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Luigi Giussani: a Teacher in Dialogue with Modernity Robert Joseph Di

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Luigi Giussani: a Teacher in Dialogue with Modernity Robert Joseph Di Luigi Giussani: A Teacher in Dialogue with Modernity Robert Joseph Di Pede Ph.D. The University of Edinburgh © 2010 I, Robert Joseph Di Pede, declare that I composed this thesis and that the work has not been submitted for any other degree or professional qualification. Author’s Signature: _____________________________ 29 September 2010 Abstract This thesis submits Luigi Giussani’s theological writings to philosophical analysis. Giussani (born in Desio, 1922; died in Milan, 2005) was a prominent Italian author, public intellectual, university lecturer, and founder of the international Catholic lay movement Communion and Liberation (CL). My enquiry is motivated by the experience of readers who find Giussani’s texts marked by vagueness and seeming inconsistencies despite his attempt to respond decisively and sensitively to real human problems. It also presents ideas from those works available only in Italian to an English-language readership for the first time. Rather than criticize the author’s style of exposition, or restate his arguments in a manner more suited to my audience, I treat the texts’ burdens as symptomatic of the author’s deeper, unarticulated concerns. I reconstruct Giussani’s implicit concerns using history, intellectual biography, sources, and the logic of enquiry itself. I then re-read his texts in the light of the explicit rendering of those concerns and, where the texts’ burdens still persist, I suggest repairs corresponding to those concerns and to the errant behaviours his writings were generated to correct. Three themes are examined: judgement, freedom, and beauty. These were prominent in Giussani’s dialogue with students from the 1950s onward and integral to his idea of the religious education of youth. My analysis is conceived as a contribution to philosophical theology, rather than to the philosophy of education. The areas flagged for repair, however, may nonetheless serve educators. I conclude that Giussani’s account is indeed shaped by his implicit concerns; that their nature provokes the essentialist arguments he mounts; and that his attempt to expound intrinsic, universal, and timeless claims runs against the pragmatic thrust of his writing. My repairs call for a better account of 1) practical deliberation, 2) discursive reason, 3) obedience in relation to autonomy, and 4) habits related to the formation of virtues. I argue that the practical grounds of his project are best anchored in robust solutions to the problems of ordinary life formulated from the deepest sources of repair from Giussani’s tradition (sacred scripture and sacred tradition, including the liturgy) rather than what he calls the “needs and exigencies of the heart,” which address a different problem (namely Enlightenment rationality or Neo-Thomism). ‘Has mankind failed the Church’ [...] ‘or has the Church failed mankind?’ [...] [N]owadays the Christian fact is proposed to the world in a profoundly reduced form. It is not what it should be; namely, the presence that battles against man’s destruction. If it is that presence, it is only so potentially. [...] The chief observation motivating such a judgement lies in the reduction of Christianity to ‘Word’ (‘Word of God,’ ‘Gospel,’ or simply, ‘Word’). This reduction entails certain consequences that are decisive for culture. — Luigi Giussani (1998) For the students of The Francis de Sales Centre at Mary, Mother of God School Luigi Giussani at the lighthouse of Portofino, Liguria in 1956 with students from the lycée Berchet. (Photo courtesy of Communion and Liberation Archives, Via Porpora 127, Milan). Table of Contents Acknowledgements vii Abbreviations ix Introduction 1 Chapter One: Judgement 36 Chapter Two: Freedom 108 Chapter Three: Beauty 172 Conclusion 242 Appendix 257 Bibliography 266 vi Acknowledgements Acknowledgements I wish to thank New College in the University of Edinburgh, Unite Group plc, Mary, Mother of God School, and, above all, my parents for helping me to finance this project. A number of individuals have also alleviated the financial burden by warmly extending hospitality on my research visits to Montreal, Milan, Rome, and Mecosta (MI): John and Cecilia Zucchi, Daniele Riggi, Francesca and Enrico Imbasciati, Caterina Tucci and family, Annette Kirk and The Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal. Friends have sustained this work at various points with concrete gestures of interest and generosity. I wish to acknowledge Caterina Tucci, who raced from Foligno to Perugia to chase the train on which I had accidentally left my thesis, and for heroically recovering it (along with several valuable books of philosophy) from a rubbish bin where it had been deposited by a thief clearly uninterested in the reading (!); Chiara Berneri, Giacomo Mazzi, and Maria Ubiali, members of Communion and Liberation, whose friendship, hospitality, and virtuous example made the first two years of this project in Edinburgh memorable; Gordon Nixon, who shouldered my burden at The Francis de Sales Centre when I reached the final stages of writing; Luca Marcora who generously assisted with the archival research undertaken at Communion and Liberation headquarters in Milan; Giovanni Teruzzi and Lorenzo Teruzzi who guided me through the library of l’ Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore; Stephanie Knott, Chiara Berneri, and, above all, Steven Aldorasi, who assisted with proofreading; Frank Riggi and Stephen Di Pede who provided computing assistance; and my friend Joseph Stuart, a tenacious interlocutor and my most interested reader, whose strong faith and good example have been as a light guiding a ship through the night back to its port. This thesis makes a critical argument for the importance of good teachers in the formation of younger generations of Catholics. The work undertaken in these pages owes a great debt of gratitude to a dozen or so Salesians of Don Bosco whose generosity and guidance formed my heart during the most crucial years of my life. I also wish to acknowledge Rebecca Pontisso, the foundress of Mary, Mother of God vii Acknowledgements School, for recognizing my God-given identity and believing in the importance of this project to the life and mission of The Francis de Sales Centre. I am grateful, above all, to my mentors, Nicholas Adams and Fergus Kerr, O.P., with whom I have not only deepened my knowledge of philosophy, but learned how charitably to bring a pupil from good to better. Finally, the fact that I have had so much over which to be thankful ultimately moves me to thank God, my greatest benefactor, from whom all blessings flow. viii Abbreviations Abbreviations I generally follow M. Camisasca, Comunione e Liberazione: Le origini (1954-1968) (Milan: Edizioni San Paolo, 2001). WORKS BY LUIGI GIUSSANI ACC L’autocoscienza del cosmo AD Affezione e Dimora AL Avvenimento di libertà. Conversazioni con giovani universitari AVE Un avvenimento di vita cioè una storia CGC Certi di alcune grandi cose (1979-1981) CVE Il cammino al vero è un’esperienza DTM Dal temperamento un metodo IRI L’io rinasce in un incontro (1986-1987) LAC L’avvenimento cristiano LFA Lettere di fede e di amicizia ad Angelo Majo MCL Il movimento di Comunione e Liberazione: Conversazioni con Robi Ronza ML Le mie letture OPC All’origine della pretesa cristiana PCP Perché la Chiesa. Tomo I. La pretesa permane PS Porta la speranza QO Qui è ora (1984-1985) RE Il rischio educativo RG Realtà e giovinezza. La sfida RSE GS: Riflessioni sopra un’esperienza SD Il senso di Dio e l’uomo moderno SPVC Si può vivere così? SPVV Si può (veramente?!) vivere così? SR Il senso religioso TA «Tu» (o dell’amicizia) TEC Tracce d’esperienza cristiana TT Il tempo e il tempio. Dio e l’uomo USD L’uomo e il suo destino. Works translated into English: JTE The Journey to Truth is an Experience (CVE) OCC At the Origins of the Christian Claim (OPC) PLW Is it Possible to Live This Way? (SPVC) RS The Religious Sense (SR) WC Why the Church? (PCP) ix Introduction Introduction If I had stated these ideas to the leaders of the ‗realist‘ school they would have said, as I have heard them say a hundred times, ‗you don‘t mean that; what you mean is ...‘ and then would have followed a caricature of my ideas in terms of ‗realist‘ principles, with sandbags for arms and legs; all so beautifully done that I could hardly have restrained my impulse to cheer. — R. G. Collingwood (1938).1 It is always a significant question to ask about any philosopher: what is he afraid of? — Iris Murdoch (1950).2 Luigi Giussani (1922-2005) is today remembered as one of the most prominent figures of twentieth-century Catholicism. Over the course of five decades, he laboured tirelessly, both as a priest and educator, to revitalize the Church through new expressions of ecclesial life, not the least of which was his guidance of lay movements. His greatest legacy remains the founding of Communion and Liberation (CL), an international movement devoted to manifesting the relevance of religion to the questions that arise intrinsically within the human condition. It is in relation to CL, in particular, that the historical and philosophical significance of Giussani‘s activity as an author comes to the fore. The Church, through the early part of Giussani‘s lifetime, was engaged in an intense philosophical campaign against modernity. The ever waning attendance in churches and the retreat of religion from the public sphere, despite the vigorous efforts of anti-Modernist popes, seemed continually to ask pastorally-minded theologians to devise more sympathetic responses to the new conditions obtaining for belief and practice. Many of the convictions and hopes to which Giussani held throughout this period, such as the possibility of a rapprochement between secular and sacred authors, and according to which he engaged the modernist challenge to religion and the Church, coincided eventually with the Church‘s greater openness to dialogue with the modern world, as expressed, for instance, in the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes (1965).
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