Disarming Beauty

Essays on Faith, Truth, and Freedom

Julián Carrón

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780268102005
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

In 2005, Father Julián Carrón became the leader of the global ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation, following the death of the movement's founder, Father Luigi Giussani. Disarming Beauty is the English translation of an engaging and thought-provoking collection of essays by one of the principal Catholic leaders and intellectuals in the world today. Adapted from talks given by Fr. Carrón, these essays have been thoroughly reworked by the author to offer an organic presentation of a decade-long journey. They present the content of his elaboration of the gospel message in light of the tradition of Fr. Giussani, the teachings of the popes, and the urgent needs of contemporary people.

Carrón offers a broad diagnosis of challenges in society and then introduces their implications in contexts such as families, schools, workplaces, and political communities. In a dialogue with his listeners, he inspires and encourages them to lay out a new path for the Catholic church and the world. Throughout his essays, Carrón addresses the most pressing questions facing theologians today and provides insights that will interest everyone, from the most devout to the firm nonbeliever. Grappling with the interaction of Christian faith and modern culture, Carrón treats in very real and concrete ways what is essential to maintaining and developing Christian faith, and he invites an ongoing conversation about the meaning of faith, truth, and freedom.

PART 1

THE CONTEXT AND THE CHALLENGES

CHAPTER 1

Is a New Beginning Possible?

What Is at Stake?

Europe was born around a few great words, like “person,” “work,” “matter,” “progress,” and “freedom.” These words achieved their full and authentic depth through Christianity, acquiring a value they did not previously have, and this determined a profound process of “humanization” of Europe and its culture. For example, just think about the concept of person. “Two thousand years ago, the only man who had all human rights was the civis romanus, the Roman citizen. But who decided who was a civis romanus? Those in power. One of the greatest Roman jurists, Gaius, defined three levels of tools which the civis [romanus], who had full rights, could possess: tools which do not move and do not speak; those which move and do not speak, which is to say, animals; and those which move and speak, the slaves.”¹

But today all of these words have become empty, or they are gradually losing their original significance. Why?

Through a long and complex process, from which we cannot exempt the mortification of words like “freedom” and “progress” by the very Christianity that had helped create them, at a certain point along the European trajectory, the idea took hold that those fundamental achievements ought to be separated from the experience that had allowed them to fully flourish.

In a memorable talk he gave years ago in Subiaco, Italy, then-Cardinal Ratzinger said, referring to Enlightenment thinkers, that as a result of a troubled historical trajectory, “in the situation of confessional antagonism and in the crisis that threatened the image of God, they tried to keep the essential moral values outside the controversies and to identify an evidential quality in these values that would make them independent of the many divisions and uncertainties of the various philosophies and religious confessions.” At that time, this was thought to be possible, since “the great fundamental convictions created by Christianity were largely resistant to attack and seemed undeniable.”² Thus developed the Enlightenment attempt to affirm those “great convictions,” whose evidence seemed able to support itself apart from lived Christianity. What was the result of this attempt? Have these great convictions, which have laid the foundation for our coexistence for centuries, withstood the test of time? Did their evidence hold up before the vicissitudes of history, with its unforeseen elements and its provocations? The answer is in front of all of us. Cardinal Ratzinger continued: “The search for this kind of reassuring certainty, something that could go unchallenged despite all the disagreements, has not succeeded. Not even Kant’s truly stupendous endeavors managed to create the necessary certainty that would be shared by all. The attempt, carried to extremes, to shape human affairs to the total exclusion of God leads us more and more to the brink of the abyss, toward the utter annihilation of man.”³

To grasp the evidence of that setting aside, it suffices to consider the effect this process has had on two of the things that we modern Europeans hold most dear: freedom and reason.

“This Enlightenment culture,” Cardinal Ratzinger wrote, “is substantially defined by the rights to liberty. Its starting point is that liberty is a fundamental value and the criterion of everything else: the freedom of choice in matters of religion, which includes the religious neutrality of the state; the liberty to express one’s own opinion, on condition that it does not call precisely this canon into question; the democratic ordering of the state, that is, parliamentary control of the organs of state; … and finally, the protection of the rights of man and the prohibition of discrimination.” Nevertheless, the ongoing evolution of these concepts already reveals the other side of the coin, the consequences of an insufficient definition of freedom that characterizes Enlightenment culture. On the one hand, any exercise of the principle of individual freedom or self-determination must take stock of the opposition between certain human rights, for example, the conflict between a woman’s desire for freedom and the right of the unborn to live. And on the other, the concept of discrimination is constantly extended, without denying the inalienable benefits associated with it, with the result that “the prohibition of discrimination can be transformed more and more into a limitation on the freedom of opinion and on religious liberty…. The fact that the Church is convinced that she does not have the right to confer priestly ordination on women is already seen by some as irreconcilable with the spirit of the European Constitution.” Therefore, Ratzinger continues, indicating the ultimate results of the trajectory: “A confused ideology of liberty leads to a dogmatism that is proving ever more hostile to real liberty.” Thus we witness a singular and significant reversal. “The radical detachment of the Enlightenment philosophy from its roots ultimately leads it to dispense with man.”

Secondly, we need to ask ourselves if the type of reason that Enlightenment philosophy hinges upon can legitimately be said to have reached a “complete self-awareness” so as to be able to give the final word on human reason as such. Ratzinger therefore invites us to remember that Enlightenment reason is itself conditioned by history, the result of a “self-limitation of reason that is typical of one determined cultural situation, that of the modern West.” Enlightenment philosophy “expresses not the complete reason of man, but only one part of it. And this mutilation of reason means that we cannot consider it to be rational at all.” It is not a matter of denying the importance of the achievements of this philosophy, but of objecting to its self-absolutization, its pitting itself with a sense of superiority against “humanity’s other historical cultures.” Thus, Ratzinger can conclude: “The real antagonism typical of today’s world is not that between diverse religious cultures; rather, it is the antagonism between the radical emancipation of man from God, from the roots of life, on the one hand, and the great religious cultures, on the other.”⁴

This does not mean assuming a prejudicially “anti-Enlightenment” position. “The Enlightenment has a Christian origin,” writes Ratzinger, “and it is not by chance that it was born specifically and exclusively within the sphere of the Christian faith.”⁵ In a memorable speech from 2005, Benedict XVI recalls the “fundamental ‘yes’ to the modern era” announced by the Second Vatican Council—without, however, underestimating “the inner tensions as well as the contradictions.” He thus emphasizes the overcoming of that situation of “clash,” in which “it seemed that there was no longer any milieu open to a positive and fruitful understanding” between faith and the modern era, as was typical of the Church in the nineteenth century.⁶

A few years after his address at Subiaco, Benedict XVI returned to the “real opposition” that cuts across the present day and treated the subject in more depth. “The problem Europe has in finding its own identity consists, I believe, in the fact that in Europe today we see two souls.” This is how he describes the two souls: “One is abstract anti-historical reason, which seeks to dominate all else because it considers itself above all cultures. It is like a reason which has finally discovered itself and intends to liberate itself from all traditions and cultural values in favor of an abstract rationality.” A clear example was the Strasbourg Court’s first verdict on crucifixes (in Italian classrooms), as “an example of such abstract reason which seeks emancipation from all traditions, even from history itself. Yet we cannot live like that and, moreover, even ‘pure reason’ is conditioned by a certain historical context, and only in that context can it exist.” What is Europe’s other soul? “We could call Europe’s other soul the Christian one. It is a soul open to all that is reasonable, a soul which itself created the audacity of reason and the freedom of critical reasoning, but which remains anchored to the roots from which this Europe was born, the roots which created the continent’s fundamental values and great institutions, in the vision of the Christian faith.”⁷

At this point, in light of what he have discussed, we can better understand Europe’s problem, the root of its crisis and what is truly at stake. What is at risk today is precisely man, his reason, his freedom, and the freedom of critical reasoning. “The greatest danger,” said Fr. Giussani years ago, “is not the destruction of peoples, killing and murder, but the attempt by the reigning power to destroy the human. And the essence of the human is freedom, i.e., the relationship with the Infinite.” Therefore, the battle that must be fought by the man who feels himself to be a man is “the battle between authentic religiosity and power.”⁸

This is the nature of the crisis, which is not primarily economic. It has to do with the foundations. It is therefore clear that we need to recognize that, “in terms of the underlying anthropological issues, what is right and may be given the force of law is in no way simply self-evident today. The question of how to recognize what is truly right and thus to serve justice when framing laws has never been simple, and today in view of the vast extent of our knowledge and our capacity, it has become still harder.”⁹ Without the clear awareness that what is at stake is the evidence of those foundations, the absence of which would make stable coexistence impossible, we distract ourselves in the debate over the consequences, forgetting that their origin lies elsewhere, as we have seen. Regaining the foundations is of the utmost urgency for us.

Responding to this urgency does not mean returning to a religious state or to a Europe that is based on Christian laws—a sort of new edition of the Holy Roman Empire—as if this were the only possibility to defend the person, his freedom, and his reason. That would be against the very nature of Christianity. “As a religion of the persecuted, and as a universal religion, … [Christianity] denied the government the right to consider religion as part of the order of the state, thus stating the principle of the liberty of faith.” Therefore, it is important to add that “where Christianity, contrary to its own nature, had unfortunately become mere tradition and the religion of the state … it was and remains the merit of the Enlightenment to have drawn attention afresh to these original Christian values and to have given reason back its own voice.”¹⁰ Therefore, what is necessary is not to return to a time gone by, but rather to undertake a path in which true dialogue about foundations is possible.

Given these new conditions, where can we begin again?

Man’s Heart Does Not Surrender

Despite all of the prodigious attempts to set man aside, to reduce the needs of his reason (by reducing the scope of his question) and the urgency of his freedom (which cannot help but express itself in his every move as a desire for fulfillment), man’s heart continues to beat, irreducible. We can discover this in the most varied efforts—sometimes confused, but no less dramatic and somehow sincere—that contemporary Europeans make to attain that fullness that they cannot help but desire, fullness that sometimes hides beneath contradictory disguises.

An example can help us understand the nature of the problem, the reductions with which we normally live reason and freedom. “Tonight,” a friend writes me,

I went to dinner with two high school classmates of mine who are engaged and living together. After dinner we sat and talked for a while, and the topic of whether or not to have children came up. My friend said, ‘I will never bring a child into this world. Where would I get the courage to condemn another wretch to unhappiness? I will not take on that responsibility.’ Then he added, ‘I’m afraid of my freedom. At best it’s useless, and at worst I can only cause someone harm. What I expect from life is to try to do the least damage possible.’ We talked for a long time, and they told me about a great many fears they have, and about how at this point they feel that they can’t hope for anything more from life. And they are just 26 years old.”

Behind the refusal to have children lies nothing but the fear of freedom, or perhaps the fear of losing freedom understood in a reduced way, that is, the fear of giving up oneself and one’s own space. But how much will that set of fears that paralyzes the young man described in the letter determine his life? To talk about “great convictions” is to talk about the foundations, that is, the foothold that makes the experience of freedom possible, makes freedom from fear possible, and allows reason to look at reality in a way that does not suffocate us.

This episode demonstrates that “the bewilderment about the ‘fundamentals of life’” does not eliminate questions. Rather, it makes them more acute, as Cardinal Angelo Scola says: “What is sexual difference; what is love; what does it mean to procreate and to educate; why should we work; why may a pluralistic civil society be richer than a monolithic society; how can we meet one another to reciprocally build a working communion among all Christian communities and the good life in civil society; how can we renew finance and the economy; how can we face the fragilities of illness and death, and moral fragility; how can we seek justice; how can we constantly learn and share the needs of the poor? All of this must be re-written in our times, reconsidered and, therefore, re-lived.”¹¹ Rewritten, reconsidered, and therefore relived.

This is the nature of the provocation addressed to us by the crisis in which we are immersed. “A crisis,” Hannah Arendt wrote, “forces us back to the questions themselves and requires from us either new or old answers, but in any case direct judgments. A crisis becomes a disaster only when we respond to it with preformed judgments, that is, prejudices. Such an attitude not only sharpens the crisis but makes us forfeit the experience of reality and the opportunity for reflection it provides.”¹²

Therefore, rather than being a pretext for complaints and closure, all of these problematic points in European coexistence represent a grand occasion to discover or rediscover the great convictions that can ensure this coexistence. That these great convictions may fade should not surprise us. Benedict XVI reminds us of the reason. “Incremental progress” is possible only in the material sphere. In the field of “ethical awareness and moral decision-making, there is no similar possibility of accumulation for the simple reason that man’s freedom is always new and he must always make his decisions anew. These decisions can never simply be made for us in advance by others—if that were the case, we would no longer be free. Freedom presupposes that, in fundamental decisions, every person and every generation is a new beginning.” The ultimate reason for which a new beginning is always necessary is that the very nature of the evidence of those convictions is different from that of “material inventions. The moral treasury of humanity is not readily at hand like tools that we use; it is present as an appeal to freedom and a possibility for it.”¹³

But what are these “fundamental decisions” about?

The Focus Is Always Man and His Fulfillment

Behind every human effort there is a cry for fulfillment. Listening to this cry is in no way taken for granted; it is the first choice of freedom. Rilke reminds us of the temptation to hush it up, which is always lurking within us: “And all things conspire to keep silent about us, half out of shame perhaps, half as unutterable hope.”¹⁴

Those who do not give in to this temptation find themselves seeking forms of fulfillment, but are always exposed to the risk of taking shortcuts that seem to let them reach this goal more quickly and in a more satisfying way. This is what we see today, for example, in the attempt to obtain fulfillment through so-called new rights. The discussion that has grown up around them shows what the debate about foundations means and what its possible outcomes are.

Since the mid-1970s, the “new rights” have become increasingly numerous, with a strong acceleration in the last fifteen or twenty years. Their origin is that same yearning for liberation that was the soul of the 1960s protest movement—it was not by chance that abortion was legalized for the first time in 1973 in the United States, and laws regarding divorce and abortion began to appear in Europe around the same time, as well. Today we hear about the right to marriage and adoption for same-sex couples, the right to have a child, the right to one’s own gender identity, the rights of transsexuals, the right of an unhealthy child not to be born, the right to die, … The list goes on and on.

Many people feel these new rights to be an affront, a true attack on the values on which Western—and particularly European—civilization has been founded for centuries. To say it better: these new rights exert a great attraction on many people—and, for this reason, they spread very easily—while others fear them as factors of the destruction of society. The deepest social rifts and most intense political controversies are today created around these themes of “public ethics,” not only in Italy but in all of Europe and around the worl...