Why the Church? in the world A Providential Response At the meetings to present Fr Giussani’s book, on the occasion of the fifty-year anniversary of CL, bishops, politicians, and intellectuals offered their testimonies about reading the School of Community text. Here are selections from some of their talks edited by Paola Ronconi Catania The task required of the entire Church, but also of a movement like Communion and Liberation, is to help all Christians–through a patient work of education–drink afresh of the awareness of what they are. Mary can help us extraordinarily, because there is a very deeply rooted feeling of relationship with her. […]If the Italian Church embraces the reality of this popular Catholicism, not as a burden but as a task, it can achieve its mission very well. The Pope says in Redemptoris missio: a new beginning. It is the new condition that enables Christianity to begin again. I believe that Fr Giussani provides words, methods, and guidance so that this missionary awareness of the Italian Church can find paths to realization. Archbishop Cataldo Naro, Archbishop of Monreale Madrid To my mind, this book is essential, fundamental, and vitally Catholic, first of all because of its vision and motivations. The vision of the Church that appears in the book is totally Catholic. […] And in the second place, it is so because it appeals to reason. The appeal to reason is not only Catholic, but it is certainly an appeal to reason that is proper to Catholicism. It does not negate the possibility of Revelation, but at the same time it recognizes the capacity and the value of reason in human beings. At times, I hear echoes of Chesterton, of Newman, and of Karl Adam. It’s very difficult not to place it in the line of those brilliant Catholic thinkers and theologians who, with notable effort, were able to bring Catholic theology closer to the man on the street and to common sense. There are realities of the faith that can be reached through common sense, if one uses it adequately. […] The book seems an extraordinarily interesting contribution for Catholics and non-Catholics alike, since its exposition is not boring at all, nor is it complicated; it does not get lost in aspects that could be secondary, and at the same time is very well articulated and balanced. If I had a Muslim friend who had never heard anyone talk about the reality of the Church, I would highly recommend this book to him. If the Orthodox Pope asked me, I’d say the same. César Vidal, writer and essayist, collaborator with El Mundo, Libertad Digital, and the Cope and Telecinco radio and television networks Piacenza I’ve always thought that one of the most important questions for the development of Christian thought, and also of lay and political thought in the West, is the discussion between grace and human autonomy, divine plan and man’s freedom. In Europe, this dialectic was the focus around which the debate between absolutism and democracy centered, and these theological discussions have been the nexus around which the European identity has been built. In the seventh century, Gregory the Great, working from his certainty about the gratuitousness of the unknowable plan of God, and from the conviction that God works out this design through the Church, in fact re-founded the Church. This book expresses an idea similar to that of Gregory the Great, a strong and very beautiful idea of the Church: the idea of Salvation as Mystery that flows in the real life of a Church that, in Christ’s company, carries on His work of redemption. The Church, made up of these imperfect and human saints who continue God’s work of redemption. […] I’ve always thought, in working as a politician, that strong convictions are a resource, and that nobody can set aside his own convictions, his own message, the certainty that is his to bring, just as no one can think of imposing it tout-court. Meeting people from CL, this fact is striking: you are people who carry a certainty but also a curiosity, a search for amazement and beauty even in the furthest positions. I hope this contribution can be contagious for other cultures as well; we need profound convictions but also openness to mutual comparison and learning from each other. Pier Luigi Bersani, Representative, Democrats of the Left Florence I think that Fr Giussani has been an instrument of the Holy Spirit, a new thing, a grace, that the Holy Spirit wanted to give the Church and today’s world. There are many other books on the theology of the Church that are very well done; there are intellectual and also spiritual personalities who are important for the Church, but who do not give rise to a movement, such a great flow of life, so overflowing, like that of Communion and Liberation, because, in fact, God wanted it so. […] I find myself very much in tune with the vision of the Church that Fr Giussani proposes in his volume: the Church, precisely as the prolongation in space and time of the event of Christ, as the visible presence of Christ– “I am with you always, even to the end of the world,” and I comment that you can see that He is with us till the end of the world. […] It’s not possible–and here again I find myself very much in tune with Fr Giussani–it’s impossible to believe in Christ simply on the basis of historical documents, on the basis of written gospels; it’s not possible to believe, to entrust your very life, totally, to a person who lived so long ago, from whom we’re two thousand years away. How can you totally hand over your own life to a figure from such a long time ago? You can give your life, you can fall in love with a person who is alive, who gives signs of life and who is present among us in our history, here. Christ gives signs of life and the Church is this great sign of His presence, and, I would say, within the Church, Communion and Liberation is certainly a very vivid light that contributes to increasing the Church’s credibility as the presence of Christ. […] The Word became flesh because Mary said, “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord, may it be done to me according to Thy word,” and you as well, like Mary, say this “Behold, here I am,” and thus you enable a new eruption of the presence of the Spirit of Christ in history. Thank you, thank you too. Cardinal Ennio Antonelli, Archbishop of Florence Vicenza For many believers who participate in the life of our parishes, the Church is seen as the community of disciples that continues the work done by Jesus. In reality, the Church continues Him really, and not only by imitation. The Christian fact is Christ dead, risen, and living today in history. The Church announces Him, celebrates Him, lives Him and concretely reveals His saving presence in history. The Church is His true body in flesh and blood and, for this reason, living and experiencing His mystery (in the Biblical sense, it means God’s action in concrete history), even today one can meet, love, acknowledge, and live Christ. To speak of the body in flesh and blood means that the Church-community is not a group founded for sociological or cultural reasons, or for private interests, but is the historical event of Christ, dead and risen, that continues. […] We must acknowledge that often Christians are all too far from the consciousness of this authentic source and spring of their value, of the fact that in every experience of community, united with the Apostles, there is the very value of the total Church, inasmuch as it expresses its profound and unified reality that the Lord makes emerge in different experiences. Bishop Cesare Nosiglia, Bishop of Vicenza Baveno The itinerary that Fr Giussani faces in these three volumes is totally dedicated to the foundational questions. For this reason, I believe that it would be good for all Christians, the adults who want to be people who think the faith as well, should undertake this journey, and young people too, because adolescence is the period when the deepest questions arise. […] Looking at you all this evening, I believe that Fr Giussani would willingly say these words that Saint Paul said to the first Christians: “You are yourselves our letter, our credit card [and he could say this because of the experience he had lived in their midst, announcing the Lord], written in our hearts… a letter from Christ, drawn up by us, and written not with ink, nor by computer, but with the Spirit of the living God, not on stone tablets but on the tablets of your living hearts.” I believe that nothing would give greater joy than this, to one who has been committed so deeply and for his whole life. […] The last note of this meeting is a question I ask myself as Bishop of this diocese: What do I ask of this movement of Communion and Liberation? Three things: 1) That for you, the reference to the mystery of the Incarnation remain absolutely qualifying, because this is very much at the heart of the charism of Communion and Liberation, and is very important for the entire Church. 2) I ask you to always pay great attention to the challenge of education; while we remember the 50 years of the movement of Fr Giussani, the educator, how could one not say this to you?! 3) I ask you to be in our diocese a presence that testifies tangibly to a great passion for the unity of the Church, the holiness of the Church, the catholicity of the Church, and the apostolic nature of the Church. Bishop Renato Corti, Bishop of Novara Forlì I was really struck, as it’s the first time I’ve seen a meeting begin with a song, and it reminded me of a beautiful expression of a man who said that he whose soul is eaten away by passions cannot sing; he who has crimes to hide, evil thoughts, can’t sing; only he who encounters a joy can sing. […] What has Fr Giussani achieved, what has he done within this Italy? Well then, I’ve stumbled onto my point, because I’ve seen that all these affinities were dictated by a simple consideration–that we’re not alone and by the simple consideration that, in being together, there is Someone in flesh and blood who eats with us, who drinks with us, who sings with us, and that this Someone, a full two thousand years ago, realized Himself through an event that continues to exist, to be present, and that seeks the forms, that offers, instead, the forms through which each one of us can perfectly well identify His traces. […] I’ve never heard that song before. I saw that all of you were singing it, so I imagine that it is a song in which you recognize yourselves. It spoke about a road that is beautiful when you walk it. There, if you will allow, I believe that the Church can be in that definition, in that road that is beautiful to walk. […] I’ve never been able to understand how all of a sudden the Church came to be perceived as, and in certain occasions, transformed into, an immense structure for social work, like something that has thus confused, or maybe offered, the idea that there is no community of believers, but of beneficiaries, to use a politically correct term–as if there were no longer the faithful, but the clients; as if there were no longer people who participate in one same body, a living body, but, instead, an idea of division, absolutely modern. Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, journalist Plano, Texas Fr Giussani is a man who has long pondered the complexities of the relationship between Christianity and Western culture. For him it is clear that the very origin of our civilization has everything to do with the Christian faith and, at the very heart of the modern world, a world shaped by twenty centuries of Christianity, is the unique claim of Jesus Christ, the God Man who has given to all who seek Him the revelation of God the Father and of His love, as well as a revelation of man to himself. It is the claim that Christ is the answer to all that the human heart desires and yearns to discover. […] In the view of Fr Giussani, the Church is really the embodiment or continuation of Christ in time and human history. […] In these books of Fr Giussani, we are treated to the insights of a very deep thinker who is completely at home in discourse with the great ideas of Western culture and civilization. The present historical context is one of the things that Fr Giussani addresses right at the beginning of this book, but then he begins to peel away centuries of historical development to return to the essential mystery at the beginning. It is not advisable for one who is seeking to understand the truth about the Church to neglect its history and origins and only focus on the present moment of the Church or the state it is in when one encounters it for the first time. No, while the encounter must take place in the present, the “otherness” of what one is encountering is not embodied in its history and can best be discovered only if we go beyond the present and seek to understand its origins. Stephen M. Matuszak, S.T.L., Fellow in Theology and Philosophy at Thomas More University College, Fort Worth (Texas) Turin Returning to pages that are at the heart of the study and reflection of a canon lawyer has been particularly useful for me, even though it played a joke on me that I have to admit and, admitting it, also ask your forgiveness, because reading this text, so interwoven in the richness of the passages and also in the thorough examination of the topics, all related to a centrality (none of the topics seems marginal), ended up putting me in a condition of learning a great deal. […] The last part of the book, as well, is the verification of the presence of the divine in the life of the Church. I’d like to underline that, since human experience is acknowledged as the typical place for conducting this verification, the Christian message is directed at the needs of man’s heart; the phenomenal and historical face of the Church is made up of Christ as the continual happening, as something that happens, not something that happened, and this is why the Church requires of man an open heart, availability to commitment, and poverty of spirit: the Church wants to bring to fulfillment the supreme yearning of man, assuring him evangelically of the hundredfold, as Giussani remarks with a shrewdness and with the intelligence of a shepherd. If, then, it’s true, not just evangelically, that by its fruit you will know the tree, then the four qualifications that our Creed lists for the Church–One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic–all apply to the Christian who lives in ecclesial communion, and they embrace man in his experience and profound dimension. The Church is newly alive, and we understand that it is truly the One and the All, unity as the explanation of reality: all strives to connect everything to its own foundation, and then, from the great passage of Saint John, “God is greater than our heart and He knows everything.” Hence, from this is born unity as the approach to life. Holiness, then, is nothing other than the human reality that realizes itself according to the plan that created it. Rinaldo Bertolino, President of the University of Turin and Professor of Canon and Ecclesiastical Law Rio de Janeiro For the presentation of the book Why the Church? in Rio de Janeiro, Cardinal Eugênio de Araújo Sales telephoned Archbishop Filippo Santoro, saying, “Remember to tell the friends present in the auditorium that if I could be there, I would simply read a part of the Pope’s letter to Fr Giussani, published on the first page of L’Osservatore Romano, for the fifty years of the movement of Communion and Liberation. I’m thinking above all of that extraordinary passage in which he speaks of the end of hope, and at the same time of the current tendency toward relativism and nihilism. And the Pope adds that the movement of Communion and Liberation together with other movements is the Lord’s providential response to the lost and disoriented man of our times.” Varese What strikes me today, in therapy and in life, is man’s dramatic closure into himself; a solitude accompanied by a characteristic oscillation between the sense of omnipotence and fear. This precise pathology is described perfectly in Why the Church?, by Fr Luigi Giussani, as what makes man deaf today to the announcement of Christ and to participation in His Church. It is the illness of rejection that brings him to the point of refusing to realize himself fully through the embrace of the other and of Christ, negating the destiny offered him by the God-made-man, that of realizing his own brotherhood with the Son in the common sonship of the Father. This illness takes on the form of a closure upon oneself, imagined, according to the model of contemporary culture, as the measure of all things. It oscillates between two apparently opposite and alternating modalities: “I’m nothing” or, instead, “I’m the one who decides good and evil, and I fear nothing”(fear, pushed down into the subconscious, then surfaces as panic, block, or metropolitan phobia). This closure upon oneself is at the basis of the drama that Giussani describes perfectly: this isolated man “crumbles into his own interests, falling back within his own ambit and, in the process, becomes prey to his own measure.” Claudio Risé, psychoanalyst