"What is faith? Is not possible to reduce faith to anything, otherwise wouldn't be faith. Would be piety with elements of Christianity. Exactly because I know Christ I am not afraid and I am interested in every particular of my life, even in political life. Christ was a great politician and the 'change' he brought to the world makes the lately “change” fade away. To be attached to values without looking forward to what happens, without risk of verifying the values in my own life, values remain values and eventually end in the trash can. Values are meant to give a first hypothesis of work, than I need a personal convincement about my life and the life of the others. To be subjected to values and cultural views is a sign of fear and not of knowledge of God. The only problem of all of this is the fact that is a fact! So, it wouldn’t be possible if it didn’t happen already in history and so to have the possibility to learn and to follow. Not only the fact of Christ, but the fact of the life of Fr. Luigi Giussani and the life of the Movement of Communion and Liberation.
"During the 60’s and 70’s Fr. Giussani never withdrew himself and his friends from the political square, because he was certain of the presence of Christ. Christ lunches me in comparison with everything, because he is the present fulfillment of everything. Thus I can enter in anything certain that He will fulfill what he promised and I can even spend my life in political matters for the good of my people and my nation and the people of the world and of the world. Fr. Giussani was never afraid of political people even very far from his own visions, because he was convinced that Christ could correspond so much to the heart of every man that he was not afraid to meet anybody. Examples are the friendships with Giovanni Testori, Walter Tobagi, Adriano Sofri, etc… Other point: what is the Church? The assembly of the baptized. If we don’t rediscover what baptism is, if we don’t accept to start over personally in the adventure of knowledge, if we take faith for granted, there is no way that we could come out of tunnel. And even your suggestions will remain a flatus vocis."
I appreciate very much this clarification regarding values. It was sorely lacking from my original post. Like my Anonymous commenter-friend, I believe there are values, but these arise from Christ and my adherence to Him. They become valuable insofar as I take the risk of living, as Giussani said, "this way".
Neither is my observation a call to retreat from the public square nor to abandon politics. We must engage reality in all its aspects, politics certainly being an aspect of reality. I am more interested in how and how not to do this. We do this in the knowledge, as Carrón so pain-stakingly tried to show us in this year's Exercises, "that Christ is the present fulfillment of everything". I see my blogging as just this kind of risk-taking, engaging an aspect of reality, one that is emerging and important. I hope my engagement is positive by being challenging. A person of faith, precisely because s/he starts from a positive hypothesis, is not defensive and must not be engaged in fighting a rear guard action. Not only is the battle not lost, the outcome is not even in question because in Christ we are victorious, which is why we can say that "the victory that has overcome the world [is] our faith" (1 John 5:4).
So, again, I appreciate for the clarification and even the correction.