For the first time at the Meeting Monsignor Nunzio Galantino, general secretary of Cei

It took place today at 11.15 a.m. in Sala Eni B1 at the Meeting the conference The person and the sense of limit in cooperation with the National service of Cei por the cultural project, with the participation of Monsignor Nunzio Galantino, general secretary of Cei. Davide Perillo, director of Tracce, has introduced the event: “We are not talking about politics, rather about what is the origin of politics: the person, his liberty (which comes primarily) and the urge to know oneself”. “I thank for the invitation and the opportunity to share some reflections I have made since I used to teach anthropology. The theme of a never satisfied heart – which often goes through a radical lack – brings me back to that inextinguishable desire described by Bernardo of Chiaravalle”. By these words Galantino introduces his lecture that starts the argumentation by quite clear questions. Why do men’s paths are marked so deeply by lack? Does the experience of limit crush, or does it stand for a growth? How can an honest employment with limit bring to a change? “These questions, as how they’re given, lay in a post-philosophical context less and less attentive to the person” explains the lecturer, “and this hails from a radical anthropological alteration that has focused individual freedom as a value in itself”. Monsignor Galantino quotes other authors dear to him such as Emmanuel Mounier and Dietrich Bonhoeffer regarding to this point: “Men are not absolute liberty, but rather incarnate liberty. Men are quest for truth, God, and responsibility”. That relativism which permeates our current mentality doesn’t accept the founding limit in men’s nature; and, if the limit is not accepted, a man’s life can become a fiction. Men are essentially created to think big; but, if they don’t accept the limit, they run into pretension. “It is not about a fruitless praise for the limit, but to humanity instead”. Yet, does the anthropology of limit weaken the ideal? Does the acceptance of limit facilitates a certain laxity? “Without ideals, life becomes meaningless for men. There is also an ideal of perfection to be rejected too – the perfection not to realize oneself, to keep step with one’s positive awareness of limit. The frontier here is becoming more human. In these terms, the limit is a result of carelessness, instead of an anthropological dimension. Which future can take shape then for society, for the Church and the individuals? “Development and perfection” answers the Cei secretary “are not synonyms. Which implies that those who experience some forms of difficulty must be integrated rather than rejected; that those who are at the fringes of development get involved and employed in their potentialities”. For the Church, the church communities and the associations are already admirable signs of God’s presence and His charity. A Church that makes a resource out of its limit becomes a Church more and more evangelist – it bends to the least. Finally, it’s the life of the single that has to be revised and modernized by a stronger awareness of one’s limit”. An anthropology of the limit can’t be given by a glorification of the limit in itself – rather of the human beings. Only when one’s life is spent in the light of these considerations it keeps being fascinated by the frontiers, endorsing the invocation “You made us for You, my Lord, and our hearts can’t be quiet but in Your rest”.
(G.L.)