CLOSE-UP
That Material Divine that Fascinates Me
We asked the editor of the Italian daily Il Foglio for a reaction
to Fr Giussani’s
article in Panorama. Here’s what he wrote: “The esteem for the human
that Fr Giussani attributes to the Pope is the keystone.”
edited by Luigi Amicone
He once told us, “I would like to reach the end of the homily near a semblance
of the truth. An impossible venture, as you see. So it’s a worthy one.”
It’s not a paradox. It’s the force of Giuliano Ferrara, a sceptic
full of non-sceptical questions. After all, doesn’t reasonable mean subordinating
reason to experience? This is why Ferrara is not contradictory in his systematic “out-ing”–for
example, “I’ve broken with the community” (his original one,
the communists) “out of love for the truth.” His newspaper is an
enterprise whose originality lies in its ironic and formidable inclination to
play the watchman over facts. John Paul II is one of those facts (the “cyclopean” facts
as Ferrara sees them) that Il Foglio considers with esteem and admiration quite
remarkable for a daily that can be accused of everything, except of not being
amongst the most secularist on the scene of Italian journalism.
We were passing through Rome, and since we’re fond of each other, I went
to say “Hello.” When we met, he had just opened up shop on Lungotevere
Raffaello Sanzio. I had in mind an article of his published by Avvenire, another
Italian daily, in their special edition for the Pope’s Silver Jubilee,
on page 70, rightly assigned to the section “out of pattern.” I quote
here the conclusion: “But the Church laughs benevolently at our incapacity
to name that which lasts, c’est la faute à Voltaire, and, all the
same, this laughing Pope shares this smile with us. It could be because I was
born in Rome, but a world without this Church, bereft of her permanent Jubilee,
of her rigors, of her deep and unfathomable political involvement, would seem
to me transparent and empty. Under the lash of John Paul II those who are bold
enough to take the risk of adventure or the pleasure of free-thinking feel safer,
with him and against him.” “I saw what you wrote for Avvenire, Giuliano;
have you seen Panorama?” “Not yet,” he says, already dialing
an internal number of his editorial office. “Can you bring me Panorama?” There
on the table is the Pope’s handsome face, exploding with a smile between
the red of his cloak and the gold background. The weekend passes before we talk
about it again. Then, early one morning, the editor of Il Foglio lets us know
he has a note for us and so as not to waste time he’ll send it by e-mail.
That’s fine, we’re waiting for it. Then we send it on to Traces.
Here it is.
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“Fr Luigi Giussani writes to the Pope and tells us about his Pope: He’s
a figure who is atemporal as regards his vicarious functions; modern as regards
his thought, work and command of the Church; also an intellectual figure who
doesn’t discuss with the filaments of “weak thought” but tackles
courageously the powerful event of the French Revolution. Man as lord of the
world is a humanistic mistake, but in Fr Giussani’s words addressed to
John Paul II, he is something else: he is history and human condition looked
at from the divine angle. A material divine, a constitutional divine that announces
the fulfillment or the ‘search for happiness’ contained in the first
amendment to an eighteenth-century Constitution, but not the French one. The
esteem for the human that Fr Giussani attributes to the Pope is the keystone
of Wojtyla’s longevity, destined to prosper far beyond his suffering and
old age, far beyond the final date of his pontificate.”
Giuliano Ferrara