Communion and Liberation?

[Geremia]

To all Gregorian Rite mass attendees:

• What are your thoughts of the relatively new lay Catholic movement Communion and Liberation (CL)?
• Is it a “liberal” or “conservative” movement?
• Is it a response to Vatican II?
• Do the writings of CL’s founder, Msgr. Giussani, contain some Modernist thought?

FYI: Pope Benedict XVI attends CL’s weekly “School of Community,” where CL members discuss excerpts of Msgr. Giussani’s writings.

 

[Sir_Anthony]

From what I have read they came before VII (1954), and were more about gaining political leverage and rejecting Marxism in Italy, but they have spread and have focused more and more on education rather than the political. The organization seemed to hit afoul of some of the more liberal members of the College of Cardinals including Cardinal Martini. I haven’t read too much of the founder’s writings, and probably there is some modernist streams but nothing too strange from what I can tell.

 

[barb_finnegan]

I used to get MAGNIFICAT magazine (the little book that you could take to Mass), and there were a lot of quotes from Msgr. Giussani’s writings. The Dominican priest-editor, Fr. Peter John Cameron, holds him in high regard.

I went to a Congress sponsored by the magazine in 2002. It was held in NYC. The choir who sang at the main Mass was comprised of Communion and Liberation members. I wrote a note to Fr. Cameron after I went home, and he replied to it, suggesting I join the movement. I didn’t know very much about it, so I was kind of leery about doing that. And besides, the members seemed to be concentrated in the NYC area-and I live in Upstate NY!

I remember that Msgr. Giussani died in early 2005-March, I believe-not long before John Paul II’s death. I also think that then-Cardinal Ratzinger went to Milan to say his funeral Mass.

Again, if my memory serves me correct, there are some female Communion and Liberation members who serve in Benedict XVI’s household.

 

[Geremia]

I used to get MAGNIFICAT magazine (the little book that you could take to Mass), and there were a lot of quotes from Msgr. Giussani’s writings. The Dominican priest-editor, Fr. Peter John Cameron, holds him in high regard.

I went to a Congress sponsored by the magazine in 2002. It was held in NYC. The choir who sang at the main Mass was comprised of Communion and Liberation members. I wrote a note to Fr. Cameron after I went home, and he replied to it, suggesting I join the movement. I didn’t know very much about it, so I was kind of leery about doing that. And besides, the members seemed to be concentrated in the NYC area-and I live in Upstate NY!

I remember that Msgr. Giussani died in early 2005-March, I believe-not long before John Paul II’s death. I also think that then-Cardinal Ratzinger went to Milan to say his funeral Mass.

Again, if my memory serves me correct, there are some female Communion and Liberation members who serve in Benedict XVI’s household.

It is for these many reasons that I lke CL. I was just curious what a “Latin mass Catholic” thinks of the movement. Thanks!

 

[benedictgal]

It is for these many reasons that I lke CL. I was just curious what a “Latin mass Catholic” thinks of the movement. Thanks!

Yes, there are women from the CL movement who minister to the Holy Father’s needs. I, too, would like more information on the group, considering they have the “Benedictine” seal of approval. They would be much more palpable than the other groups.

I believe that the Holy Father began his involvement with them perhaps about 20-30 years ago. In fact, he was involved in the publication of a magazine called “Communio”, which I think is also part of the movement.

 

[Geremia]

I believe that the Holy Father began his involvement with them perhaps about 20-30 years ago. In fact, he was involved in the publication of a magazine called “Communio”, which I think is also part of the movement.

I do not think Communio is its official magazine. Traces is, though.

 

[Neil_Anthony]

This group organized a public Way of the Cross on Good Friday last year in my city, which was led by the Archbishop. It was the first time a public way of the cross was held here in a long time. So I get the impression they might be ‘traditional’.

 

[I_Believe]

To all Gregorian Rite mass attendees:

• What are your thoughts of the relatively new lay Catholic movement Communion and Liberation (CL)?
• Is it a “liberal” or “conservative” movement?
• Is it a response to Vatican II?
• Do the writings of CL’s founder, Msgr. Giussani, contain some Modernist thought?

FYI: Pope Benedict XVI attends CL’s weekly “School of Community,” where CL members discuss excerpts of Msgr. Giussani’s writings.

Hi Germania,
After a brief visit to their site, it doesn’t appear to me Fr. Luigi Giussani is liberal or modernist at all.

Actually, he appears to be a diamond in the rough. I’m very interested in his 2 volume Is It Possible To Live This Way.

A compilation of Giussani’s conversations with young people who have chosen the path of the consecrated life in the Church – that is, have chosen to live their lives in the world according to the “evangelical counsels” of poverty, chastity, and obedience – it proposes an unusual yet reasonable approach to living as a Christian.

As in all his works, Giussani encourages young people to be serious about their own existence and loyal to their experience. The conversations reported here are fascinating and insightful, providing support for a way of life that today is frequently questioned, rejected, or censured.
clonline.org/Bk_detail.asp?ID=287

That looks like there is some fairly deep spirituality going on there, and it’s based on solid Catholic Doctrine. That last line in the book description …
"The conversations reported here are fascinating and insightful, providing support for a way of life that today is frequently questioned, rejected, or censured. … arouse my curiosity. I’d like to read about how these young folks have found this apparent level of piety in today’s world.

Thanks for posting this

 

[m134e5]

Communion and Liberation is a wonderful organization. In many ways, this movement is responsible for my conversion. The writings of it’s founder, Msgr. Giussani, are pretty tough to read-they will deter some people- but that kind of reading, that kind of thinking can be really attractive to people who may struggle with faith and religions- and it can help them feel “at home” in the Church. Theologians, artists, musicians, teachers/professors, soldiers, businessmen (and women), writers, doctors, lawyers, philosophers, college students, priests, and religious are among the many people I have known who have had their lives drastically changed for the better- thanks to what the found through Communion and Liberation. If this sounds like anything you might be interested in, please contact the Responsible (what the leader of the local chapter is called) in your area. If you want more information, check out the website, clonline.com- it is for Communion and Liberation in the United Sates- it’s not updated as well as I would like to see, but at least that’s a start. There is also the international site (I’m sorry- I can’t remember the URL).

I never knew how much CL meant to me- until I didn’t have it anymore. I pray one day that I can be a part of it again.

 

[m134e5]

That looks like there is some fairly deep spirituality going on there, and it’s based on solid Catholic Doctrine. That last line in the book description …

“Fairly”? That is quite an understatement…

 

[Freshman88]

I think that they’re awesome! I only attend traditionalist massess, and God willing I hope to be a traditionalist priest one day. That said, a few my profs at my university belong to this movement, and much of the teachings of Msgr. Giussani pop up in their classess. I’ve read three of Msgr. Giussani’s books and I think they’re wonderful. I’ve also attended a handful of meetings for CLU.

Essentially what Msgr. Giussani does is compile the core philosophy of Christianity, and then stresses how we must look to our own experience for proof of God. They way he handles the information is quite philosophical, but also quite enjoyable. I’ve never come across anything unorthodox in his writtings.

The group at my secular university is quite large for any kind of Catholic youth group. especially at the 18-23 age bracket. If anything, seeing their witness to an authentic Catholic faith is quite inspiring.

As for liturgy. I’d say they’re conservative but not traditionalists. This is all coming from a guy who has trouble attending most NO’s. Accompying them to a NO in order to be with this group is a cross I gladly bear.

 

[Freshman88]

The writings of it’s founder, Msgr. Giussani, are pretty tough to read-they will deter some people- but that kind of reading, that kind of thinking can be really attractive to people who may struggle with faith and religions- and it can help them feel “at home” in the Church

Very true. He invites you to face those questions that we all have, the “religious sense” if you will . I had just had a reconversion before coming across this group and they certainly jumpstarted my freshly renewed faith and left me with a Christian understanding of the world.

It also helped to be with people my own age, and to hear and be able to share your religious experiences with them was very powerful and something I had never experienced before. I’ve heard and seen of young non-Catholics having similar sessions, but never had I heard or seen young men talk about the Blessed Sacrament as if God was truly present.

And yes, there is a lot of thinking required and his material is quite thick. That’s why I suggest that everyone seeks out their local CL sine their members will be more then helpful with getting through the tough stuff.

 

[Freshman88]

This group organized a public Way of the Cross on Good Friday last year in my city, which was led by the Archbishop. It was the first time a public way of the cross was held here in a long time. So I get the impression they might be ‘traditional’.

Hmmm. That sounds like what my local C+L group did in my Canadian city, though I didn’t know a public procession hadn’t been done for a while.

Anyway, they are certainly orthodox in thought whereas liturgy just simply isn’t the focus of this group.

Although I should share this concerning liturgy…

Over a year ago a few friends of mine wanted to have a traditional mass for all the students our city has. Despite preparing months ahead of time and securing a traditionalist priest to say the mass (FSSP) we were denied parish after parish. We then found out that the chancellory was upset at our efforts (so much for a pro-SP bishop). So we decided to go to a parish ran by an outside group - C+L. They gladly accepted, and the CL priests were there to watch .

 

[m134e5]

Over a year ago a few friends of mine wanted to have a traditional mass for all the students our city has. Despite preparing months ahead of time and securing a traditionalist priest to say the mass (FSSP) we were denied parish after parish. We then found out that the chancellory was upset at our efforts (so much for a pro-SP bishop). So we decided to go to a parish ran by an outside group - C+L. They gladly accepted, and the CL priests were there to watch .

CL is certainly solid in their teaching, and I can see how, in many ways, the Tridentine Mass would attract people who are also attracted to CL. CL encourages appreciation of the arts and of literature, and it emphasizes the need for a personal encounter with Christ. The reverence of the Tridentine Mass, and the emphasis on the Eucharistic sacrifice, the union of heaven and earth at the moment of consecration, and the encounter with God as we receive Him in Holy Communion are all things that the charism of Communion and Liberation either directly speaks of- or that creates a mindset that makes us more receptive to those things.

 

[Geremia]

Anyway, they are certainly orthodox in thought whereas liturgy just simply isn’t the focus of this group.

I think you have p(name removed by moderator)ointed with what I struggle the most with CL. Do you know of any other lay groups where the liturgy is their focus?

Although I should share this concerning liturgy…

Over a year ago a few friends of mine wanted to have a traditional mass for all the students our city has. Despite preparing months ahead of time and securing a traditionalist priest to say the mass (FSSP) we were denied parish after parish. We then found out that the chancellory was upset at our efforts (so much for a pro-SP bishop). So we decided to go to a parish ran by an outside group - C+L. They gladly accepted, and the CL priests were there to watch .

That is great!

 

[I_Believe]

“Fairly”? That is quite an understatement…

Regional lingo.

 

[Geremia]

Fr. Giussani’s books are still very poor. They lack clarity, are hardly traditionally Catholic, and rarely mention God directly. Why do not Schools of Community read the time-tested classics like the Catechism of the Council of Trent, St. Francis de Sales’s Introduction to the Devout Life, or The Imitation of Christ?

Everyone I have met in the movement seems very opposed to traditional Latin masses (“Extraordinary Form” or “Gregorian Rite” masses). One lay member even showed us a picture of him in Italy with a monstrance on a kitchen table that they were adoring. I do not think this is allowed even if it was on a mission.

Quoted below is an email I sent out to CL members. It was inspired by one CL member asking if I want to go to mass for Mgsr. Giusanni’s death. I remember at a few meetings ago he said his friends who lost their baby were praying at Giusanni’s grave. They almost worship “saintly” Giusanni and his “holy” books. I remember when I first went to a School of Community I thought it was very Protestant-like. This is what I thought, and still think about CL:

Ever since my first experience of School of Community, CL has seemed to me to be a faction in the Church, almost not even in the Church. It has its own “mass” (School of Community), “bible” (Giussani’s books), and leader (Giussani himself). Should not Holy Mass satisfy our weekly desire to worship Him most profoundly, or is it not enough, necessitating School of Community? Should not the Holy Bible, the Word of God, and tradition in the Church be our trustworthy source of knowledge of Him, or is it not enough, necessitating the reading of Giussani’s abstract works? Should not we worship Christ, not Fr. Giussani? It is disturbing to me how much more frequently we mention Giussani than scripture, works of popes, or writings of saints like Aquinas and Augustine. Above all, we believe in a “one Holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church,” yet at the same time CL seems to depart from the Church, maybe not doctrinally but essentially.

 

[Geremia]

Here is what a reviewer on Amazon.com thinks of Giussani’s most popular book, Religious Sense:

It reeks of a Modernist, anti-Catholic theology, and it has not been approved by a bishop to be free from doctrinal error (i.e., the “nihil obstat” and “imprimatur”). For example Giussani says:

“What type of phenomenon is religious experience? It is a phenomenon that concerns human reality and therefore cannot be studied as a geological or meteorological event. It involves the person. How then must we conduct our inquiry? Since we are dealing with something that occurs within me, that has to do with my conscience, my ‘I’ as a person, it is on myself that I must reflect; I must inquire into myself, engage in an existential inquiry.” (pg. 5).

This focus on man and not God, as well as a de-emphasis on tradition, is prevalent in Giussani’s works and his Communion and Liberation movement. He argues that we are most free and creative when we experience God without preoccupying ourselves with traditional doctrine and morality but “with the tools of self-discovery [that] are within us” (back cover) or with personal “experience.”

“Therefore the religious sentiment, which through the agency of vital immanence emerges from the lurking places of the subconsciousness, is the germ of all religion, and the explanation of everything that has been or ever will be in any religion. The sentiment, which was at first only rudimentary and almost formless, gradually matured, under the influence of that mysterious principle from which it originated, with the progress of human life, of which, as has been said, it is a form. This, then, is the origin of all religion, even supernatural religion; it is only a development of this religious sentiment. Nor is the Catholic religion an exception; it is quite on a level with the rest; for it was engendered, by the process of vital immanence, in the consciousness of Christ, who was a man of the choicest nature, whose like has never been, nor will be.”

Does this sound like Giussani? Well, continue reading what Pope St. Pius X says about this in his encyclical “Pascendi Dominici Gregis” in 1907:

“Those who hear these audacious, these sacrilegious assertions, are simply shocked! And yet, Venerable Brethren, these are not merely the foolish babblings of infidels. There are many Catholics, yea, and priests too, who say these things openly; and they boast that they are going to reform the Church by these ravings! There is no question now of the old error, by which a sort of right to the supernatural order was claimed for the human nature. We have gone far beyond that: we have reached the point when it is affirmed that our most holy religion, in the man Christ as in us, emanated from nature spontaneously and entirely. Than this there is surely nothing more destructive of the whole supernatural order. Wherefore the Vatican Council most justly decreed: ‘If anyone says that man cannot be raised by God to a knowledge and perfection which surpasses nature, but that he can and should, by his own efforts and by a constant development, attain finally to the possession of all truth and good, let him be anathema’ (De Revel., can. 3).”

 

[Geremia]

Here is what a reviewer on Amazon.com thinks of Giussani’s most popular book, Religious Sense:

It reeks of a Modernist, anti-Catholic theology, and it has not been approved by a bishop to be free from doctrinal error (i.e., the nihil obstat and imprimatur). For example Giussani says:

“What type of phenomenon is religious experience? It is a phenomenon that concerns human reality and therefore cannot be studied as a geological or meteorological event. It involves the person. How then must we conduct our inquiry? Since we are dealing with something that occurs within me, that has to do with my conscience, my ‘I’ as a person, it is on myself that I must reflect; I must inquire into myself, engage in an existential inquiry.” (pg. 5).

This focus on man and not God, as well as a de-emphasis on tradition, is prevalent in Giussani’s works and his Communion and Liberation movement. He argues that we are most free and creative when we experience God without preoccupying ourselves with traditional doctrine and morality but “with the tools of self-discovery [that] are within us” (back cover) or with personal “experience.”

“Therefore the religious sentiment, which through the agency of vital immanence emerges from the lurking places of the subconsciousness, is the germ of all religion, and the explanation of everything that has been or ever will be in any religion. The sentiment, which was at first only rudimentary and almost formless, gradually matured, under the influence of that mysterious principle from which it originated, with the progress of human life, of which, as has been said, it is a form. This, then, is the origin of all religion, even supernatural religion; it is only a development of this religious sentiment. Nor is the Catholic religion an exception; it is quite on a level with the rest; for it was engendered, by the process of vital immanence, in the consciousness of Christ, who was a man of the choicest nature, whose like has never been, nor will be.”

Does this sound like Giussani? Well, continue reading what Pope St. Pius X says about this in his encyclical “Pascendi Dominici Gregis” in 1907:

“Those who hear these audacious, these sacrilegious assertions, are simply shocked! And yet, Venerable Brethren, these are not merely the foolish babblings of infidels. There are many Catholics, yea, and priests too, who say these things openly; and they boast that they are going to reform the Church by these ravings! There is no question now of the old error, by which a sort of right to the supernatural order was claimed for the human nature. We have gone far beyond that: we have reached the point when it is affirmed that our most holy religion, in the man Christ as in us, emanated from nature spontaneously and entirely. Than this there is surely nothing more destructive of the whole supernatural order. Wherefore the Vatican Council most justly decreed: ‘If anyone says that man cannot be raised by God to a knowledge and perfection which surpasses nature, but that he can and should, by his own efforts and by a constant development, attain finally to the possession of all truth and good, let him be anathema’ (De Revel., can. 3).”

 

[tuviskazinai]

Geremia, if anyone is still reading this thread, I was very interested in what you wrote! I am inclined to share one of your hesitations in your first April post…in my experience CL is very, very Giussani-centered, and I tend to shy away from cults of personality like this.

But at the same time, the people that I have met who are in CL are simply among the most extraordinary people I’ve ever met. I don’t have a ton of experience, but two of the people in the local chapter are among my best friends and are definitely two of the most inspiring Catholics I know. They live life more beautifully, more piously, than just about all of the Christians I’ve met. (The others in CL have been equally delightful human beings.) These are also people who go to Mass all the time, love the Pope, and are absolutely in line with Church teachings…so I don’t think there’s any danger, at all, that the School of Community is replacing Mass or anything.

As for official approval of Msgr Giussani’s books, they may not have a nihil obstat or imprimatur, but Pope Benedict spoke of CL as having changed his life. I can’t find that reference right now, but here is a glowing homily he gave at Msgr Giussani’s funeral Mass:

comunioneliberazione.org/funerale/ratzing240205_eng.html

Oh, one more thing about the Amazon review…I don’t think Giussani is reducing religion to a nice feeling, which seems to be that reviewer’s implication…I think he is saying that the sensitivity we have within us is pointing us towards God. In my opinion, this is very similar to Pope Benedict’s analysis of hope in his encyclical Spe Salvi, where he talks about our hope (which is subjective and interior) nonetheless relating integrally to that truth which is objective and eternal…

But I could be way off. I am definitely curious to learn more about this group!

Peace,
+AMDG+