Why the Church?

by Giussani, Luigi

• ISBN13: 9780773517073
• ISBN10: 0773517073
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-03-01
• Publisher: McGill Queens Univ

Summary

Giussani begins by focusing on the Church as a community composed of people who are aware of themselves as defined by the gift of the Spirit, from which they derive a new conception of existence, the fruit of conversion. He then describes the Church's developing self-awareness of its dual elements of the human and divine. Concerned with verifying the Church's claim to embody Christ, Giussani situates the locus of verification in human experience, arguing that a different type of life is born in those who try to live the life of the Church. Why the Church? is a seminal study that will engage both the scholar and the general reader.

Author Biography

Luigi Giussani is professor emeritus of the Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, Italy.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
BOOK ONE: THE CLAIM CONTINUES
PART ONE
How to Enter into an Understanding of the Church	5	(5)
A Fundamental Presupposition	5	(1)
Being in Tune With the Phenomenon	5	(2)
Training the Focus on the Originality of Christianity	7	(1)
The Heart of the Church Problem	8	(2)
The First Premise: How to Attain Certainty about the Fact of Christ Today	10	(17)
The Rationalistic Attitude	11	(6)
An Inner Enlightenment	17	(3)
The Orthodox-Catholic View	20	(3)
A Gaze That Values the Other Positions	23	(4)
The Second Premise: The Contemporary Difficulty in Understanding the Meaning of Christian Words	27	(38)
Becoming Aware of a Difficulty	27	(1)
The Middle Ages from the Point of View of Disseminating a Mentality	28	(4)
Humanism From the Point of View of the Disarticulation of a Mentality	32	(7)
The Renaissance: A View of Nature as the Ultimate Source of Human Energy	39	(8)
Rationalism: The Difficulty of Man Conceived in the Abstract	47	(4)
The Common Denominator of the Three Factors	51	(8)
Conclusion	59	(6)
PART TWO: THE CONSTITUENT FACTORS OF THE CHRISTIAN PHENOMENON IN HISTORY
The Continuity of Jesus Christ: Root of the Church's Self-Awareness	65	(7)
The Path We Will Follow	65	(1)
The Link with Jesus Christ	66	(6)
The Three Constituent Factors	72	(51)
The Reality of a Sociologically Identifiable Community	72	(15)
The Community Invested by a ``Strength from on High''	87	(8)
A New Type of Life	95	(22)
Conclusion	112	(5)
BOOK TWO: THE EFFECTIVE SIGN OF THE DIVINE IN HISTORY
Introduction	117	(6)
PART ONE: THE CHURCH'S SELF-DEFINITION
The Human Factor	123	(24)
Through Human Reality	124	(4)
Implications	128	(19)
A Mission of the Church: Towards Earthly Man	147	(16)
The Definitive Word on Man and History	148	(1)
A Continuous Reminder	149	(4)
The Best Position for Facing Human Problems	153	(1)
The Problems of Man	154	(1)
The Church's Task is Not to Resolve Human Problems	155	(2)
Facilitating Aspects of a Truly Lived Freedom	157	(1)
The Work of Every Man	157	(2)
Religiosity Will Never Be Wholly Lived in History	159	(1)
The Christian's Moral Tension	160	(3)
The Divine in the Church	163	(40)
The Self-Communication of Truth: Community, Tradition, Magisterium	164	(15)
The Self-Communication of a Divine Reality	179	(24)
PART TWO: VERIFYING THE PRESENCE OF THE DIVINE IN THE LIFE OF THE CHURCH
The Locus of Verification: Human Experience	203	(7)
What the Church Demands as the Criterion of Judgment	204	(2)
On the Use of a Criterion of Judgment in Its Utmost Expression	206	(1)
Openness of Heart	207	(3)
``The Tree Can Be Told by Its Fruit''	210	(23)
Unity	211	(8)
Holiness	219	(7)
Catholicity	226	(4)
Apostolicity	230	(3)
Conclusion	233	(2)
Notes	235	(12)
Index	247