shall hold no more public lectures, nor will I give  interviews to the media about Sai Baba. In all these years I have never contaminated my ministry with any theories foreign to our doctrine.

Given that the only thing that really matters to me is that our church come to know Sai Baba in a serious way, without divisions, I declare myself available to take part in any committee that might be set up to study Sai Baba thoroughly. I am willing also to take part in any trips to visit Him, as long as they are undertaken with a scientific attitude without prejudices. It may be useful to say that I am in contact with doctors, physicists and scientists who have been studying the Sai Baba "phenomenon" for years.

Whatever measures are taken in my regard, I declare that I shall always be happy to serve the Church in any other way through consultations or studies, because I shall always feel that I am united with Her.

These words wounded me more than the threat of excommunication.

Don Mario further expresses, "As the author of the book in question, I reaffirm that I have not lost my Catholic faith. On the contrary, after my encounter with the great 'Indian Master' Sri Sathya Sai Baba, I feel that I live it with greater intensity, in a spirit of real communion with all other religions. These all share the one goal of reaching the same God, who transcends all changing names and forms.

Between the two alternatives I am offered, either being exiled from the institution of Church, or else being exiled from my conscience, I cannot and will not select the latter. Institutions do not accompany anyone beyond the grave. While the only reality that one can present to God is one's conscience. The Lord who 'examines the heart' is our judge: if in my case I have committed or am about to commit an error (by refusing to retreat), I beg His forgiveness and the light to rectify it; if I am acting in accordance with truth, may He forgive those who condemn me".

On Thursday September 24, 1992 the fateful letter arrived. This time it was fully formal decree of excommunication.

The final words of Don Mario Mazzoleni :-

"Here we have come to the end of my history as a priest. This is the chapter of my life which will now be filed away. I felt that I owed this explanation to the reader, even though the affair is of no longer of any concern to me: to be suspended from certain ceremonies, said to be divine, certainly does not preclude access to the Divine. I can no longer go to Mass, no longer lose myself in the warm atmosphere of a midnight Mass, to be moved by the sweetness of Christmas Carols, but I can always speak heart-to-heart with the Lord, pray to Him, love Him, meet Him. Everyone can, because of this, even 'atheists' know how to pray. This is the real consolation, which no one will ever be able to take from me; there is not a single person in the whole world who can pry you away from God.

To belong to a religious institutions does not automatically mean that one belongs to God. To be in harmony with the Divine, one must respect the conscience of every person and listen to one's own. At that point one can say: if God is with us who shall be against us? "Why fear when I am here?"

(Entire matter has been taken from the book 'A Catholic Priest Meets Sai Baba' by Don Mario Mazzoleni).

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