“Secular, i.e., Christian”

The sixteenth annual International Book Fair, one of the best-known and best-attended in the publishing world, was held between May 15th and 19th in Turin.
As part of the Fair, on Friday, May 16th, the tenth anniversary of the series directed by Fr Giussani, “Books of the Christian Spirit” (BUR-Rizzoli) was commemorated. The series now numbers more than 60 titles, with 900,000 copies sold.
Speakers were Lucietta Scaraffia, a professor at the University of Rome; Pierluigi Battista, an editorialist for the Italian daily La Stampa; and Davide Rondoni, who has contributed to the series from its inception. A message of greetings from Fr Giussani was read to introduce the meeting.
Scaraffia emphasized the unique nature of the series, whose titles do not reflect the choice of a literary genre, but rather the ideal library as conceived by Fr Giussani. Battista said that the series directed by Fr Giussani is a “happy exception” which has broken through the apparent wall of separation between secular and Catholic culture.

Greetings from Fr Giussani
Salone del Libro – Turin, May 16, 2003
I am grateful to all of you for this dialogue, and grateful above all to Rizzoli, who, in a way I absolutely did not expect, chose to issue a series containing so many books that have marked my life ever since my seminary days, and that of those who have accompanied me in these fifty years, as well as an equal number of books arising from reflection on our experience.
It is through education that a people is constructed as a unitary consciousness and as a civilization. Today we well understand how urgent and necessary this task is for those in positions of responsibility. Reading is a part of this educational process for the reconstruction of what is human. The purpose documented by many of the books in the series is to encounter the experience of persons who have lived reality intensely and have felt its provocations to be an unanswered question, or rather have surprised in it the traits of a good destiny, to the point of unexpectedly discovering a positive answer. In particular, the books aim at showing the reasonableness and usefulness for contemporary man of the answer to the drama of existence which takes the name of “Christian event.” We offer this answer as a sincere contribution to this education in reality for a true liberation of young people and adults.