Meeting Our Progress… A Goal, a Beginning and the Present Notes from a dialogue at the Meeting Board on May 3rd. Ideas for examining more closely the title of the 2004 edition by Alberto Savorana “Our progress does not consist in presuming we have reached our goal, but in continuously striving to achieve it.” The Meeting Board gathering held last May 3rd was dedicated to a dialogue on the Meeting title, emphasizing in particular the word “progress.” Here are some summary notes. A goal Evidently, you can speak of progress only in relation to a goal to reach. But you can go toward a goal with all the consciousness of not having arrived, if the road in some way includes the goal, because otherwise life would be endless unhappiness. This is why the page presenting the Meeting (published in Traces, Vol. 6, No. 1, January 2004) highlights the image of man as pilgrim, as viator, walking along the right road. But the goal that begins to realize itself in the steps of the walk is not man’s work. This means that in order to strive for the goal, you don’t first of all have to be righteous, “all set.” Precisely because we walk, sure of the truth, and this truth first of all judges us, we listen to anybody, we learn from everyone. This is the theme of Christian culture as Saint Paul speaks of it: “Weigh all things and keep what is valuable.” A beginning The possibility of progress toward a goal is established by a point of departure. Christianity is the announcement of this beginning, a fact that gives direction to history, that “begins” history, as Eliot describes in his Choruses from “the Rock.” Christianity as beginning and history thus disagrees with the contemporary nihilism that believes a beginning, a road, and a goal are impossible, reducing man’s walk to a meaningless wandering. The idea of history did not enter human consciousness with the Enlightenment, through a thought that imposed itself, but through an event that made itself present, and that gave rise to a journey that reaches us as “tradition,” a walk in which we are upheld by the force of a memory. The merit Fr Giussani’s The Religious Sense differentiates progress as future and “success” from progress as “merit.” In the latter sense, progress means the increase of that which exists. All modern ideologies have deceived man, asking him to sacrifice himself for a future progress–the magnificent and progressive destinies–that his descendents would enjoy fully. Christianity, instead, does not say this. It introduces the concept of merit, according to which, yes, you sacrifice your life, but for something greater so that you fulfil and realize your life now. For that matter, what is the ultimate sign of the authenticity of the Church? You know a tree by its fruit; only the Christian experience fulfils that for which man is made. History itself documents the reason of Christ’s victory in this world. Progress is the incrementation of a positivity, and not the filling of a void, of a lack. All of modernity has wagered on the bet that scientific progress and technology would eliminate ignorance, injustice, and illness, and then man would be happy. But precisely the historical consequences of this presumptuousness cast doubt on the very idea of progress. After the war, to those who imagined a society on the threshold of complete dominion of human activity, Churchill responded, “I hope I’ll be dead by then.” Hope History is played out in a present happening, and not in a utopian dream. Thus, the Meeting title exalts the Christian virtue of hope, which enables freedom and the possibility of meeting with everyone, an openness that appreciates and enhances every experience. Saint Paul affirms that he runs to win something that has already won him. Progress is born as the expression of gladness for something that is. Aware of evil Christianity is the only experience that, in speaking of progress, keeps in mind evil, seeing the possibility of evil, while all the other ideas of progress must either censure or eliminate it, or do not foresee it. I, who am capable of evil, precisely I, have already been grasped by a positive factor that enables me to walk from hope to hope, as a “striving toward.” The beginning of the end In this different conception of progress, the end is at the beginning. The possibility of walking toward the goal exists because the end is at the beginning of the walk. For this reason, we do not shift the possibility of happiness to the future. For that matter, the cultural, social, and political situation shows evident signs of a regression you can see, and touch with your hand. Now, only if there is a present and living happening–the end as the continuous beginning–does one continue to work without despairing, precisely in the era in which progress as ideology is causing the implosion of the West, Europe, and the world.