Four years ago, seated at a noisy, companionable dinner at the Meeting [for the Friendship Among Peoples] in Rimini, the Jewish American writer Chaim Potok intoned King David’s Psalm 8, “O Lord, what is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man...
The Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples in Rimini, Italy, familiarly called “the Meeting,” is an event whose weight in the private lives of many people, and also in the so-called public life of Italy–and not only Italy–has become greater over the years....
The grievous and deadly series of terrorist attacks affecting different countries in the world is a phenomenon that fills us with dismay. The use of violence in a blind–and at the same time, carefully studied–manner is an extreme deviation of hate, one...
“Not only am I interested in education, but also, in particular, in the type of innovative suggestions Fr Giussani proposes in recovering education as a Christian activity. I would have much to say about the book The Risk of Education. But, alas, I am in...
While this editorial is going to press, a war whose outcome and consequences are unforeseeable is underway in Iraq. A coalition headed by the United States has decided to respond in this way to the failure of Saddam’s regime to respect the UN resolutions...
We offer here the article by Fr Giussani published on the front page of the most important Italian daily Corriere della sera, entitled “Certain Kinds of Pacifism, More Hate Thrown into the Streets.” February 25, 2003 Dear Editor, The sides that are...
This issue of Traces devotes ample space to a forum on the condition of youth. The generations of young people who have come on the scene, one after the other, in recent decades have found a world whose characteristics and “climate” are changing....
Recently, the daily newspaper Le Monde, which has always been an authoritative secular voice in France, acknowledged, after a poll, that the Christmas and New Year’s holidays are those most widely shared by the French people and that, above and beyond...
By the spirit one goes to God… What a heart-breaking misfortune!” These words by Arthur Rimbaud contain the drama of human consciousness, especially for contemporary man. To the men of our time, God–according to the teaching of centuries of philosophers...
Someone wrote that violence is the midwife of history. The midwife is the factor that makes it grow, the motor, the lever setting concrete historic changes to motion. Only violence, they say, changes the state of things. Hosts of men, under various...
The world has always been marked by war–not only war between peoples and nations, but also the division that worms its way into the most “normal” relationships, into friendships and families. It seems that men are carriers of a disease impossible to stamp...
What I want to tell you is like a clearer and more profound vindication than can be imagined on the apparent uselessness of life, on the apparent negativity of plans. Whoever has not experienced it, whoever has not felt it, and thus has not done it...
We are coming to the middle of a summer that arrives as a relief. This is desired by all, and it is also fitting, if it is true that God Himself rested on the seventh day. In the world, a “fiscal year” particularly dense with events and change has come...
Awell-known Italian philosopher, Umberto Galimberti, urged teachers, from the columns of a well-known daily newspaper, to take their students’ souls into their care. Too many episodes of violence all around us show that there is a lack of education of the...
One of the pat phrases going around–without ever being critically examined, especially in these times–is the statement: “I envy those who have faith.” Journalists, writers, and politicians may be saying it in all sincerity, but they view the gift of faith...
Flames of war and terror in the Holy Land, the continuation of tension and attacks after the destruction of the Twin Towers, other hotbeds of grave violence in Africa and the Far East. And in Italy political tension, feeding on pretext, and even acts of...
The Pope’s letter to the Fraternity of CL on the twentieth anniversary of its pontifical recognition is a document rich in direction for the Movement and for the Church. The letter which Fr Giussani subsequently addressed to the Fraternity grasps its...
As this month’s editorial, we offer Fr Giussani’s article which appeared on the front page of the Italian daily newspaper Corriere della Sera, February 3, 2002 Dear Editor, We cannot help voicing our participation in the gesture by which God, through...
“Even if salvation does not come, I want to be worthy of it in every moment” (F. Kafka) We offer as the editorial of the first issue of Traces for 2002 the written text sent by Pierluigi Battista, editorialist for the Italian daily newspaper La...
Everyone who knows about the events of those times from my works or the works of others, may be sure that every time the Prince ordered exiles or slaughters, thanks were rendered to the gods, and that the ceremonies which once characterized happy events...
One hundred thirty seven years ago, John Henry Newman wrote, “Observing the world far and wide, the vicissitudes of its history, the multiplicity of human races, their beginnings, fates, mutual alienation, conflicts; the feats or purposeless wanderings;...