Fr. Giussani

“A More Heartfelt Affection”
Three years after the death of Fr. Giussani, Cardinal Angelo Scola tells of a bond more alive than ever, because Giussani goes on moving our hearts and giving us passion for reality, beginning from an event, and following a method

edited by Roberto Fontolan

Years of friendship, of life side-by-side… Then, Angelo Scola, among the first group of GS and for a long time among Fr. Giussani’s closest collaborators, followed the road that the Lord marked out for him through the Pope’s call, becoming Bishop of Grosseto, then Rector of Rome’s Lateran University. Since 2002, he has been Patriarch of Venice and was created Cardinal in 2003. He has never let slip his relationship with the charism he met at school. Now, three years after the death of CL’s founder, out of great friendship with Traces he has agreed to speak of that charism, of his personal relationship with Fr. Giussani, and of how the figure and the method of “Fr. Gius” go on provoking his present life.

Three years after his death, how do you recall, how do you think of Fr. Giussani, you who were so near to him and so fond of him?
Just as it happens for members of my family, it comes spontaneously for me to keep up an almost daily relationship with people who are dear who have gone before us to the other side. In this way, the relationship with Fr. Giussani is progressively maturing. As it was always in my life, it is a very demanding relationship that forces me to question myself, only now the apparent silence of his person speaks in the dimension of a more heartfelt affection.

Fr. Giussani wrote to Pope John Paul II: “I did not intend to found anything.” But the CL Movement is present in over 80 countries and his most famous book, The Religious Sense, has been translated into 19 languages (most recently in Japanese). How can this be explained?
It is tied up with the dynamism of the Church’s development and growth. It is really the Holy Spirit who surprisingly arouses the charisms. And when a charism has an authentic Catholic strength, it draws people spontaneously to belong because it is persuasive. This is the case with Fr. Giussani. This is why his charism is spreading so widely. Now it is up to the individual and the communitarian responsibility of those who by grace participate in it to keep it alive.

What is new in his Christian proposal? What struck you when you met him?
I was silently moving away from a convinced practice of Christian life because I did not see the link between the Christ event and reality. And reality, in its cultural and political dimensions, in interpersonal relationships, without Christ, seemed to me more imperative than a mechanical and routine adhesion to the Church. Fr. Giussani made me see that Jesus has to do with all aspects of humanity–“human existence and historical existence,” he used to say with a wonderful expression–and, moreover, it throws you more and more deeply into reality every day.

An essential part of this proposal is the method, the method of Christian experience. How would you describe it?
The method Fr. Giussani proposed is to use the very same method proposed by Jesus Himself. Jesus said, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there among them,” and “I will be with you all days till the end of the world.” When He gathered His friends at the Last Supper and showed them the Catholic genius–that is, the anticipation, in the Eucharist, of the event of Christ, dead and risen for the sake of all men of all time–He said, “Do this in memory of me.” The method Fr. Giussani proposed, as I see it, is based on two pillars: communion as the a priori of existence and as the locus of the event of freedom, because only in communion received as a gift of the Spirit–so relationships and circumstances that are given to me are for my good–can freedom be truly freed and the “I” entrust itself totally to God and give itself to the brothers.

His figure as an educator, that way he had of relating with young people…
Education is an art and Fr. Giussani was a genius in this art. However, I am more and more averse to making Fr. Giussani’s educative power coincide only with his capacity to relate to young people. It is clear that an educator’s capacity is seen in his ability to convince those who are coming into the critical age. All the same, Fr. Giussani was an all-round educator for all generations. His pedagogical art was that of proposing the Christ event in his own life, in his own person–through his witness, an ongoing companionship rooted in a Christian doctrine soundly drawn from the great tradition, but extraordinarily enlivened by his ability to ask all the questions that were aroused in him by any circumstance or relationship–involving himself directly with what he proposed, and calling all those whom he met to share his own life and that of his friends. The great enemy of education is the inability to risk. This inability takes root in all those who are objectively uncertain. It is not a question of fragility or contradiction, but the incapacity to let oneself be questioned by everything–above all, by the unforeseen. In this sense, education is the opposite of a technique. This degrades Christianity, takes away its fascination, and makes it boring. What is impressive in my relationship with Giussani is that, many times, I began to listen to him skeptically, sad and far away, and then every time I was set moving again in my heart and in my reason.

Again, regarding education: it is certainly one of the great themes brought to light by Fr. Giussani’s many years of dedication–a theme that in recent years very many people, both non-believers and Catholics, have acknowledged as a priority. What is so attractive in Fr. Giussani’s idea of education?
His capacity to involve himself personally not so as to affirm his own person, but his belonging to Christ who–not only in words–is the way to the Truth and the Life. Giussani was able to bring this dramatically close to the freedom of those whom he met. From this point of view, it is true that today the theme of education is acknowledged as a priority, but it doesn’t seem to me that Giussani’s idea of education contained in his masterpiece, The Risk of Education, has been taken into consideration by many of those dealing with education, even in Catholic circles. I think we are still a long way from this. It is enough to see how little, in our country, the word freedom, understood in its true sense, is linked with the word education.

Fr. Giussani and his life of obedience in the Church: there has been incomprehension, especially in the past, but among the most winning facts emerges his closeness to John Paul II and to Cardinal Ratzinger, who, as Pope, in the audience on March 24th last year, called him “a true friend”…
From this point of view, Giussani had the experience that is often that of “founders” in the Church. The Church is a great mother; it is like a solid, old tree whose trunk is covered with cuts and wounds, but which in springtime puts out new buds and fresh leaves. Certainly, what Giussani proposed was like a fresh leaf that went on to become a leafy branch on the great trunk that is the Church. In him, obedience to authority was unshakable, learned on his mother’s knee and in his parish, corroborated by the formidable adventure of the seminary at Venegono, and consolidated in many trials. For sure, his was a free obedience: he spoke clearly; he had a relationship of witness with ecclesiastical authority, not a political one. For this reason, many times he was not understood and had to suffer. He was ahead of his time when, in the 1950s, he made the clamorous decision to leave a prestigious post as lecturer in Theology in the Faculty of Milan, in order to devote himself to young people. He saw that Catholics–who seemed to be the vast majority in the country–were withdrawing themselves from the real life of human society. For this reason, he prophetically asked to leave his post and continued his journey in a hard-fought confrontation with Monsignor Pignedoli and Giovanni Colombo, then with Montini, who was later to become Pope Paul VI. Later, he had the great gift of friendship with and extraordinary recognition by John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger. I had the opportunity to be present at many of Giussani’s meetings with these great personalities. I was always surprised by the great freedom and extraordinary humility with which he asked questions, listened to the answers, raised objections, asked for direction, and presented bold solutions.

In contrast with those who saw in Fr. Giussani a “traditionalist” critique of modernity, many of his readers and many scholars point out the absolute modernity of his thought, his surprising capacity to intercept the unease and bewilderment of contemporary man. You are very much given to reflection on the modern world: how do you see this aspect?
I dedicated a book to this aspect of Fr. Giussani’s life and, not by chance, I called it A Generative Thought because, in the case of geniuses, they can never be reduced to a scheme. Their thought can never be “decomposed;” they are, in a sense, like a prime number. Fr. Giussani’s knowledge was in no way first of all the outcome of competence gained by reading books, even though until the age of fifty he read an extraordinary number, and in this field he was really ahead of his time (it is enough to think of his studies on Orthodoxy and American Protestantism as a young man, his sensitivity to new developments in fundamental theology, and his ability to use poetry, literature, theater, and art in the elaboration of the intellectus fidei). All the same, his thought can really be considered a systematic, organic and critical reflection on man’s elementary experience, invested with the integral experience of faith. That is why I speak of “generative thought,” that is to say, a thought that springs from its own source, that breaks all “school” schemes. It is striking on reading Giussani to see how, even where he lacks direct knowledge of certain works by some contemporary authors (I am thinking for example of Heidegger, Husserl, etc.), he often, through a way all his own, reaches even bolder conclusions than theirs. Then, though the traces of his neo-scholastic formation are evident, he overtakes this on all quarters and is able to bring out an original vision. His is, as I said, a generative thought, very up to date and, for this reason, I believe, destined to last, as confirmed by the fact that his main writings are continually being translated, even into languages once considered inaccessible to Western thought.

The inheritance Fr. Giussani passed on to the whole Movement and to his successor, Fr. Carrón, is certainly demanding. What makes his charism alive and present?
First and foremost, the Holy Spirit, then the fact of following him, being one with the charism itself, to the point of paying out of one’s own pocket through a witness ready for continual conversion. Then, co-essential to the charism is the gift of the institution. This asks of those who share in the charism to remain in faithful reference to the one who leads the Movement, just as the Movement itself must be to the life of the Church as a whole, in particular the Magisterium of the Pope and the bishops.