Communion and Liberation A Movement in the Church Communion and Liberation A Movement in the Church edited by the International Center of Communion and Liberation © Fraternità di Comunione e Liberazione Via De Notaris, 50 - 20128 Milan Design and layout: Four in the morning Printed: AGF Spa - Via del Tecchione, 36 San Giuliano Milanese (MI) Print date: March 2021 Table of Contents 04 22 What is Communion Christians At Work and Liberation? • Desire to Serve • In an Epochal Change • Fight Against Poverty • Ecclesial Movements • Welcoming, Recovery, Education • Life in the Movement • Economics and International • Encounter and Constructiveness Cooperation • An Ecumenism of Experience • Culture and Dialogue • The Three Dimensions of Faith • The Organization 28 The Popes and CL 12 • Paul VI From Its Origin to Today • John Paul II • On the Train • Benedict XVI • Crisis and Creativity • Francis • Rediscovery of the Charism • Go Into the Whole World 36 Biographical Notes 18 • Servant of God Fr. Luigi Giussani Lay and Religious • Fr. Julián Carrón Associations • Fraternity of Communion 40 and Liberation Essential Bibliography • Memores Domini • Priestly Fraternity 43 of the Missionaries of Notes St. Charles Borromeo (FSCB) • Sisters of Charity of the Assumption • Monastery of Saints Peter and Paul 44 • Fraternity of St. Joseph Contact Information 1. What Is Communion and Liberation? A great friendship, stretching all over the world and rooted in the Christian faith, that helps discover the solidity of faith and its relevance for life’s needs. 1.1 05 In an 1. What Epochal Is Communion Change and Liberation? What Is Communion and Liberation? (I). Brief Biography on p.36. o we Christians still diffculties, its circumstances, which believe in the capacity of none of us are spared, can begin to be “D the faith we have received lived with a dignity, with a gratitude, to attract those we encounter, and do and with a light that it did not have we believe in the living fascination of before.”2 its disarming beauty?”1 In this spirit, Communion and Seventy years after it began, Liberation faces the challenges in Communion and Liberation never the present, constantly reassessing ceases to ask questions about the and renewing its task. We all feel current state of Christianity. It does the impact of the “collapse of the so with a growing openness to the self-evident,”3 those certainties horizons of the whole world and its that underpinned common life for needs: today its 100,000 members centuries. This collapse continues are spread over more than eighty to turn our lives upside down at countries, from the United States to every level: from relationships New Zealand, from Russia to South between parents and children Africa. This great friendship within to those between teachers and the Church has as its aim educating students, from attitudes toward the one another to the elementary poor and migrants to international aspects of the Catholic faith, to relations. In 1968, the founder of discover its solidity and its relevance the movement, Fr. Luigi Giussani in confronting concrete problems in (I), captured the advent of a new life. Whether one is at a university in historical age in lucid terms, Milan, in a slum in Kampala, on the pointing out that, “It is no longer icy tundra of Novosibirsk, in a market history, or doctrine, or tradition, or in Taipei, or in the frenzy of New a discourse that will move men and York, the proposal of Communion women today. Christian tradition and and Liberation is the same: “The philosophy, Christian tradition and only possibility for faith to be seen as discourse have created and continue useful is that each one can compare to create ‘Christianness,’ but not it with his life; that is, that life, its Christianity.”4 The current cultural landscape and who remains present in history shows us that “Christendom no through the changed lives of those longer exists”5 and that the content who follow Him.”7 of Christianity no longer serves as Witness, therefore, takes on a critical a widely shared point of reference. value for the Christian announcement This is at the heart of the pressing today: the communication and the questions that pervade the Christian sharing of a fullness of life with full world: what is the current state respect for each person’s freedom. of Christianity? How can it be “That gets Christianity across much convincing for men and women more than lots of other things, than today? And what does it mean to all these ethical arguments, because be Christians in the midst of this when you see someone like that, you “epochal change?”6 naturally want to ask, ‘Where does Fr. Giussani’s proposal centers this joy come from? Where does this around the conception of Christianity fullness of life come from?’ People as a real, historical event that is may not immediately think that the not confned to the past, but is ultimate origin of this happiness is contemporary in our lives; it continues called Jesus Christ, that it’s called today. Thanks to this and through the faith. But when a person starts to attraction of a personal and communal understand that this stupefying way experience that develops day by of living in the real world, so happy, day, Christianity is (re)discovered as so joyful, is rooted in the faith, he “the event of God who became man, starts to get interested.”8 1.2 07 Ecclesial Movements What Is Communion and Liberation? ommunion and Liberation is founder in specifc circumstances one of the more established and ways.”11 The “evangelical C and wide-spread Catholic lay courage”12 of their members–as movements that sprung up during Pope Francis called it–has taken the time of turmoil that characterized form over the years into a diverse the Church in the middle of the 20th range of missionary activities: from century, culminating in Vatican evangelizing and translating faith II. John Paul II described them as for modern times to promoting “an unexpected newness which is peace; from education to care for sometimes even disruptive,”9 whose the poor, migrants and others in birth he saw as a “new springtime need. “Watching them,” Benedict brought forth by the Spirit.”10 XVI confessed, “I had the joy and A diverse and multi-faceted category, the grace to see how, at a moment a movement is, “a concrete ecclesial of weariness in the Church, at a reality with predominantly lay time when we were hearing about membership, a faith journey and ‘the winter of the Church,’ the Holy Christian witness which bases its Spirit was creating a new springtime, own pedagogical method on a precise awakening in young people and adults charism given to the person of the alike the joy of being Christian.”13 1.3 Life in the Movement Common Fund. Monetary contributions to the movement to sustain all its activities. Each member can contribute regularly in an amount freely chosen. Its purpose is as an education to poverty and to the missionary dimension of life. Spiritual Exercises and Assemblies. number of gestures and events According to one’s stage of life are characteristic to the path (university or high school students, A of Communion and Liberation, professionals or members of the in addition to the insistence on Fraternity) and geographical location, participating in the liturgy and the large communal gatherings take place prayer life of the Church. They are to mark the seasons of the liturgical not requirements in order to consider year, such as Lent and Advent, or oneself part of the movement, but are to discuss and to judge aspects of rather a proposal: each person may personal or community life, such as freely adhere. the various forms of assemblies (from the level of local communities to the School of Community. leaders for each continent). A time of catechesis: reading and personal meditation on a Naturally, each person or group text suggested to everyone in the may promote particular initiatives movement. This work is typically that are open to everyone, and they shared in regular meetings with a do, sometimes renewing elements group, spontaneously formed by from religious tradition and other people in the place they live, work or times creating gestures that form a study. following in time. Examples include the Way of the Cross over the Charitable Work. Brooklyn Bridge in New York (and To educate oneself to charity as many analogous processions that take the ultimate law of existence, place in dozens of cities throughout participants are invited to dedicate the U.S.) or the walking pilgrimages their free time to serve those in need from Macerata to Loreto (which now in various sectors: from assisting usually draws 90,000 participants) people with disabilities or the and from Krakow to Częstochowa (in elderly to supporting families or which thousands of students come individuals in poverty, the homeless, together each year after completing immigrants or prisoners. high school or university). 1.5 1.4 09 Encounter and An Ecumenism Constructive- of Experience ness he journey proposed by CL calls us “to live the faith not as a T point of arrival, but as a wound that is never healed, making me the traveling companion of anyone I fnd What Is Communion and Liberation? on the road.”14 urther relationships blossom An unconditional openness to others with those who belong to other and affrmation of all that is human F Christian communities: from bring the Christian experience the broad realm of Orthodoxy to within reach even for those who are Anglicans in the United Kingdom ideologically or circumstantially distant. and representatives of various This happens in daily life, in the denominations in Europe and ordinary dynamic of social interactions in the U.S.