Obedience and authority in Luigi Giussani's trilogy

I was fascinated to discover that neither "obedience" nor "authority" appear in the index to The Religious Sense! What can it mean? I can only imagine that adhering to authority and living in obedience are not for rank beginners!

Again, it is very interesting to note that "authority" does not occur in the index to At the Origin of the Christian Claim, and "obedience" makes its first appearance, but only shows up twice in this book. In the first instance, Fr. Giussani is recounting a dramatic event, recorded in chapter 8 of the Gospel of John. Jesus has been confronted by the Pharisees, who press him to explain who he claims to be. Jesus responds, "If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing; it is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say that he is your God. But you have not known him; I know him. If I said, I do not know him, I should be a liar like you; but I do know him and I keep his word" (John 8:54-55). Fr. Giussani doesn't refer directly to Jesus' obedience, but quotes from the work of two scholars, R. Schnackenburg and H.U. von Balthasar, who use this word to characterize Jesus' attitude. Balthasar comments, "the attack on Jesus' arrogance collapses on his obedience" (The Glory of the Lord, page 478). The only time in At the Origin of the Christian Claim when Fr. Giussani uses the word "obedience" himself comes toward the end of the book, in a discussion of the value of the human person. He characterizes Jesus as demonstrating, "a passion for the individual, an urgent desire for his happiness." Jesus expresses, "The problem of the world's existence is the happiness of each single person. 'For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? Or what shall a man give in return for his life?' (Matthew 16:26)" (page 84, in At the Origin...). Fr. Giussani concludes, "No force of energy and no paternal or maternal loving tenderness has ever impacted the heart of man more than these words of Christ, impassioned as he is about the life of man. Moreover, to listen to these radical questions Jesus poses, represents the first obedience to our own natures" (page 84, emphasis mine). Thus, even before introducing the idea of obedience to authority, Fr. Giussani first stresses Christ's own obedience to the Father, and with even greater emphasis, our need to be obedient to our own natures and irreducible value. I think these points are fundamental, and cannot be skipped over or forgotten. This type of obedience is an essential step; without it, we are not capable of obedience to authority.

Can you guess where Fr. Giussani first begins to speak about authority? Not until we are a good three quarters of the way into Why the Church? do we find a discussion of the subject. Authority, Fr. Giussani stresses, is a function of the life of the community: "The supreme authority of the magisterium is an explication of the conscience of the entire community as guided by Christ. It is not some magical, despotic substitution for it" (page 172). Then he goes on to discuss the Church's teaching authority, pointing out that even in the case of the dogmas that seem to have come down from "on high," in fact, in every case (The Assumption, The Immaculate Conception, papal infallibility), they are the fruit of the whole community; debated, voted upon, and tested, these dogmas were not proclaimed until the popes had come to the firm conclusion that the entire community's conscience had been sounded. Fr. Giussani observes, "Clearly, then, the vast majority of people have no idea of the Church's procedure leading to the proclamation of a dogma, never mind comprehending the meaning of the expression. But, as we have seen, it defines a value when that value has become a sure and living part of the conscience of the Christian community" (page 174). In other words, the Church's teaching authority derives from its unity (and consistency). This is a very different picture from the one conjured by the term, "authoritarian." Then, in the final chapter of Why the Church? Fr Giussani returns to the question of authority. If the Church's catholicity, that is its universality and unity, is a sign of its authority within space, then her apostolicity "is the characteristic of the Church which signified its capacity to address time in a unitary, structured way" (page 230). Then he says something that is really worth pausing over: "...Just as Christ's will was to bind his work and his presence in the world to the apostles and in doing so he indicated one of them as the authoritative point of reference, so, too, is the Church bound to Peter's and the apostles' successors -- the pope and his bishops" (230). Jesus stooped to bind his work and presence to particular persons (colorful, even sometimes idiotic persons!), and the Body of Christ makes the same gesture, in obedience to its own nature. There is a beautiful and audacious symmetry in this thought! For the Body of Christ to fill time and space, in order to be truly "all in all," then it teaches what is true for all (preserving its catholicity/universality) and it remains faithful to Christ's original method, to bind itself to a particular succession of persons, who become its authoritative point of reference (preserving its definitive presence in time). The concept of obedience to the Church also makes a brief appearance in this book on page 86 and is worth quoting at length:

Christians are often far from aware of this authentic source of their value, for we frequently find people who are either seeking clarity and security or a motive for their actions, and in so doing, they interpret their own community, or movement, or special association in a reductive way, depriving themselves of the source of unity that gives them life -- the mystery of the Church as Church. Or, there are those who in referring to the Church, mean a mechanical super-organism unrelated to their daily reality, the concrete community close to them. In this way, then they incorrectly separate themselves from the living Church. This is why one must learn what the total Church is, and this is why we must explore the depths of the ecclesiastical experience one has encountered, providing that is has all the characteristics of a true ecclesiastical experience. This means obedience to the total Church, depending on it, organizing one's life according to its rhythms, seeing oneself reflected in the other factors within the sphere of the Christian life. These are aspects which define the validity of gathering together...

We have thus demonstrated how reflection on the word "ecclesia" has helped us to understand the type of consciousness of the first Christians of the value of their community, a value which derived totally, entirely from participation in the one Church, the Church governed by the apostles. (pages 86-87, emphasis mine)

Far from recommending "blind obedience," Fr. Giussani is urging us to adhere to "the total Church" in order to assure that our gatherings are invested with the life of Christ.

Freedom is ambiguous

Reading ahead a little in the chapter on freedom in Is It Possible to Live This Way? I came across the following passage, which resonates for me as I consider Sharon's challenge:

Only in the companionship are you recalled to this fascination with being or this awareness of our own fragility due to something that is a choice -- to be able to choose is a good, but to be able to choose evil is an evil, therefore it's ambiguous. Freedom isn't in a bad position; it's in a position that is still ambiguous. (page 78)

At this particular moment there are any number of things that I could be doing: I could be down in the backyard with my two youngest daughters, who are there picking strawberries together; I could be cleaning my kitchen; I could be preparing for our outing to the swimming pool; I could be putting my tomato seedlings in the ground...I have so many options, all of which are good and necessary. So why I am here, typing?

The companionship I discover among bloggers is no substitute for the community of my family and near neighbors that surrounds me. And yet, it is undeniable that the friends I have here, on the internet, are real; their companionship is real, also made of flesh and blood. This companionship truly does recall me to a "fascination with being" and an "awareness of my own fragility" in ways that are just as necessary and vital to my life as are the ways of my proximate community.

Speaking and writing are two different methods of expression, and each are necessary to life. I can say things in writing that I cannot say in speech; and I can understand things that I read that escape me when I hear them spoken out loud. Of course, each of the preceding statements may be reversed! To remove the possibility of reading/writing would mean to diminish me and impoverish my relationships with others.

What if, like Jean-Dominique Bauby, I were stricken with Locked-In syndrome? Perhaps, if my faculties went unused, they would atrophy. And yet, if I, like Bauby, could communicate somehow, I would work with what I had, even if it were only a single eyelid that could still blink. Since I am not locked in, however, not to use all that has been bestowed on me, would be to maim myself. It is a moral imperative that I use all of my humanity. To paraphrase something St. Paul said, my mouth cannot tell my hand, "I don't need you" and my ears cannot tell my eyes, "You're unnecessary."

I can (and do!) waste time doing any number of things that are worthwhile and socially acceptable. Any time that we just go through the motions or live our duties with resentment or forgetfulness, we are wasting our lives and the lives of those who are forced to put up with us. Or, at the very least, we are reducing them. To be fully alive, we have to be aware, we have to seek the meaning in all we do. And we can't be aware or seek meaning on our own. At least I know that I can't. I have a need, so deep and so real that it makes me tremble to think about it, for this companionship (a companionship which includes those I see and speak with, those with whom I write, and those rare few with whom I can do both), in which I can be fully myself and fully alive, using not only my ears and mouth, but my hands and eyes as well. I am called back to the knowledge that all the hairs on my head are counted when I am present here with my blogging friends, but in a way that is different and equally vital as the way I am called by the faces and eyes of those with whom I speak.

I am convinced that the commitment I have to my blogging companionship is just as important as the commitment I make to my School of Community. Each is a commitment to Christ, alive and active and incarnate in my life.

The roots of dialogue

«What we have in common with the other is not to be sought so much in ideology as in the other's native structure, in those human needs, in those original criteria, in which he or she is human like us. Openness to dialogue, therefore, means the ability to take as a starting point those problems to which the other's ideology or our Christianity proposes solutions, because what is common to different ideologies is the humanity of the men and women who carry these ideologies as banners of hope or as an answer.»

~ Fr. Giussani, The Journey to Truth Is an Experience, p 132

What is man, what is the human person?

«The whole cosmos reaches for a certain point of evolution, at which it becomes self- awareness: that point is called "I." The "I" is self-awareness of the world, of the cosmos, and of oneself. The cosmos is the context in which the relationship with God, with the Mystery, lives.

The Psalmist asks, "Lord, what on earth is man that you keep him in mind, that you remember him?" Among all the beasts and little creatures of the cosmos, man is one- hundredth, a thousandth, a ten- thousandth. But the greatness of man, the honor and glory of man, lies in the fact that man, the individual man, is in relationship with the infinite. To live what man is, to realize his person, man must grasp everything that God has done. Happiness is the final end of this process, the process of penetrating the eternal.

Sooner or later, one begins to say this eighth Psalm of David every day.»

~Fr. Giussani, The Psalms, p18-19

"a knowledge of man is a prerequisite for a knowledge of God"

Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete quoted these passages recently. Without googling or otherwise peeking, who spoke these remarks?

«The religion of the God who became man has met the religion (for such it is) of man who makes himself God. And what happened?
[...]
The attention of our council has been absorbed by the discovery of human needs (and these needs grow in proportion to the greatness which the son of the earth claims for himself). But we call upon those who term themselves modern humanists, and who have renounced the transcendent value of the highest realities, to give the council credit at least for one quality and to recognize our own new type of humanism: we, too, in fact, we more than any others, honor mankind.
[....]
the Catholic religion is for mankind. In a certain sense it is the life of mankind. It is so by the extremely precise and sublime interpretation that our religion gives of humanity (surely man by himself is a mystery to himself) and gives this interpretation in virtue of its knowledge of God: a knowledge of God is a prerequisite for a knowledge of man as he really is, in all his fullness; for proof of this let it suffice for now to recall the ardent expression of St. Catherine of Siena, "In your nature, Eternal God, I shall know my own." The Catholic religion is man's life because it determines life's nature and destiny; it gives life its real meaning, it establishes the supreme law of life and infuses it with that mysterious activity which we may say divinizes it.
[...]
we can and must recognize in Christ's countenance the countenance of our heavenly Father "He who sees me," Our Lord said, "sees also the Father" (John 14:9), our humanism becomes Christianity, our Christianity becomes centered on God; in such sort that we may say, to put it differently: a knowledge of man is a prerequisite for a knowledge of God.»

Update: Pope Paul VI - Address to Vatican II, December 7, 1965

Facing darkness

[crossposted at Deep Furrows]

«We see darkness and talk about darkness so many times. We mustn't pretend that the darkness doesn't exist; we shouldn't just think some spiritual thoughts about darkness; we can't do something "alongside" the darkness — we have to look it in the face! "I look into my depths and see endless darkness" [song: "Il mio volyo"]. What is it that the darkness can't quash? It can't stop my acknowledging this darkness, and it can't stop the moment "when I realize that You are there," when I realize that this circumstance, no matter how ugly it may be, is not made by itself; when I live through a dark period, even in that moment I am living, and even in the darkness, I do not make myself; it that darkness I have a radiant clarity: I do not make myself.

[...]

We can't avoid this road, nobody can spare us this road, and this is why Christ went deep to the bottom of the darkness: so that we can look at everything. This is anything but an intellectual exercise! It's simply the recognition of reality according to all its factors.»

Fr. Julián Carrón
Notes from the talks by Ciancarlo Cesana and Julián Carrón at the Beginning Day for CL adults in the Lombardy Region of Italy, September 29, 2007.
Traces Vol 9, #9 - 2007

I mention this apropos of a post at Deep Furrows on an priest sex abuse trial in Kansas City. The post offered only a partial, tentative judgment. If I link to these articles from time to time, it's because of an implicit need to look at the darkness and betrayals of my life, of our life together in the Church. I must remember, however, not to stop at the surface, but to seek the face of Him who conquers the darkness.