Student Youth (1954/55 - 1964/65) 

By the mid-fifties, on the one hand Italian society was striving for an ideological-political commitment that proved to be unmindful of the sacrifices of the Resistance; on the other hand, the principle of freedom of conscience was being affirmed, whereby young people were not called to verify their own cultural tradition but had to document the most diverse types of thoughts before they could reach an objective truth. In such a climate, Fr. Giussani came to realize, as he was talking to some young people during a train journey, that they were deeply ignorant of the Church. From then on, he decided to devote himself to bringing the Christian presence back to Italian schools, starting with the Berchet High School in Milan.

In those years, the Church itself did not understand how important the problem of education was, and moved forward on the grounds of mass participation in Catholic worship. Even mass events of the Catholic associations often turned out to be superficial gestures, forgetful of their roots, with no educational value. When Fr. Giussani remarked on such criticism he was opposed by some Catholic leaders, but others supported his attempt to introduce a method of education.

Intolerance towards Christianity became stronger in secular culture, and professors used to preach an anti-Christian thought by facing religion with a preconceived attitude. Secularists in the fifties advocated a full-fledged anti-Catholic crusade. On the other hand, Christian teachers supported the separation of temporal and religious power, and this happened precisely in Milan, on the premises of the Catholic University. Fr. Giussani wondered why Catholic associationism had no cultural incidence on the environments of daily life such as factories, offices and schools. He noticed that faith at school, even among those who belonged to Catholic associations, did not become Christian mentality. His attempt was to remedy this crisis by bringing Christian presence back into the ambits of everyday life and taking “Student Youth” as a starting point. Initially, this name denoted the women’s youth group of Catholic Action, opposed to the men’s group known as the “Student Movement” because each of these two sectors provided for a particularized treatment of souls in relation to sex, age, and profession. This kind of pedagogy immediately appeared to Fr. Giussani to be in contradiction with the unitary character of the person, because the ideal to attain is the realization of the human experience and not the very aspects of human beings such as femininity, virility or professionalism. Thus, the initiative of Student Youth started from the fusion of these two structures.

At the Berchet school, a group of boys called the Communists always gathered on one of the landings in the staircase, and Fr. Giussani wondered why Christians were not capable of that same unity; so he stopped four boys and asked why no one at school could notice they were Christians. From then onward, there were no topics more hotly debated as much as the Church. Before this fact, the courage to announce the substance of the Christian proposal was lacking—announcing Christ is the essence of the Christian fact, and this is lived out in a life of community, in the Church. Fr. Giussani’s project was not something elitist, but an attempt to address human problems from a Christian point of view.

It soon became obvious how adhering to the announcement of Christ was the grace in which you were called to bring your own freedom into play. So Student Youth, also known as GS, attracted young people because their humanity was taken seriously and encouraged; there were no political goals, but they were fighting for freedom of education.

In years when the Church was spending a great deal of money to equip parish centers with facilities that would attract young people, but then without offering them a real proposal of life in the oratories, GS proposed first of all the decision to live the Fact of Christ as decisive for existence. Secondly, they suggested joining together so that that decision would be understood and be meaningful to those who adhered to it. GS soon became a mass reality in numbers not only in Milan, and secularists were disturbed that there was an increasing Christian awareness within the school. Also new was the fact that the community dimension opened the possibility of learning, and thus making possible, an ethical level that would be impossible to reach for an individual who thinks of himself or herself as alone.

From the start, the locus of verification of the Christian tradition could be found in experience, understood as that complex of original needs and evidences of which the human heart is made.

Some authors served as important cultural inspiration for the ideas supported by GS—Saint Thomas and Saint Augustine, Moeller, Newman, Przywara, Guardini, De Lubac, Péguy, Claudel, Bernanos, Gabriel Marcel. And then again Fr. Primo Mazzolari, Fr. Milani but also, at one point, Gramsci and Lukacs. As to how people were together, everyone was united around Christ in the verification of Saint Paul’s thesis of the Mystical body.

People were invited to conceive of their needs as part of a community by confronting the most authoritative and mature figures; in this sense “il raggio” or “the radius” was the most significant moment. Even the word “radius” originates from the terminology used by Catholic Action—this was when students from Catholic Action prepared a testimony to persuade others to join the association. Instead, GS Radius was a meeting in which every young one was asked to compare themselves with a human problem (suggested by a flyer on the agenda), witnessing their own experience to others. Then finally the most influential person leading the assembly would make a summary of the contributions to answer the questions on the agenda.

The Radius was not simple group psychotherapy because, with the existential reality of the Church as its point of reference, it was the announcement of positivity for the individual. 

But a GS student’s life did not end with the Radius meeting. GS students lived an intense prayer life—reciting the Liturgy of the Hours, going back to Mass and meditating every day on what a book had inspired, also to be able to interact with those who advocated a dominant secularist mentality. Study aid also became a key initiative. A theater—Teatro Tascabile Milanese—started, with religious songwriters. Trips and vacations were privileged times for going deep into the verification of the Christian society that was proposed. Other important gestures were the annual convention at the beginning of the year, the Easter triduum, and finally the spiritual exercises. GS was the first Catholic movement in which the community was not separated by gender, and this caused a stir among traditional associations. The reason why Fr. Giussani came to this, however, was because the prevailing factor was the unity of all in the mystical body of Christ that is the Church, rather than the psychological differences between males and females—from a moral point of view, Fr. Giussani always insisted on the tension towards the ideal rather than drawing a moralistic pattern of what was most suitable for men and women.

GS has always lived three expressive dimensions—culture, charity and mission. Culture understood as an attempt to critically express a life experience in its totality, that is, adhering to truth through evaluation, “Test everything; retain what is good” (Saint Paul). People were educated to the dimension of charity in order to share the needs of others through charitable work, such as helping socially depressed families in the outskirts of Milan. The missionary dimension was supported by the common fund—every young one paid a tithe, attributing to it an educational value, namely that what we have is not only our own but is to share a social need.

Back then, people said GS was totally lacking in political capacity; whereas today the movement is accused of being a mere electoral political reality. But to tell the truth, then as now, CL is exclusively an ecclesial movement with the sole purpose of personal verification of the Christian faith. Political implications, however, became apparent early on when it came to the issue of institute associations—initially people joined, but then they understood they had to dedicate their free time to verify whether or not faith is worth. To become mature, young people must verify a traditional hypothesis that has been proposed to them by adults who have already experienced it; thus, the Christian tradition passes through the authority of the Church, and in the Church young people can verify how Christ responds to their human need. This method of knowledge, starting from a hypothesis about reality, produces in adults a great loyalty that leads them to recognize whether the initial assumption meets their needs. Authority is despotic 1) if it is not respectful of the tradition of those it is facing; 2) when it is not intent on obeying the plan of God. A young person does not follow 1) if he or she does not judge critically; 2) if he or she partially follows the conditions of the proposal.

GS has always opposed student associations that only saw in the state the legitimacy for any experience of basic unity, because it has always seen the state as a mere technical support to a real experience of unity among people. Within student associations, however, there were calls to disregard the Christian identity of GS, thus denying the pluralism at the basis of democracy; after all, GS was not interested in joining an association to become a Catholic majority because the only interest was that the association be based on human values acceptable to all. In the case of the newspaper “La zanzara” and in the debate with the Piccolo Teatro, an attempt was made to provide space within school and cultural bodies for those initiatives that were distant from Marxist and secular radical convictions, such as those of a Catholic nature.

The Crisis (1965-1969)

In 1964-65 Fr. Giussani left Berchet, and a crisis began shortly thereafter that upset CL for quite some time. He was gratified by the promotion to university professor, also because this gave him the opportunity to follow up with students who had come out of high school. The crisis exploded as a result of the waning awareness that Christ is an event and is the only one who can give hope. Those who left GS instead reduced Christianity to a form of social commitment. Then, when 1968 began, the internal crisis worsened; even those in GS who left on a mission to Brazil were part of this generous and activist group that, however, did not understand the religious dimension of the GS experience, and in fact they all eventually went back home from there.

In 1968 Fr. Giussani insisted that we needed to go deeper in developing our Christian identity instead of investing in political militancy. With regard to the ideologies of 1968, GS recognized the cry for freedom against authoritarianism, but also wanted to testify that the way to respond to that need had to start from ecclesial communion. Unfortunately, however, this position was not effective because it lacked adequate cultural development. To make matters worse was the fact that GS leaders, who by then were at the university, went after ideological issues. This momentum was numerically significant, to the point that by the end of the crisis, GS had halved in size. Many later returned, beginning again united in the Church and faithful to the Christian Fact. Following this desire, GS broke away from the Catholic institutions to which they had hitherto been tied, not out of presumption, but because they needed to call back to the heart of Christian dogma; also because, since the leverage of the Italian Catholic University Federation (FUCI) prevailed within Catholic Action, a chance for dialogue vanished for GS. This happened precisely in 1965, the year marking the movement’s official recognition. Disagreements with Catholic Action were due to the fact that the new experience in universities challenged the strict separation of the areas of competence on which the association was based. When FUCI asked GS university students to join the Federation, they refused because FUCI’s type of culture was quite different, and GS students would have caused upheaval as they were very numerous. So, unfortunately, a malevolent prejudice against GS arose, which later turned into a political contrast; as a matter of fact, in those years FUCI viewed the spiritual sphere as distinguished from the temporal one, while GS advocated a thoroughly unitary way of standing.

All those who abandoned the movement during those years for ideological reasons left because they did not share the basic idea that the announcement of the Christian Fact is the beginning of liberation. The movement’s mistakes brought to a distance, but the affection Fr. Giussani felt for his old friends always gave him hope that they would walk together again. This is also because dialogue is an opportunity for correcting the mistakes of the movement itself, since faith is not based on what one does and has done, but on the Mystery of Christ’s presence in the Church.

Communion and Liberation (1970-1975)

In 1969, university students in the movement began to use the term “Communion and Liberation” which eventually replaced the term “Student Youth.” This new name indicated a commitment to the liberation of the world starting from the event of Christian communion, which is born of God made man, bound to the unity of mankind whom He encountered through Baptism. And it is unity in the mystery of Christ that makes this commitment to the liberation of the world possible. One of the key issues was the problem of the relationship between the Church and the world because the unity of Christian experience leads the subject to perceive more than others the totality of factors in reality.

Even the value of parishes should have been missionary, that is, ensuring their presence in all study and work environments. In contrast, in those years parishes were an increasingly constrained world. During the years 1970-75, many Bishops would have liked CL to replace Catholic Action, but Fr. Giussani disagreed with that position, because his only concern was that the authenticity of the Christian event be affirmed, with no inclination to establish his own organization. Rather, Fr. Giussani accused Liberalism and Marxism of being incapable of grasping the religious sense, the only dimension of the whole and real human need. Even in some Christian circles this starting point was often ignored, attempting to solve human problems on the basis of secular criteria. But outside the relationship with Christ there is only resignation. The first dimension to start from is a culture of certainty, the certainty of a common positive destiny—only this way comes respect for all our attempts to walk, with the intention to acknowledge the value of every experience, however risky it may be. The second dimension is charity as the acknowledgment of the love of God for mankind, and thus of the permanence of Christ in the history of the Church. This is why charity urges to achieve unity with all people. Even the missionary dimension has been deepened over the years. It has always seemed clear that mission is not only in distant lands but also here, in everyday life, because faith is given to us so that we can communicate it to others. In fact, though many left the mission in Brazil in the sixties, Pierluigi Bernareggi remained there, becoming a diocesan priest in Belo Horizonte, and a few years later he reorganized our presence there.

It has always appeared evident that the pedagogical experience in CL is a permanent factor in human life and that we can grow mature through a critical comparison with tradition.
The risk involved in such comparison, patience, personal freedom and respect for this freedom are the factors of this pedagogical experience.
In the seventies, even the Church was persuaded of the dominance of secularism. The undisputed development of secularism opened the door for the Italian Communist Party (PCI) to rise, because Leninist Marxism was the extreme coherence of secularist radicalism. In those years, Catholics neglected cultural goals on the basis of an educational development, thus focusing on something else. And while Radicals and Marxists invested in schools, Catholics disregarded all the tools that educate people—cinema, television, the press. The result was that all education in these decades was dominated by Marxism and Radicalism, laden with all their anti-Christian hostility.  Instead, Catholics had the duty to engage, through a conscious ecclesial life, in bearing witness to a popular unity. The interest of the press in the Church was also part of a project of instrumentalization. It is untrue that power was in the hands of the Christian Democrats, because in addition to the Radical and Marxist cultural influence was the support they were offered by big industrial and financial capital.
The accusation of integrism against CL was one of the most frequent; and this was because of the profound unity that the movement viewed in the connection between Church and world. But the profound nature of this view was not understood, which lies in the fact that faith permeates the totality of the person and thus also her actions. What CL aimed at was recognizing the presence of the mystery of Christ among mankind, which finds its visible sign in the unity of believers. The fulcrum of this method is a community led by an authority. The main instrument of this work was school of community, lessons starting from the themes proposed annually by the Italian Bishops Conference (CEI). Everyone was invited to meditate on this daily.

The experience of the Movimento Popolare (Popular Movement) arose because an authentic Christian community tends to have its own idea and method of dealing with human problems; in this sense it also has a political implication. The political involvement of people in the movement is the result of their own personal choice. CL has never delegated militants engaged in politics. Facing the urgency of saving fundamental values, the community evidently calls on those who have this attitude to be politically active. You could join the Movimento Popolare without belonging to CL or vice versa. The Movimento Popolare aimed to bring together people who were willing to fight for the development of traditional values that the Catholic experience makes us sensitive to. It was not a political party, although they thought that its members should join the DC (Christian Democracy) as this seemed the only party that did not deny the values supported by the Movimento Popolare. By joining the DC, CL militants meant to revive the Catholic popular soul of the party.

Comunion and Liberation (1976-1986)

By obedience to the ecclesiastical authority, CL eventually joined the unsuccessful campaign for the referendum on divorce. This gesture of obedience helped the movement become more aware of its Christian identity, and the episcopate realized what forces in the Church were really willing to get involved. The commitment of CL also in the 1975 election campaign led the general public to identify the movement as a political force, attracting reactions from the ultra-left. Between 1975 and 1976, more than one hundred and twenty attacks on CL headquarters were reported, and the offices of the publishing house Jaca Book were devastated.

In 1975 Paul VI called for young people to gather in prayer in St. Peter’s Square, and he noticed that there was a strong presence of members of CL. So he encouraged Fr. Giussani to continue on that path. Yet the tension between the cultural-political and spiritual poles is permanent in the movement. The time when the unity between these two souls is best expressed is the Rimini Meeting.

The movement has also spread abroad, and this expansion is the result of the miracle of personal encounters, because the substance of what matters is an experience that is possible for everyone. But when the experience of the movement is used for a personal political project, this means that a life of communion and a poverty of spirit toward power are lacking. The cultural significance of people’s lives has grown in this decade, and active cultural centers have been consolidated. But we must not lose sight of what the phenomenon of experience means—experience is possible if, in the impact with reality, we become aware of a belonging. In belonging to Another, the “I” opens up to all reality. As Christians become aware of their belonging to Christ, they have a great responsibility to time and history. As for charity, in these ten years more awareness has been gained of the fact that it is a gratuitous sharing of need, in imitation of God’s incarnation. Welcoming Families or AVSI started for this purpose, for example.

With regard to the missionary impetus, it has strengthened since John Paul II invited CL members to go all over the world in 1984, and from there several priests and many students left to start small communities.
Fr. Giussani asserted that he had the role of a father with respect to CL and that those who joined him in the leadership of the movement were called to go deeper than he was capable. As to hierarchy, before other risks he would rather take the one of despotism; and in any case the progress of the Movement is the result of the overall experience of individuals who are committed to communion in the fraternities.

But the further we go in time, the greater is the danger to the freedom of the individual, because the political culture aims to an increasingly growing effective power as the only way to salvation. In order to get out of this situation CL undertakes the task of becoming aware of this cultural confusion. In its struggle against the tyrant, the Church is called to become the salvation of humankind, and therefore CL follows the message of the Pope. Furthermore, in the early eighties, when John Paul II became Pope, he made the relationship between the movement and the Holy See very intense, up to the official recognition of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation. At the root of the Fraternity is a need to be equipped with solid structures on the level of spiritual life and social engagement. Basically, the traits of fraternity groups are: 1) to result from free and spontaneous gathering on the basis of bonds of friendship; 2) to aim at mutually supporting each other in life understood as a path to holiness; 3) each individual group must establish a rule that includes committing to prayer, contributing to the common fund to be destined to the needs of the movement, accepting the guidelines of the central diaconia, and committing to a common work as a specific implementation of the work of the movement.

The Fraternity was conceived precisely as a reminder and stimulus to the responsibility that all adults must have as they organize their lives. An earlier form was created in 1980 by the Abbot of Monte Cassino on the solemnity of Saint Benedict, because CL has always felt its Christian inspiration as close to the Benedictine world and Saint Benedict continues to be an ideal figure for all members of the fraternity. The Rimini Meeting has been another increasingly fundamental event since the eighties. John Paul II pointed out to us that the purpose of the Meeting is to collaborate in building a civilization of truth and love.
During those years, CL communities were also established in foreign countries. In Uganda, for example, the movement became a nationwide phenomenon, as it did in Brazil and Chile. This was no less so in German-speaking countries and the United States, thanks to the presence of professors, students, as well as to the endorsement of influential theologians such as von Balthasar himself. In a similar way CL became widespread in England and Ireland.

As the young people of CL have grown into adults over the years, this has resulted in a boost in numbers of people engaged in educational activities towards young people and particularly in the educational communication of the faith. Experience then confirmed the educational effectiveness of the radius, because the criteria for judging the experiences shared at the radius emerge in our personal engagement with the school of community; and school of community is a catechesis inside which Christian truth provides its own reasons and prompts a verification through a comparison with our personal lives. The movement was born in high schools and universities and until the mid-seventies it struggled to move into the working world. Since the eighties, however, the situation has changed completely.
The “Memores Domini” association also had an unexpected outcome. The growing number of members confirms that this form corresponds to the ideals of faith and consecration to God as it can be lived out in our time. The movement increased in people who were inwardly vigilant and capable of sacrifice, but this number was not equaled by the qualification of many leaders—unfortunately, the most tepid kept the most fervent from accomplishing what they could accomplish.

During this decade Fr. Giussani received much confirmation: 1) Christianity is the only hypothesis capable of liberating mankind by bringing them back to the true meaning of life; 2) to experience the presence of Christ, we need to experience ecclesial communion as a closeness we can existentially encounter; 3) communional faith generates a creative impulse that is translated into works that respond to human need; and 4) we need this faith to continue to come into play in the environment in which we live and work.

As for theology, it must reflect the critical enthusiasm of faith. In this case alone it will be of interest for the life of a Christian. And for this reason, CL has always focused on theologians such as Newman, Moeller, Soloviev, De Lubac, Guardini, and von Balthasar, who were enlightened by this interest in their study to go deep into the self-awareness of their experience of faith in action. Fr. Giussani recommends reading, for those accustomed to studying, De Lubac’s writings on the Church in the Middle Ages; for all others, he recommends the speeches of John Paul II. Of his writings he recommends reading The Religious Sense, The Risk of Education, La coscienza religiosa dell’uomo moderno [The Religious Awareness of Modern Man], and Tracce di esperienza e appunti di metodo cristiano [Traces of Experience and Notes of the Christian Method].

In the years during which Cardinal Martini led the Ambrosian Diocese, the Archbishop, theologically speaking, set it on the tracks of the Rahnerian school of thought. But the movement remained faithful to its identity, certain that the Holy Spirit knows how to make the coexistence of two heterogeneous positions fertile for the Church; and asked the Bishop, in serving his pastoral purposes, to value the freedom of the children of God, which is a right given by Baptism. Currently, the greatest risk in the Church is the tendency to view Jesus not as a permanent Fact in history, but as a teacher of humanity to look up to. John Paul II countered this position by affirming that Christ is present here and now and that His presence changes the world.
With this perspective, leaders within CL had to reach an adequate maturity in serving and enhancing the vitality that lay at the heart of movement, not viewing their role as a possession, a remnant of clericalism. In the face of a fragile and weak leadership, Fr. Giussani believed he could not foresee when he would be able to follow up on his desire, already expressed ten years earlier, to withdraw from the leadership (not from the fatherhood, that is inescapable) of CL. Nevertheless, he stated that he was ready to draw the necessary consequences in case someone showed him that his position was a sign of attachment to power or defense of the status quo.