Carron on Giussani

Julián Carrón presenta "Il senso religioso" di Luigi Giussani - Comunione e Liberazione


Intervento di Julián Carrón al corso su Il Senso Religioso (versione corretta)


Julián Carrón presenta "All'origine della pretesa cristiana" di Giussani - Comunione e Liberazione


Presentación de «El Sentido Religioso» de Luigi Giussani por el P. Julián Carrón


Julián Carrón e Luciano Violante - Incontro sull'educazione al Teatro Dal Verme

A Long Essay for Holy Saturday

CWR: This Holy Saturday: Social Distancing, Solitude, Healing by Brad Bursa, Ph.D.
Msgr. Luigi Giussani claims that “the only condition for being truly and faithfully religious…is to live always the real intensely.”i This line stays with me in these solitary days, when “the real” has become surreal. [...]

The author uses "death as isolation" as the first explanatory key, basing it on the writings of Joseph Ratzinger.

Following the Judeo-Christian tradition, Ratzinger does not view death in a one-sided manner, as if it were only an experience of bodily corruption that marks the end of one’s physical life. Instead, “death is present as the nothingness of an empty existence which ends up in a mere semblance of living.”^v Ratzinger says, “Death is absolute loneliness…the loneliness into which love can no longer advance is — hell.”

The second explanatory principle is the definition of Person within the Trinity as "relation":

In God, in the Trinity, person is pure relativity, of being turned toward the other. The concept of person does not refer to substance, but to relationality. God’s substance is one, and person, as the “pure relativity of being turned toward the other” does not lie on the level of substance, but on the “level of dialogical reality.” Thus, Ratzinger concludes that relation is recognized as a third fundamental category “between substance and accident.”^xvii Therefore, in and through Christian faith, theology manifests “the Christian newness of the personalistic idea in all its sharpness and clarity,” for “it was faith that gave birth to this idea of pure act, of pure relativity…it was faith that thereby brought the personal phenomenon into view.”^xviii

Ratzinger argues that the early developments in Trinitarian understanding offer profound insight in the area of anthropology as well. For the human being to be made in God’s “image and likeness,” must, in some way mean that the human being is a personal being. In other words, the human being is “not a substance that closes itself in itself, but the phenomenon of complete relativity, which is, of course, realized in its entirety only in the one who is God, but which indicates the direction of all personal being.”^xix The human being exists as a personal being, precisely because the human being is a spiritual being. God takes the basic material of earth and forms the human being, but human being only enters into existence after God breathes into the formed earth the breath of life. Now, “the divine reality enters in,” for “in the human being heaven and earth touch one another….the human being is directly related to God.”^xx Based upon what has been developed in the area of Trinitarian theology, to be in God’s image, according to Ratzinger, “implies relationality,” setting “the human being in motion toward the totally Other”….“it means the capacity for relationship…the human capacity for God.”^xxi To be in God’s image means to be personal, it means the human being has the capacity for a personal relationship with God and to exist as a personal being, as a social being, in relation to others human beings.

Is sociability a participation in the Divine? Can we say that primates participate in the Divine? Yes, but it may be foreign to some of us. All of His creation participates in God in its own way.

Would Byzantine Christians have any difficulty with using the Divine relations to enhance theological anthropology? I don't know.

Fr. Luigi Giussani

What Should Supplement the Benedict Option?

Benedict Option & Christian Resilience By ROD DREHER

Ancient Faith Radio: Chastity, Purity, Integrity

Youth Ministry?

Church Life: Discipleship Isn’t as Exciting as Youth Ministry Makes It Seem by Timothy O'Malley

My adaptation of Fr. Giussani’s method of education involves three dimensions: provocation, hypothesis, and verification. This method of catechesis depends on the authority of a teacher who knows his or her students, who is capable of serving as an authentic source of authority and love. It is an approach that is long-term, requiring the building of a relationship over years.

The first dimension of this method is provocation. Provocation is not equivalent to getting someone’s attention. Too often, the large events discussed above, get someone’s attention. They provoke an experience of social solidarity that is unparalleled. But the “event” fails to provoke additional questions—it stands as an experience apart from life.

Giussani’s understanding of provocation is different. The human being has been made to ask ultimate questions. What is the meaning of life? What is love? What is authentic friendship? For Giussani, each human being has this religious sense, this orientation to the ultimate that sin has not destroyed.

But, the human person also has been taught to not ask such questions. We embrace ideologies that make it impossible to wonder, to ask questions that matter. We do not ask about the meaning of life, about the nature of love, or what constitutes real friendship. Instead, we simply live our day-to-day lives, a kind of practical atheism whereby only the visible and tangible matter.

The goal of provocation is to reawaken the young person to asking questions. A good teacher provokes not through emotional manipulation but daring to ask the ultimate questions to the student. Students want to talk about the nature of love. They want to discuss friendship. They want to be provoked.

Big events can be aids to provocation. They may allow the student to enter into the kind of liminal space where they do ask the big questions. But, it is not the “event” that is the telos of such formation. It is the moment of provocation, the moment in which the student asks, “What is the meaning of life?”

Christian provocation has two key dimensions. First, provocation is always grounded in the scriptures. It is Jesus Christ who is the answer to the human heart’s deepest longings. It is the God-man, fully human and fully divine, who provokes in us the ultimate question: What does it mean to be human, now that God has dwelt among us? A “big event” approach to ministry cannot attend to the one-on-one conversations that are necessary for good provocation.

Second, provocation emphasizes beauty, silence, and contemplation. Provocation is an inward awakening, for every person has to ask the ultimate questions on his or her own. Too often, big events in ministry overwhelm the young Christian, functioning almost as a saturated phenomenon, taking away all capacity for wonder. We need to allow space for the young person to work on his or her inner life, to encounter the ultimate questions that are always present in the human heart, if only we listened. Who am I? What is my destiny? Learning to attend to these questions is not simply a task of the young adult but an essential task of Christian maturity.

Orthodox College Students Losing Their Faith

Pravmir: Is it Time to Rethink Orthodox Campus Ministry

the report on OCF

Biographer of Fr. Luigi Giussani

Post by Vatican Radio - English Section.

Related:

Post by Vatican Radio - English Section.

Post by Vatican Radio - English Section.

Post by Zenit News Agency.

Rome Reports: 10 Years After the Death of Luigi Giussani

Crisis: Recalling Luigi Giussani’s Passion for Christ by Regis Martin

Zenit: Pope's Message to Rimini Meeting
"Not only my soul, but even every fiber of my flesh is made to find its peace, its fulfillment in God"

Thus do we discover the truest dimension of human existence, that to which the Servant of God Luigi Giussani continually referred: life as vocation. Everything, every relationship, every joy, as well as every difficulty, finds its ultimate meaning in being an opportunity for a relationship with the Infinite, a voice of God that continually calls to us and invites us to lift our gaze, to find the complete fulfillment of our humanity in belonging to Him. “You have made us for Yourself – wrote St. Augustine – and our hearts are restless until they rest in You” (Confessions I, 1,1). We need not be afraid of what God asks of us, through the circumstance of our lives, were it even the dedication of ourselves in a special form of following and imitating Christ, in the priesthood or religious life. The Lord, in calling some to live totally for Him, calls everyone to recognize the essence of our own nature as human beings: we are made for the Infinite. And God has our happiness at heart, and our complete human fulfillment. Let us ask, then, to enter in and to remain in the gaze of faith that characterized the saints, in order that we might be able to discover the good seed that the Lord scatters along the path of our lives and joyfully adhere to our vocation.

Some thoughts on CL

One of my former professors was a follower of CL and introduced me to the writings of Msgr. Giussani, its founder. The group and its founder have received praise from the current and previous popes. I think GodSpy, which has not been updated in more than three years, was also associated with CL in some way? (Or maybe it just published essays by Msgr. Alcabete.)

I have some of Msgr. Giussani's books, but I must admit that I have not really read through most of them. I tried to read through one but stopped, as it was too dense for me at the time. Having grown a little, maybe I would comprehend it better now and thus profit from it. Or maybe I'm too simple-minded to appreciate it. My first impression was that its literary style of presenting the Faith was not for me. (Or the style of the English translation, at least.)

I also know that study groups are very popular with CL; they read the writings of Msgr. Giusanni plus other texts. This reminds me of the study groups of Jacques Maritain. (How many conversions did Maritain facilitate?) I've been invited to a CL study group, but never attended. It may have a better reputation than some of the other ecclesial movements. I think its apostolate is more directed towards university faculty and students and professionals? The key to understanding it better for me would be to see how they define culture and education (and how this relates to community, both the local Church and the political community). How is it different from John Senior's IHP at the U. Kansas? Its sort of ecumenical outreach reminds me of Sant'Egidio, but their apostolates are different? For the big cities I tend to favor something more radically simple like the Catholic Worker movement, which was not anti-intellectual, far from it. (iirc, Dorothy Day had her own study groups.)

What are the philosophical/literary sources upon which CL texts rely? Maybe I'm not steeped enough in recent European intellectual culture to fully appreciate the texts, but is there a danger of over-intellectualizing the Gospel?

There is actually a CL group at the local parish. If things ever settle down, maybe I'll check it out.

Related:
The Risk of Education
Traces
The "Right Way" of Fr. Luigi Giussani
International Institute of Culture
Crossroads Cultural Center

New York Encounter
A Festival of Faith and Reason


More with Msgr. Alcabete:
Frontline interview
REFLECTIONS ON HUMANAE VITAE'S 25TH ANNIVERSARY
Younger than Sin
Some appearances on Charlie Rose.



Msgr. Alcabete on the salvation of non-Christians - he is correct that salvation is not works-righteousness; it is your stand to the Other. But it seems rather muddled. Maybe it's my preference for "scholastic distinctions." Truth and Love can be names for God, yes. And we must know and love Him to be happy.

Rome Reports: Process of beatification begins for Luigi Giussani, founder of Communion and Liberation

Zenit: Papal Message to Rimini Meeting
"Man Cannot Live Without the Certainty of His Destiny"