close-up The All-Encompassing Christianity of Fr. Giussani On February 28th, at the presentation of the book, A Coffee in Company, at the Capranica Theater in Rome, the Italian Senate President remembered Giussani. “The Christian faith descends from an experience.” A few notes from his contribution by Marcello Pera This presentation of the book of Renato Farina’s interviews of Fr. Giussani occurs only a few days after his death. We still have in our hearts and eyes the funeral, the Milan Cathedral, and the square overflowing with people; the dignified pain, the crowd, mostly of young people, the lucid and rigorous homily of Cardinal Ratzinger, Fr. Carrón’s discourse, so rich, the applauses, and also the silences. In some way, today’s presentation continues that celebration. So you can understand my embarrassment today, as one sent to a function for which he feels unqualified. Unqualified institutionally, because the institution I head does not count here, and unqualified personally, because in terms of Fr. Giussani and his world, I am an “outsider.” I’ll move to the points I think I’ve learned from Farina’s Fr. Giussani. Faith and Mission This is the first point. Christian faith descends from an experience. It is an event, as Fr. Carrón reminded us in the Milan Cathedral, a happening, an encounter, and a revelation. It is a He who comes to meet us, who manifests Himself, and makes Himself known. A few important consequences follow from this. The first is that faith cannot be substituted by any reasoning, theory, or explanation. A fact is a fact: you perceive it; you acknowledge it. The second consequence is that if the faith is a fact, then the fact of the faith is stronger than any elaborated and accepted point of doctrine. The fact–God made man–is the intangible tradition, while doctrine is the reviewable elaboration of the fact. Fr. Giussani tells Farina, “What is Christianity? One: God became man, died and rose, and lives among us. Two: you cannot be quiet about this event; you have to announce it. It’s so simple: Christians have been chosen for this, for mission” (p. 124). Intransigence and courage The second point is connected to this concept of mission, a simple concept, as Fr. Giussani says, but which in recent times had become timid and controversial in some sectors of the Catholic Church herself. This is what it is. Having the Christian faith, being Christians, means many things at once: sensing a presence, witnessing to it, preaching its message, committing yourself to realizing it. From this point of view as well, various consequences follow, and one in particular: that the life of the Church must be marked by faithfulness to tradition. Therefore, if, in the name of tradition, you judge that this or that historical position of the Church or her hierarchy are an accommodation, or a negotiated compromise, or a distancing from tradition, then you have to be intransigent. I believe that this intransigence, this courage, is what so often was defined and criticized as fundamentalism in Fr. Giussani and Communion and Liberation. I don’t think this accusation is justified. Was Fr. Giussani fundamentalist and rigid in preaching tradition, or was the post-Council Church’s doctrine and practice accommodating when they preached dialogue with modernity, but ended up sliding into dilution of the Christian faith to a merely cultural message? In this context, it’s useful to re-read the 1988 interview on “the secret faces of Peter,” perhaps the clearest and certainly the most dramatic one in the book. Here, Fr. Giussani speaks of the “disaster” and the “abyss” the Church was heading for ten years earlier, the choice “that led Catholic association-ism to take refuge in every kind of political leftism.” He speaks about faithfulness to tradition, the torments and disappointments of Paul VI, who “felt the destruction of the Catholic presence in society,” and finally the Pope’s invitation to move ahead. Giussani says, “When one is clearly aware of being faithful to the tradition one has been taught, and finds that the Magisterium of the Church, bit by bit as it evolves, underlines again the same things, and one isn’t conscious of ever contradicting it; then, for this man, what’s important is to act, and that’s enough–and to act courageously, also judging and accusing that which isn’t according to the living tradition” (pp. 106-7). This is Catholic fundamentalism only for those who hold Christianity isn’t faithfulness to Christ but adhesion to one of the many variants of the culture of liberation; that Christianity doesn’t mean salvation of all in the next kingdom, but emancipation in this world for a few elect, the poor, the disinherited, the weak, or maybe the working class, or the ranks of the needy. Fr. Giussani did not think this way, and opposed it. And for this he was considered fundamentalist, battled by the left wing lay progressives on the one hand, and unappreciated by the modernist Catholics, also of the left-wing, on the other. A strange destiny that, if you think of it, raises more doubts about the Church’s choices at the time than about the positions of Fr. Giussani. Christian commitment And this brings me to the third and last point of reflection that Farina’s book has given me, that of commitment. The Christian is committed in preaching, mission, and works. He is committed to being in society, not to bring society in this or that direction–social justice, peace, tolerance, etc.–but to shape it and move it in only one direction, that of Christ. If this is so, then one understands that Christianity, as Cardinal Ratzinger reminded us in the Milan Cathedral, isn’t precisely a culture, or even less a culture for the liberation of peoples from a social or historical status. It is an error–quoting Ratzinger again–“to transform Christianity into moralism, and moralism into politics, to substitute believing with doing.” For this reason, the Christian is an uncomfortable presence because, when he is authentic, he won’t let himself be regimented into some of the current cultural and political frameworks. For this reason, he is a cumbersome presence, because he demands, and won’t be satisfied with less. His goal is beyond, not here. It regards everyone, not the few.