Luigi Giussani - Quotes

Quotes

• "For me, reason is openness to reality, a capacity to seize and affirm it in all its factors. For that other teacher, reason is the "measure" of all things, and a phenomenon becomes true only when it can be directly demonstrated." (The Religious Sense)

• "The method is imposed by the object!" (The Religious Sense)

• "Existence expresses itself, as ultimate ideal, in begging. The real protagonist of history is the beggar: Christ who begs for man's heart, and man's heart that begs for Christ." (Testimony before John Paul II, 1998)

• "I believe that unless the end of the world comes first, sixty or seventy years from now Christians and Jews can be one." (Interview, 2002)

• " asked himself "Has the Church failed mankind, or has mankind failed the Church?" . . . Both, both, because first and foremost it is mankind who failed the Church, because if I need something, I chase after it, if it goes away. No one chased after it . . . The Church began to fail mankind, as I see it, as we see it, because she forgot who Christ was, she did not rely on..., she was ashamed of Christ, of saying who Christ is." (Interview, 2004)

• "The faith is not given us in order that we preserve it, but in order that we communicate it. If we don't have the passion to communicate it, we don't preserve it." (Written contribution to the XXI plenary assembly of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, 2004)