CULTURE

Religious Sense in the City of Lights

More than 300 people attended the presentation of The Religious Sense in the Amphithéâtre Guizot at the Sorbonne. At the speakers’ table were Cardinal Poupard, the poet Jean-Pierre Lemaire, and Professor Feliciani from the Università Cattolica in Milan. “The course traveled by Giussani gives a reasonable answer to a group of existential questions that open toward wonder"

BY RICCARDO PIOL

There was a middle-aged woman who arrived out-of-breath because, a few minutes earlier while she was in her car, she had heard someone on the radio talking about a book presentation that would take place that same evening. The topic of the meeting interested her; the person presenting it on the radio had persuaded her. There was also a boy about 18 or 20 years old who had been invited a few hours earlier after evening Mass in Notre Dame Cathedral. He had said, “I’ve already heard about that lecture.” The title of the book being presented, along with the casual meeting in the cathedral, had made him decide to attend. There were university students, co-workers, and people who had received invitations out in front of their parish churches or from friends met in the days before. There were upwards of 300 people present, from all over the city and elsewhere. At 8 pm on March 11th, they were waiting in the Cour d’Honneur of the University of Paris at the Sorbonne, in the heart of Paris’ Latin Quarter, for the presentation of the French edition of The Religious Sense to begin. As soon as the doors of the Amphithéâtre Guizot opened, they took their seats in the chairs or on the steps, while many were left standing at the back of the hall. Crowded together, they awaited the beginning of the meeting.

Provocation
Why is organizing a “conférence” on the topic, “Religious sense, religion, and culture: a need of human reason,” in the city that in some ways gave birth to modern reason, the Reason of the Enlightenment, a sign of courage? To say that the religious sense is a need of human reason might sound like a provocation for someone living in a country in which, for centuries, people have thought that faith and reason do not get along with each other, that if you have the former you do not use the latter, and if you really want to use the latter, it would be better not to pay attention to the former. And yet, there were upwards of 300 people contradicting this axiom, certainly very interested in the talks given by Cardinal Poupard, French by birth but by now Roman by adoption, and today President of the Pontifical Council for Culture; Jean-Pierre Lemaire, a well-known poet in France; and Dr Giorgio Feliciani, professor at the Università Cattolica in Milan who knows and is known at the Sorbonne, where he has held courses and seminars for a number of years in the Faculty of Law. Moderator of the event was Silvio Guerra, an Italian teacher in a Paris high school. He had wanted this event to take place at all costs, hoping–or maybe knowing–that it would turn out to be something more than a mere “présentation du livre.”

Full reason
The first to speak was Lemaire, who put his finger directly on the main question: “This book speaks of a reasonable faith,” a demanding statement, especially if the one making it is a man of culture–as the newspapers would say–who, in a simple way, drew a series of strong assertions out of his experience and not out of his thoughts: “Reading The Religious Sense was like breathing.” And again: “This books speaks of a full reason,”and, “I was struck by the discovery that the heart’s needs are a valid criterion for approaching reality,” and once again, “This book documents a passion for reality” that emerges insistently, page after page, because–as Fr Giussani writes–“the only condition for being always and truly religious is always living reality intensely.”
Thus there is realism, and then reasonableness and morality in knowing. Retracing the three premises of the book, Dr Feliciani accompanied the 300 people at the Sorbonne on a discovery of the most explosive content, of the challenge Giussani throws out to anyone who takes The Religious Sense in hand. Quoting passages from the early chapters, he used words like experience, morality, faith, and reason in a new way, giving a talk that in no way resembled a formal presentation, but was rather the testimony of someone who has discovered and encountered the humanity of what is written in the book.

A methodical course
The Religious Sense is indeed a book, as Cardinal Poupard said, that accompanies today’s man on the new or renewed adventure of faith. And inviting people to read it means inviting them to let themselves be amazed by a work “determined by the passion for reality, the prizing of all of reason, the love of truth.” “The course taken by Giussani is methodical without being constricting. He does not give a rational solution to a theoretical problem, but gives a reasonable answer to a group of existential questions that open toward wonder.” This is a wonder that invades the days of those who, living the hint of the need for a total meaning, reach the point of begging that precisely that meaning make itself known. And when this happens, “if the hypothesis of the revelation presents itself, who would reasonably refuse to examine it, when the light that shines forth immediately transforms a group of panes of glass into a multi-colored window?” How can one refuse an invitation like that? Those attending this presentation must have wondered that too. After the meeting was over, many of them stopped to discuss it in the university courtyard; they had taken part in something different. They talked with each other a long time, despite the fact that it was almost ten o’clock at night. And they made dates, exchanged addresses, arranged to meet again, because something new had begun.