The Origin of New Knowledge
Julián Carrón - Notes from a conversation between a group of Spanish leaders of Communion and Liberation and Julián Carrón.
Ignacio Carbajosa: what allows us to recover a new judgment that embraces all of reality? Where can the light come from to judge everything that’s happening in Spain these days? “The starting point of the Christian is an Event. The starting point for others is a certain impression of things” (“Event and Responsibility,” Tracce, no. 4/1998, p. III), said Don Giussani, as Julián Carrón reminded us at the Beginning Day in Madrid on October 1st. “But for this to become the starting point,” Carrón added, “the Event must be happening now, and it must be more powerful than the impression that things make on me.”
On that same day, a referendum on the independence of Catalonia was taking place, illegally called by the regional government in revolt against the central government. The police intervention, in compliance with the judges’ order to prevent the opening of polling stations, broadcast images of clashes and violence. The news was confused and contradictory. The whole of Spanish society was shaken by a great tension, in which feelings of sadness and indignation were mixed.
This was the topic of conversation during the lunch that followed Carrón’s lesson. On this occasion, one of the diners, who works in a school in rural Catalonia—a strongly pro-independence area—told the story of what happened to one of his students at the start-of-year day for high school students, held the previous day in Madrid (see the leaflet titled “The Possibility of an Authentic Dialogue,” written by the CL high school students in Spain).
One girl stood up in front of two hundred and fifty students and said: “I am an independentist. I have my reasons for being so, but I’m not just an independentist. And these days, in fact, I constantly ask myself who I am. I’m sorry that they call me a ‘separatist,’ as if that’s all I am. However, there is one thing I know with absolute certainty: that I want to be loved above all this.
And I’m very sorry to feel constantly judged.” Then she shared her experience from the previous weeks, weighed down by prejudice in the separatist environment where she lives—prejudice about “Madrid.” Yet she decided to leave her city and come to Madrid on a day as significant as October 1st, the day of the “referendum for self-determination.” Some of her family members spent the weekend locked in a polling station to prevent the police from closing it and stopping the vote on Sunday.
What powerful reason moved her? The young woman continued her story: “Today I am here, far from Barcelona, because my friendship with a friend from Madrid helped me wake up, get out of my skepticism, and judge everything we’re going through. It’s helping me live and understand myself.”
The night before, after their long journey, the group of Catalan students had been welcomed at a parish in Madrid. They arrived at the place “where they always say we’re oppressed,” a little afraid of how “the other kids would look at us.” During dinner, something unexpected happened: a hug for each one of them, a unity born from a single heart that desires, suffers, and searches. It moved her so much that she found herself thinking: “If only my parents were here! If only all my friends could see this!” She concluded her speech by saying: “After these days with you, after what I’ve heard about my heart, my desire, and Christ, I can no longer say I’m different from you. I am one with you.”
At that moment, Carrón leapt from his chair, exclaiming: “It’s the event happening again!” And so the conversation continued.
Julián Carrón. Only the Christian event, when it happens, has the power to change what we have already considered impossible, as in this case. What else can we say about the current situation? What other judgment can we start from? We must look at what happened to this girl. We have to look at the fact, because otherwise we don’t understand what’s going on.
We simply don’t see. And Christianity is reduced to pure ideology. It may be theoretically perfect, but it’s still ideology.
For this reason, either we start from the event that has touched us, or we don’t get out of the impasse. Because it won’t be a dialectic, a speech, or a line of reasoning that pulls us out of the swamp. In the last few weeks, you’ve heard analyses and arguments of all kinds, but—as you well know—they’ve only increased the confusion.
It seems crucial to me to see how what you said at the Beginning Day challenges this confusion.
Carrón. On many occasions, it feels to us like “facts,” such as the one just described, are too fragile. We think something else would have a bigger impact—something capable of convincing lots of people and instantly generating widespread agreement.
Yet, in John and Andrew, something had already started to happen, and they barely even noticed it. Jesus won them over little by little. But there was something there that turned out to be more decisive than anything else. And it changed history.
What you’re saying suggests a conversion in us who are here too. I’ve spent two weeks that left my legs trembling: because of the images you see, what you read, what you hear. Evil doesn’t leave you unchanged, and the evil we’re witnessing sends shivers down your spine.
Carrón: That’s why silence is essential. Without silence, confusion takes over. Silence isn’t just an add-on; creating silence means waging a battle between the fact and the images, the event and our impressions, so that the fact can come out on top. But this takes effort—both from ourselves and with others. We need to guide people into the work required to keep our more instinctive reactions from dominating.
Otherwise, each person’s impression overshadows the event itself. It’s obvious that the impressions things leave on us seem “statistically” more powerful than the event—like what you mentioned about the girl. But the feelings stirred up by the things around us don’t carry the power, intensity, or truth of what she shared with us. It’s like how everything happening in the human context around Jesus didn’t have the depth or scope of what was unfolding in John and Andrew—something no one else understood at the time.
We either let ourselves be shaken by the event that happens again, or we all turn into Kantians, quietly assuming that facts can’t lead to truth—that they can’t hold a universal truth. But in that girl’s experience, we see the opposite: the event she went through (meeting her friend from Madrid, the embrace she felt over these two days here) brought her to a universal truth that connects to her family, her friends, and even history. Recognizing this fact as something to follow—as a method—requires a totally unique shift in awareness. By doing this, amidst all the confusion, we’ll begin to take on a truly original stance, one that lets us engage with everyone.
Outside of this approach, all that’s left is debate. Nothing new there: the urge to “crush” the other takes over. But that’s old news—we’ve seen it before: wiping the other off the face of the earth to prop ourselves up. We’ve already been through a Civil War and seen its results—what do we expect to gain by chasing that logic again?
I’d like to share a question a friend asked me. I have my own opinion on it, but I’d love to hear your take, to get your “stamp of approval”...
Carrón: Forget about it! This is something we need to clear up, or else we won’t grasp what the Christian experience really is. We often think of it as split: on one side, there’s my personal experience, and on the other, there’s an authority that comes to confirm whether my experience is true. No! Maybe we still haven’t understood the first chapter of The Religious Sense: the ultimate criterion for judgment is within us. So, each person has the ability to recognize the truth; they don’t need any confirmation outside their own experience. If the criterion came from outside, we’d all be alienated.
Of course, each of us has the responsibility to uphold the original criteria that belong to our humanity; otherwise, like everyone else, we accept dependence on an external, alienating standard, surrendering to mere reactivity or flattening ourselves to others’ judgments. Imagine applying what we’re saying to John and Andrew: who could they have turned to for confirmation of the experience they were living? Not Jesus, because the judgment was precisely about Him...
Regarding the Pharisees.
Carrón: "Think about the Pharisees, the Sanhedrin, Pilate, Herod, and the Roman Empire. Clearly, they wouldn’t have given them any confirmation. And if they had relied on that, Christianity wouldn’t exist."
"Okay, I’ve heard this before..."
Carrón: "Yes, you’ve heard it, but I don’t want to let this moment slip by without us realizing what’s really at stake here. Because either the way we judge truth is truly within us, or the very essence of our faith vanishes right in front of us. What’s on the line is whether the human heart can recognize truth. Sure, it can’t make it up, but it knows it the moment it encounters it. Honestly, without the Event [of Christ], you don’t even know what you’re really longing for. You only figure that out when it happens. We can stand up to anyone precisely because of this shared experience. Don Giussani teaches us that faith is something you live right now, and its truth is proven by that very experience—no outside approval required. I don’t need anybody telling me what’s true. When you go shoe shopping, you don’t need the salesperson to tell you which pair fits your foot: you try them on, and your foot lets you know. Otherwise, the salesperson might rip you off and sell you some ill-fitting shoes they can’t unload on anyone else. Watch out! We often raise our kids assuming they don’t naturally have what it takes to spot the truth or figure out if what they’re experiencing is real or not. As a result, our ability to educate them is basically zero: we don’t push them or spark that full, heartfelt engagement—their whole self—so they can really experience things. This is huge when it comes to education.
So, on this journey, in this experience, where does authority fit in?"
Carrón: A member of Memores Domini says to me, "Can I tell you something?" And to challenge her, I say, "Why are you asking me?" The house leader says, "Because you’re the authority," as if to say, "She tells her story, but only when the authority confirms it can she be sure." I reply, "No, the authority is within her, within the experience she’s had." Now, if John and Andrew hadn’t met Jesus, they wouldn’t have had that experience of their hearts being deeply touched; but no matter how much "authority" Jesus had, without that inner experience of their hearts being met, they wouldn’t have followed Him—they couldn’t have reasonably followed Him. The authority came from outside, but they recognized it because of something inside them. Ultimately, the authority you follow isn’t just some external thing; it’s what makes you experience such a deep connection that it becomes authoritative from within your own experience. Otherwise, anyone could force you to believe them just by claiming authority. There are plenty of crazy people who say they’re Napoleon, but they have no authority over you. And some random person on the street can’t just say, "I’ll explain it to you because you’re incapable of understanding reality." Even in the movement, there are people who say, "I’ll explain it to you." The real educational challenge is at this level, because there’s always someone who wants to tell you how things are, someone who knows more than you—or claims to. It’s an insane level of arrogance!
Yeah, okay, but I can have an experience and still run into contradictions."
Carrón: "Perfect. Now, try to view those contradictions or objections in light of what you’ve just said. The girl you mentioned earlier hasn’t finished her journey. Tomorrow, when she goes back home and to her environment, she’ll be bombarded by ideology again..."
"She just wrote to me, saying exactly this: ‘I’m afraid of what will happen tomorrow.’"
Carrón: "The real issue isn’t being scared of what comes next, but whether she’s truly grasped what she went through and what she acknowledged the day before, while she was here. It’s not about Monday, when you have to deal with your surroundings; it’s about Sunday, whether you experienced something real and acknowledged it. The issue is the truth of what you experienced ‘the day before.’"
"In the craziness of these past few weeks, one thing that’s really hit me hard is realizing that Christ doesn’t promise we’ll all see eye to eye on every little detail of life. I used to think the opposite, like everything should just change instantly to fit what I think is right."
Carrón: "This is extremely important. When Nueva Tierra became part of CL, I recall what some moms of the young people at the time said to me. Their kids would come home all happy, but the parents would tell me, ‘Sure, but my son doesn’t help out at home, doesn’t study, doesn’t care about the family.’ Just because the event is all-encompassing doesn’t mean it produces results right away; it takes time.
The girl we’re discussing has experienced what she needed to, but this isn’t the finish line, and she hasn’t thrown in the towel; now she needs to test whether what she saw and acknowledged can withstand the tests of time, her surroundings, and life itself. Naturally, she’ll be pressured by all the arguments she’ll hear from those around her—friends, family—and she’ll need to weigh them against her own experience. When the Pope talks about starting processes, this is exactly what he means. We’re at the start of a journey that takes time."
I'd like to dig deeper into what you're saying. When I realize that the Lord doesn’t come to clarify everything for me but to allow me to journey through difficulties, many people—especially in the context of the Catalan crisis—respond: “Yes, but the intelligence of faith is the intelligence of reality, so it should lead you to say something certain about all the details. And on the Catalan issue, we need to speak the truth.”
Carrón: But what truth can be spoken in this case? What can you say about reality? “Forgive them, for they know not what they do”: that’s the truth, the judgment Jesus made before those crucifying him. That’s the cultural novelty, as we saw in the experience of the prisoner humiliated during a search, who doesn’t retaliate against the guards: he understands they treated him badly because they haven’t had the grace of the encounter he had. The difference in his reaction was made possible by Christ’s presence in his life. With all the consequences!
It’s clear we affirm that the intelligence of faith implies an intelligence of reality. However, it’s not true that the leaflet you wrote in Catalonia doesn’t reach that point; it reaches as far as it can in this precise historical moment. The miraculous experience of unity among you, sparked by Christ, has generated a different way of seeing the problem everyone faces. Once again, it’s the start of a process. But what the girl testified to us carries a promise of change that’s the only hope for Catalonia. To cite a great precedent, the problem of slavery begins to be resolved when St. Paul writes from prison to Philemon, asking him to welcome Onesimus, his runaway slave, as a son. Who was St. Paul, what was that gesture in the face of all the laws of the Roman Empire?
I’ve mentioned this example many times in recent weeks to show the potential of certain events that happen among us.
But most people say: “Yes, but it’s not enough, we need to ‘judge,’ to speak the truth without half measures.”
Carrón: We need to understand why they take that position. It lacks recognition of man’s historical situation and the journey of experience necessarily involved in discovering the truth. Look at Jesus: he could have crushed those who were taking him to the cross, he could have struck them down. Instead? He said to the Father: “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Is that speaking the truth or speaking falsely? Is it a true judgment or not? Why does Jesus say this? In that moment, something is happening that only Jesus understands: He grasps the historical situation of those before him, he’s aware that if they don’t open up to something greater, they can’t understand what he’s doing; it’s impossible for them to understand.
In the demand for a judgment that “must be made,” the judgment is often conceived as a-historical, as if there were an abstract man, in general, outside of history, who is its recipient. But the only man who exists is the concrete man, the man shaped by a specific history. There are people who have had the fortune of knowing Christianity, and others who have not. For some, Christianity is a present fact; for others, it is not. There are no other men “in general” outside of these; everything else is a chimera. Jesus speaks with the men before him, the historical men of his time. And these men, because they did not understand who his Father was—since they had not experienced the encounter that Andrew and John had, they had not experienced the Christian event—could not realize what he was doing nor, ultimately, the gravity of what they were doing.
Does that mean that this judgment is full of the desire that they might come to understand?
Carrón: Obviously! If Jesus didn’t have that desire, why would he have given his life? He was giving his life for that very reason. In that moment, he could have said, “Even now, as I’m giving my life for you, you don’t realize?” Instead, even then, he doesn’t reproach them. Because he knew it would be an abstract, a-historical reproach.
This is liberating. If we don’t understand this, we commit an injustice in the name of the “judgment that must be made,” because we judge others as if they had known the Christian event, showing that we’re not aware of the novelty introduced by the encounter with Christ: a cognitive novelty, not primarily an ethical one. We’re not aware of the cognitive impact of the encounter.
We take everything for granted. If we realized that we can live and interpret reality as we do only because of the grace of Christ that has entered our lives, we would look at others considering the conditions they’re in and what they need to come to understand. How often do we commit total injustice in the name of “judgment”! Therefore, it’s not enough to say, “We need judgment.” I’m not saying we shouldn’t judge; the problem is whether the judgment is truthful, whether it takes into account the historical man and all the conditionings he undergoes by being in history. Otherwise, the judgment I make becomes false.
That’s why St. Paul says, “Do not judge before the time” (1 Corinthians 4:5), because we don’t have all the elements. It’s a matter of reason, of how we conceive reason: “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” as Shakespeare says in Hamlet.
So don’t be surprised if you find yourselves facing many who don’t understand. If you’ve been given the ability to understand, it’s because you’ve been touched by a certain encounter—you’ve experienced the power of the facts that Christ brings about among us (like the example of the girl or the unity you share). Otherwise, to draw a comparison, it would be as if Abraham had gone to God to complain: “You gave me these people so they would understand, so they would grasp the reality of things, yet they keep living as they always have—they don’t get it at all!” How would God have answered him? “I know full well: that’s exactly why I called you, so that something would start happening right before their eyes!” If we fail to recognize God’s method, we end up frustrated with those who don’t understand, even when they’re our friends. We need to start grasping God’s approach: He calls one person to reach the others. The key is that He has touched that one.
One who has a greater awareness…
Carrón: The same awareness as God, through the experience of faith. And here we see if we are certain, if we have a certainty from which we can judge. I ask myself, is this the origin of certain “cultural positions”? Often, people start from the opposite, from an existential uncertainty. And this uncertainty is certainly not capable of changing reality. This is where faith comes into play. It’s as if we want to somehow modify the horizon of God’s plan; in fact, we think: “The way must be different, more impactful; God’s way is too slow.” Maybe it’s worth considering that we might be the ones who are wrong! The issue is that we don’t understand or accept God’s method; we don’t realize what two thousand years of Christian history and our own personal history have documented. We think that God is a bit naive and that we need to give Him a hand because, by following His way, reality doesn’t change. From here, it’s a short step to the idea of hegemony—as a way to ensure a real and tangible impact...
At first glance, it seems like a harsh judgment, because some of us, when we talk about the intelligence of reality, start with a desire to arrive at a judgment that digs into the details, one that leads to the truth. The problem is that we’re taking for granted what the intelligence of faith actually is. The beauty of the current situation lies in this: someone who claims to make a judgment about reality, saying it stems from the intelligence of faith, ends up with a judgment that’s at odds with that of another CL member living in a different region.
Carrón: How often is this so-called judgment not shaped by faith at all, but by a political stance! We talk about judgment, but it’s really just a political choice already decided beforehand, based on reasons that don’t come from the event of Christ happening in the present moment, but are pulled from somewhere else. We speak of reaching the truth, but what do we even mean by "truth"? Most of the time, this truth is just a collection of doctrines, a bundle of “notions” we think we already possess and then apply to situations whenever it suits us.
In reality, we take the intelligence of faith for granted and then derive truths (the intelligence of reality) from another source.
Carrón: It’s obvious. Even Kant went down the same path. So, what we often identify as Christianity is really just a form of Kantianism: a set of universal values affirmed independently of their historical foundation, which is Christ. I used to say this to my students many years ago: “What you call Christianity is just Kant.” Today, I say it with even more conviction.
Often, in the name of Giussani, we’re accused of not judging.
Carrón: This is the ongoing debate. But, be careful—it’s not that I, or the movement, don’t judge. The issue is that I judge differently. Jesus judges differently. When he says, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do,” isn’t he judging? He’s making a judgment. And when he goes to Zacchaeus’ house, he’s making a judgment about Zacchaeus; the same with the Samaritan woman and the sinful woman.
But His judgment does not align with the dominant moralism of that time, nor does it coincide with the dominant Kantianism of today. And this is where the problem arises. As becomes evident with Pope Francis: every day he makes judgments, but his judgments do not align with the common mentality. What Giussani fought against was the dominant mentality, in which we are immersed to the core…
Someone went so far as to tell me that our statement on the situation in Catalonia is a clear example of emptiness, failure, and the movement's inability to express a judgment or have a cultural presence. I have always insisted that it is a text written together by people with completely different political opinions, and that what distinguishes it from what happens elsewhere in Catalan society is that, despite their differing opinions, they are united. And for this reason, it is a miracle that we must make clear to everyone.
Carrón: Don’t waste time arguing. Let everyone verify the judgment they make in reality, let them experience it firsthand! Let each person test their judgment, their opinions, with work colleagues, on Facebook, with friends, and in the family! Then we’ll see if it meets the full challenge that the problem presents. If the truth of a position or a judgment isn’t evident in experience, it won’t convince anyone—not even if a dead man rose again, as Jesus said in the parable of the rich man.
What we are observing also shows us how to guide the movement. The newness might not happen in us; it might happen in others—like a high school student, for instance, as we’ve seen. All we need to do is follow the “fact” wherever it occurs. This is what being responsible means. I’m not asking you to make it happen in yourselves—that wouldn’t even make sense—I’m asking you to follow what happens, where it happens, and in whom it happens.
When Giussani started following the “unpresentable” members of the CLU in Milan in the 1970s, shocking many in the movement, he made a choice. Many at the time asked, “How can he follow these unpresentable university students?” For Giussani, this choice was the way to lead the movement at that moment. He wasn’t making an arbitrary or “authoritarian” judgment just because he could; no, he was obeying, following what the Mystery was bringing about. That’s the key issue.
Because if we don’t follow what happens, what Someone Else does, who decides which path we should take? We’ll end up trying to reach an agreement and seek consensus. And we’ll call that “communion.” You can call it consensus, compromise, or whatever you want, but it will just be politics. And I’d be the first to step out of that game.
I have a question. You say that it is necessary to show these facts, like the one that started our dialogue, because only through facts can words be understood. At the Beginning Day, you cited the letter of a person who, while remaining faithful to all the gestures, has nevertheless lost joy and lives in formalism. In the end, you concluded by saying that the difference between ideology and tradition is that memory must live from a present event—that is, we must be contemporary with the event where it occurs. But the boy in the letter could have said he was contemporary because he was here. So, what is the difference?
Carrón. The difference is whether this contemporary fact is completely decisive, as in the case of the student, to the point that it leads you to broaden your perspective. For this reason, at the end of the lesson, I said that only those who are willing to let themselves be determined by the reoccurrence of the event of Christ can see all the dimensions of faith being born, precisely starting from this newness.
If a gesture of the movement does not have as its ultimate purpose that of giving rise to the appeal to the memory of Christ, the only result it achieves is to make life more complicated. One can participate in everything, and nothing is useful to him. But it is a reduction of the Christian experience. How can one adhere to all the gestures without this determining him? "Be careful, we can go to School of Community, we can go to Mass... and all this is not enough," Giussani said. I am saying the same thing. But when it happens, it is because for us the life of the movement has been reduced to a mechanism: we place our trust in participating in a mechanism.
Father Giussani created the movement precisely because the mechanism of participation in the life of the Church in the 1950s, with thriving Catholic associations and full parishes, did not generate a mature subject in faith for whom faith was relevant to life. At Berchet, he found people who had distanced themselves from the faith after a few years of attending the parish. They had grown up in Christian families: catechism, confirmation, youth groups, everything.
But all of that had generated nothing in them. That’s why Giussani tells us: “Be careful, because the same thing can happen to us.” And he invented the movement precisely by appealing to experience, to the need to verify the relevance of faith to the demands of life.
It’s important to understand that we run the risk of repeating the path of the Milanese Church in the 1950s. At that time, there was no heterodox position; no truth in the Ambrosian tradition or in the surroundings of Milan was questioned, but faith had stopped being communicated due to a formalism that today is recognized by everyone. And what did Giussani propose as a method to counter this? He could have started by giving a catechism lesson. Instead, he challenged the experience of the young people in front of him and proposed the “radius.”
The GS members prepared the agenda and distributed it in the classrooms; then, during the radius, they only spoke based on their experience. Giussani would say: “I don’t care about what you think; just talk about your experience.” He wanted to avoid formalism, to prevent someone from joining GS in a formalistic way. And since this had dramatic aspects—because those leading the radius were there without knowing in which direction it would develop—some leaders would say to him: “Why don’t you send us a trace of the radius?” as if to say: “Why don’t you give me the speech so that I, as an adult, can comment on it and not have to wait here to see where the sign or suggestion comes from?” And Giussani: “Not a chance!”
Today, we adults can conduct the School of Community by simply commenting on a text: this way, we avoid talking about life, we don’t have to speak about experience, and we don’t have to answer the questions people have. But this allows formalism to creep in and spread among us.
On the contrary, if one does the School of Community well, it’s impossible to arrive at the meeting without a question or to leave without a broadened judgment. Once, during School of Community, we were talking about hope. One person intervened, saying: “I have no hope.” He was referring to a problematic situation he was experiencing at home. He had done everything he could to resolve it, and it had been a failure. And he said to me: “I have no hope that anything can change.”
Up to that point, I would have accepted it. But the problem was what he said next: “I’ve read the School of Community, and nothing has changed.” So I replied: “You haven’t even done a minute of School of Community, because School of Community says the opposite. You’re confusing your capacity for hope with your ability to solve things, to change things. Whereas Giussani affirms that the reason, the starting point of hope, is what faith has recognized. If, when facing the problem of Catalonia, our hope is that tomorrow we can change something, we’re already starting out defeated. If, on the other hand, the starting point is what we recognized in that girl we were talking about earlier, we have all the hope in the world.”
When you finished your lesson this morning, I said to myself: we truly are the object of a preference.
Because you come here carrying all the anxiety caused by the situation in Catalonia, by your home, your children—you arrive here with all your needs—and there’s a moment when all of that is still there, but something else matters more, something else takes over. That’s what interests me. And within this shift to something else, this morning you said something beautiful about the data and the images. I realize that this week I wasted time looking at the images, the newspapers about Catalonia. What stood out was just an impression. In response to this, you say: if you don’t have a space to let what we’re saying settle, it’s all just small talk.
Something has to happen right before our eyes, but if you don’t see it… You have to stand before the student; otherwise, you just keep going with your own schemes.
Carrón. Exactly. The student is the first point to start from: it’s the fact that fills me with silence. The silence is full of this fact because it’s astonishing that it happens. If we don’t feel the need for silence, we shouldn’t blame it on a lack of piety: it means that nothing has happened to suddenly make us fall silent.
This summer, a university student, at a leaders’ meeting, was recounting an encounter during the community vacation with a very well-known person. He was leading the event and realized that both he and the invited person—who said so explicitly in front of everyone—came out of it different from how they had entered, so great was the intensity of the encounter. And he said: “This can only be explained by the fact that He is present: He is, if He is working.” That university student said that usually, when such meetings ended, he would go for a beer with friends to discuss what had happened. But that time, it wasn’t possible: “I needed silence.” A university student, due to the impact of the reality of what happens, recognizes Christ, and this fills him with silence, without interruption. The question is whether we have the patience to educate people like this, who do not live fragmented lives. Otherwise, silence will be an addition for devout men, for those who have nothing else to do.
Help me face the objective evil I see these weeks. The whole problem we’re living through is generating evil, an objective damage among friends, in families, with expressions of hatred and reactive positions. This causes me a lot of pain. Evil exists, it hurts, and we should be able to say: “This is evil.”
Carrón. One thing here is decisive: how do we react to this evil? God would have all the tools in His hands to prevent evil, and He doesn’t. And this scandalizes us. Does it mean that God cares less about this circumstance, or rather that He knows our reactions don’t generate the response, don’t move the other? Do we think God is naive because He claims to change the world by dying on the cross? Or rather that He is the only one who doesn’t let Himself be drawn into the spiral of violence?
Evil hurts, as you say, it opens wounds; indeed, it hurts. So, what do we do? What have we seen in Jesus? In Him, evil does not win; the wound inflicted on Him by evil did not lead Him to hatred or violence. He didn’t even say: “It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t hurt that much,” but: “Forgive them, for they know not what they do,” “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me.” He didn’t have to sugarcoat evil or look the other way to make this statement. Once you have recognized: “This is evil,” what makes it possible for evil not to win in you? In Jesus, evil did not win because of His relationship with the Father. If we don’t look at how evil did not win in Jesus, we actually enter the same spiral that led to the Civil War. Or that can lead to an even more radical division.
It’s like arguing about who started it first. It’s useless; it doesn’t help.
Carrón. Exactly.
Even if you’re completely right, it’s useless.
Carrón. The issue is this: for the other person to take a step forward, I have to present them with something that is absolutely more fascinating than “their” reason—just like what happened with the student you mentioned earlier. If she hadn’t seen what took place here over the past few days, she would have been another one of those people overwhelmed by ideology, tempted by violence despite herself. The key question is whether something happens—an event—that proves more decisive than ideology. To us, this seems naive; it feels insignificant compared to all the propaganda these young people have been bombarded with for months, because those in power have a propaganda machine that completely overshadows us...
The propaganda is brutal.
Carrón. It’s brutal, yes, but it challenges us even more to grasp what Giussani means when he says that the tougher the times, the more it becomes the time of the person. It’s a cultural challenge for those of us who think the only alternative is a counter-attack of equal force. Let’s make up our minds: either Giussani is totally out of touch with reality—that is, completely naive in saying what he says — or he’s the only one who truly believes in the self, in the idea that the self isn’t defined by the historical circumstances that come before it (in the case of that Catalan girl, by the ideology she’s been steeped in for years), but by the awareness she has of herself, sparked by the Christian event, just like that girl...
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