This image is shamelessly pinched from this post at What Does The Prayer Really Say? Go there and read all about it. Fr. Z. was an eyewitness of "Family Day," a lay-organized rally in favor of the traditional family. Organizers were hoping for 100,000 people. They got at least 1 million (and perhaps 1.7 million).
He describes what he saw at the counter-demonstration. He has more here. Including the contrasting remarks of Silvio Berlusconi and Romano Prodi on the event. Berlusconi wasn't going to attend, but decided to after all when he saw an anti-Catholic cartoon in the communist paper. Which led him to remark, among other thingsThe importance of this event is not merely that when left to their own devices the Italian people will support traditional values in great numbers, giving the lie to the script presented by the intellectuals in the press. It also means in concrete terms that the traditional values laity can organize and achieve results.
On the other hand, at P.za Navona was the "counter-demonstration" manifestly in favor of same sex marriages and civil unions etc. What it really was about was hatred of the Catholic Church.
In these recent times there is an attack on the freedom of the Church to express its own convictions. There comes to my mind what happened in the Communist countries, the Church of silence that could speak only within the ambit of its own buildings.
