Carl Anderson

History in the Re-Making
A friendship among CL friends and priests and Knights of Columbus’ Carl Anderson has blossomed into a continuing collaboration in the U.S. and at the August cultural Meeting in Rimini, where Mr. Anderson will again participate–a tangible sign of the universal unity of the Church.

by Fr. Peter John Cameron, O.P.

Earlier this year, over 200 people gathered in the basement of Saint Mary’s Church in New Haven, CT, to focus on the 2008 Synod of Bishops on the Word of God. In that very basement, some 127 years earlier, the Venerable Michael J. McGivney founded the Knights of Columbus—a society reaching out to oppressed immigrant Catholics. The first speaker was the Supreme Knight of that organization, Mr. Carl A. Anderson. The second speaker was Fr. Julián Carrón, leader of Communion and Liberation.
The event, organized by the Connecticut CL group, was entitled, “The Word’s Face: The Word of God in the Life and Mission of Every Believer.” The Synodal Fathers emphasized this theme in the Message to the People of God that they issued on October 24th: “The eternal and divine Word enters time and takes on a human face. Words without a face are not perfect; they do not fully complete the encounter.” This moved us to ask: What does this claim mean concretely for our lives?
Mr. Anderson synthesized the Vatican II document on divine revelation, Dei Verbum. He then spoke about “the problem of pervading secularism” that “makes a distinctively Christian way of life impossible.” Mr. Anderson underscored Pope Benedict’s efforts at recovering a Christian way of thinking by turning to Sacred Scripture to rescue key concepts from secularism. He highlighted a major point in Pope Benedict’s book Jesus of Nazareth: the importance for Christians to develop an intimate friendship with Jesus Christ on which everything depends. He indicated that the intention of the Synod was to encourage believers to draw closer to the Lord through Sacred Scripture. 
Fr. Carrón began by stating that hungering to hear God’s Word is what constitutes the human being. The term “Word of God” cannot be reduced to the Bible for it means the Event of Jesus Christ Himself made flesh. The Word of God transcends Sacred Scripture, even if Sacred Scripture contains the Word in a truly unique way. Christian revelation implies the primacy of God’s initiative which calls man to share His own life. The way that the Word of God continues as an event in the flesh is through the life of the Church, to the point that we can exclaim, “What happened to the Apostles is happening to us!”                 
The speakers then moved on to suggest some steps for incorporating these insights into daily life. Fr. Carrón used the analogy of a love poem—without the experience of falling in love, it is impossible to understand the real meaning of a love poem. The same is true in our desire to enter into the Bible. And we have this experience in the relationship with something real: the Church. The only way of communicating Christianity is through attraction—a new humanity makes us want to be human.
Mr. Anderson observed that the Mystery is much greater than can be comprehended, but one can open himself to it through the witness of other Christians. Entering Sacred Scripture must start within the context of witnesses—family, friends, community. He then demonstrated this by giving his own extemporaneous recount of the story of Abraham sacrificing his son Isaac (Gen 22:1-14). Speaking as a husband and a father, with his own son Carl, Jr., in the front row, Mr. Anderson’s retelling of the narrative made it sound brand new.                  
That night, once again, something beautiful was born in that historic basement, which will grow this summer in Rimini and into the future.