A cultural center conceived as opposition to other positions doesn’t interest us in the least. This is what makes us uneasy even with people who are friends.
Why can we say that we have no cultural problem? Because culture is inherent and coextensive to our experience, and our horizon and our source of culture is precisely this experience.
Our cultural problems are not solved by adding something that seems to be missing in our experience, but by learning what is already present. For the origin, the genesis of this something that is missing and we need to add to what we have already learned would be something else. This would create a division in our “I,” as happens with everyone, and the cultural product would be heterogeneous. There is a synthetic expression that is methodologically crucial: “What is not united from the start cannot be united later.” For example, it is an identical original form that permits unity in a plant; you graft something on to it, but this is not natural, it is a miracle.
My concern arises from the observation that a cultural position depends wholly on the existential subject that expresses itself in this operation.

1. The existential subject is defined by the content of his self-awareness, from the content of the self-awareness that the subject has.
The content of the awareness we have of ourselves, of our human subject (human subject and cultural subject are the same thing, because there can be no human subject that does not become explicit as a cultural subject), is a fact present in history, i.e. Christ.
“I came among you knowing nothing else but Christ and Christ crucified.” See 1 Corinthians, and Chapters 1, 2, 3 and 8 of Romans.
Today, everything is against this, both outside and inside the Church, as John Paul II said.
This subject is an exile in hostile territory and we are strangers even to our fellow Christians.

2. This subject must be aware of being in conflict with a reality that is hostile to what he is.
When you find yourself in hostile territory, you defend yourself. If you don’t, then it means that either you don’t know the environment or you are not aware of who you are.
This second fact is what proves the first thing I said–that the existential subject, i.e. the new subject of history, becomes fully aware of who he is (i.e., the existential subject becomes a historical subject) only if he becomes aware that the reality surrounding him is different and hostile. If you are lying on a feather bed and an enemy has put a sharp knife among the feathers, then you feel the knife through a hundred thousand feathers. In short, if you don’t know the meaning of yourself, then you are abstract and unrealistic.
This is what is lacking in much ecumenism today, in which everyone is in agreement, but only regarding the fight for the environment and pollution. We are not like this. The existential subject becomes a historical subject by becoming aware of the strangeness of the environment in which he is–for the Hebrew people this is exactly what happened; it began to make history when it began to distinguish itself from Pharaoh.

3. The content of self-awareness that creates the new subject as protagonist of history, and therefore resists, reinforces the judgment on reality and sees it as precious.
There is nothing that doesn’t interest us; there is nothing that we censure or eliminate, not even evil, because evil does not exist, since evil is not doing good.
To summarize the position of a subject before a reality that is conceived and lived as hostile, I borrow a phrase from St. Paul: “Everything cooperates for the good.” For those who know Christ, everything cooperates for the good. This is why we see nobody as an enemy.
This is not in contradiction with what we said in the second point, but it is paradoxical. The second point puts us in conflict with the dominant culture, whereas the third puts us in a friendly relationship with everything, with people, things and events (even death).

So, to summarize:
1. Culture is made of an existentially living subject, of a living self-awareness; it is an unmistakable identity.
2. The existential subject becomes a historical subject through the clash with a different kind of awareness.
3. The subject becomes missionary.

This is what gives rise to a center of affection as the organizing point of a cultural center.

(The Church’s Social Doctrine is the embrace of a system of things and dynamisms in the wider realities that are crucial for man. We are interested in social doctrine because the subject we are reinforces the judgment on reality and considers it totally precious.)

In conclusion, I would like to thank you for your commitment and urge you to go on because the experience of CL does not need cultural contributions, but needs to express the cultural depth that is inherent in its origin. Otherwise, the cultural contributions are born from something else. The criteria for judging the experience are, always and only, immanent in the experience itself.