I sure wish the text to this document was available in English:
Marx to Ratzinger. The Turning Point Manifesto
It’s not just the Courtyard of the Gentiles. In the borderland between faith and lack of faith, the season of conversions has returned. And of “a new alliance,” with Benedict XVI as guiding light
by Sandro Magister
ROME, November 16, 2012 – While one after another come the editions of the “Courtyard of the Gentiles” organized by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the pontifical council for culture, other noteworthy things are happening in the borderland between faith and lack of faith.
They make less news. They are hardly spectacular. But they are incisive and engaging. They do not limit themselves to displaying the opinions of the most famous spokesmen of the culture of the time, revered and unchallenged. They put seriously into play the positions of each one, they activate real paths of seeking, they are not afraid of the word “conversion.”
Proof? On TV 2000, the channel owned by the Italian bishops, a large and still growing audiences tuning into a program entitled “La svolta [Turning point],” which in each episode presents a convert having come to the Christian faith from the most varied of backgrounds.
In the Catholic Church, famous converts played a role of the greatest importance between the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. But then silence fell upon conversions. They became almost a taboo to be hidden. The program “La svolta” marks a real resumption of attention. The converts interviewed for it are the Italians Pietro Barcellona, a philosopher of law; Giovanni Lindo Ferretti, a singer-songwriter; Cristina Alfano, a lyrical singer; Guido Chiesa, a director; Claudia Koll, an actress; the Frenchmen Jean-Claude Guillebaud, a journalist; Fabrice Hadjadj, a philosopher; François Taillandier, a writer; Patrick Kéchichian, a literary critic; Claire Gibault, an orchestra conductor; the German Gabriele Kuby, a sociologist; the Englishman Alister McGrath, a theologian; the Japanese Etsuro Sotoo, a sculptor; the Russian Tatiana Goritcheva.
One of these converts, Pietro Barcellona, is also the author, together with three other post-Marxist thinkers, of a manifesto on “the anthropological emergency” that has met with great astonishment.
And this is the second noteworthy fact. The other three authors of the manifesto are the professors Giuseppe Vacca, an historian; Mario Tronti, a philosopher and political scientist; and Paolo Sorbi, a sociologist. The last of these is Catholic, the other two are not. All four were activists in the Partito comunista, and today are part of the Partito democratico, the main party of the Italian left. Vacca is the director of the Istituto Gramsci. Tronti is president of the Centro per la riforma dello Stato, and was the leading Italian theoretician of operaismo, but also has always shown strong interest in the political theology of Carl Schmitt and frequented the intellectual cenacle of the Catholic magazine “Bailamme” and the Camaldolese monastery of Monte Giove.
All four have been called “Ratzingerian Marxists.”
Their manifesto is, in effect, an explicit declaration of appreciation of the vision of Pope Benedict XVI.
Tronti says:
“The current interpretation according to which this is a ‘conservative’ pontificate constitutes a complete overturning of the pope theologian. Central, in Joseph Ratzinger, is the necessity of the public dimension of the experience of faith. Instead of contenting themselves with commonplaces, the cultures of the left should if anything raise themselves to this level and accept the encounter on the terrain of ‘indispensable principles.’ Any experiment in the transformation of reality cannot do without the spiritual element present in every human being. There is a very close connection between transcendence and revolution.”
Tronti said this during an October 31 interview in the newspaper of the Italian episcopal conference, “Avvenire,” which in recent weeks has been dedicating a page to each of the four authors of the manifesto, presented in conjunction with a Catholic intellectual.
But it must be said that the four chose “Avvenire” partly in order to make public their manifesto, a little less than a year ago, on October 16, 2011.
The manifesto – which this year was republished in a book with fourteen commentaries by as many authors – takes the form of an open letter addressed to the left.
It is entitled: “Emergenza antropologica. Per una nuova alleanza tra credenti e non credenti.”
And this is its beginning:
“The manipulation of life, originating in the developments of technology and of the violence inherent in the processes of globalization in the absence of a new international order, puts us in the presence of an unprecedented anthropological emergency. This appears to us to be the most serious manifestation and at the same time the deepest root of the crisis of democracy. It sprouts challenges that demand a new alliance between men and women, believers and nonbelievers, religions and politics.”
In the introduction to the book, the four authors acknowledge that “the most criticized passage of our letter is the one that deals with the ‘freedom and dignity of the human person from the moment of conception.’”
And here is how they respond to the criticisms:
“Our letter is imbued with a single purpose: that of contributing to the affirmation of a shared humanity. What could be the ‘point of union’ between believers and nonbelievers in defining the value of life? It seems to us that we are able to say that an unborn life represents a value in itself from the moment of conception, because of the responsibility that it confers upon every individual of the community to welcome it, raise it, educate it, and accompany it with love and care to its end. Those who accept this framework will have no trouble in recognizing that, whether it is a matter of the zygote, of the embryo, or of a life already formed, there can be no difference of value in the manner of behaving toward it.”
The “Ratzingerian Marxists” charge the left in Italy and the West with having given in to “falsely libertarian cultures, for which there exists no right other than the right of the individual.”
In order to rebuild the foundations of the human community, the four identify therefore the decisive interlocutor with whom the left should engage not as some “borderline” theologian, but as Benedict XVI, the highest and most authoritative expression of the Catholic vision, in particular on “two fundamental themes of his magisterium: the rejection of ethical relativism and the concept of non-negotiable values.”
To this end, the authors of the manifesto have already announced that they will organize in 2013 a major conference precisely on the anthropological vision of Benedict XVI, between believers and nonbelievers.
__________
The manifesto of the four “Ratzingerian Marxists”:
The book:
The interview-debates with the authors of the manifesto, in “Avvenire”:
There is a fifth Ratzegerian Marxist as well- Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Baveria has written a new version of Das Kapital criticizing both the centralizing nature of State Ownership and the centralizing nature of private wealth.
Daniel, Samn! offers a translation of the text in the comment thread here:
http://postochlophobist.blogspot.com/2012/11/ratzingerian-marxists.html#comment-form
Here is the full text for those not interested in leaving this site:
The Anthropological Emergency: For a New Alliance
by Pietro Barcellona, Paolo Sorbi, Mario Tronti, and Giuseppe Vaca
The manipulation of life, originating in technological development and the violence inherent in globalization in the absence of a new international order, puts us before an unprecedented emergency. This appears to us to be the most serious manifestation and at the same time the deepest root of the crisis of democracy. It sprouts challenges that require a new alliance between men and women, believers and nonbelievers, religions and politics. Therefore we believe that the changes that have occured in our country in the civic and religious fields are worthy of attention and call for hope.
It seems to us that in recent years– a historic period beginning with the financial crisis of 2007 and in Italy with the twilight of the “second republic”– as the Italian church increasingly dedicated itself to resrutcturing its national role, an interlocutor like the Democratic Party came to define its original appearance as “a party of believers and nonbelievers.” These are significant changes which widen the range of forces which, if they cooperate responsibly, can contribute to putting forward effective solutions to the current crisis.
The common ground is the definition of the new laity, which in the words of the secretary of the Democratic Party is motivated by the recognition of the public relevance of religious beliefs and, on the part of Church authority, by a positive vision of modernity, founded upon the alliance of faith and reason. In his interview-book, “With Good Reason,” Pier Luigi Bersani affirms that the “engagement with the Church’s social teaching” is a distinctive characteristic of the reformist inspiration for the Democratic Party and that the presence within Italy of “the highest Catholic spiritual authority” can help overcome the ethical bipolarism that has negatively affected democratic politics at crucial stages in the life of the country. Finally, stressing the “autonomous responsibility of politics,” Bersani expression a strong preference for his vision thaat “not wanting to renounce deep and challenging ethical and religious convictions entrusts to the responsibility of the laity the practical choice of policy decisions.”
As regards the Catholic Church, there are two points from the report of Cardinal Bagnasco to the meeting of the Permanent Council of Bishops on September 26-29 that merit particular attention.
The first concerns criticism of “radical culture”: it targets those positions that “motivated by an individualistic understanding,” imprison “the person in sad isolation from his own absolute freedom disconnected from the truth of the good and from any social relationship.”
The second is to propose new means for a shared commitment by Catholics to combat what he had defined on a previous occasion as “the anthropological crisis”: “the possiblity of a social and cultural entity for dialogue with politics.” No less significant is his historic reasoning: “What gives Catholics awareness today is not primarily belonging to the outside, but rather the values of humanization [that] are increasingly also drawing the attention of those who do not explicitly feel themselves to be Catholic.” In other words, the “possiblity” of this new entity that originates in the laity’s social and cultural commitment in which Catholics are “more united than one might believe” thanks to the compass that guides them: the construction of a shared humanism.
The definition of the new laity and the assumption of a more strongly felt responsibility on the part of the Church for the fate of Italy require the development of political and cultural initiative, aimed not only at dialogue with the Catholic world, but also at searching for new forms of cooperation with the Church, in the national interest. In this regard, two fundamental themes from the teaching of Benedict XVI which in the prevailing interpretation have caused confusion and distortion that are still prevalent in public discourse seem to be resolved: the refutation of “moral relativism” and the concept of “non-negotiable values.”
For those who have given due attention to the thought of Benedict XVI, there should in principle be no ambiguity. The condemnation of “moral relativism” does not do away with cultural pluralism, but only looks at nihilist visions of modernity which, even if they are practiced by significant intellectual minorities, are not found at the basis of democratic action in any type of community: local, national, and supra-national. “Moral relativism,” however, profoundly permeates processes of secularization insofar as they are dominated by commercialization. There is no one who does not see how the struggle against this tendency of modernity constitutes the fundamental worry of democratic politics, in whatever way the principles are broken down, by believers or non-believers.
On the other hand, there should not be any doubts, even about the concept of “non-negotiable values” if they are examined in their exact formulation. A concept that does not distinguish believers and non-believers, and which points out the responsiblity for consistency between behaviors and the principles that inspire them. A concept that relates precisely to values– to the criteria that should inspire personal and collective action, but does not deny the autonomy of political mediation. Thus it cannot be traced back to that concept of responsibility for decisions in which, because of the failures of lay mediation or for ignoble reasons of opportunism, the freedom and dignity of the human person from the moment of conception are offended.
However, if misunderstandings and mistakes of this type have occurred in the approach to bioethics ,not only in the opportunistic choices of the center-right but also in the biological determinism of the center-left, the reaffirmation of the value of lay mediation seems to inspire “the possibility of a social and cultural entity for dialogue with politics” clears the field of confrontation between believers and non-believers. Thus whether this “possibility” takes on a more or less progressive stamp in the Italian story will depend on cultural and political initiative of the forces in the field.
To this end, we hold that the Democratic Party should promote a public engagement with the Catholic Church as well as with the other religious confessions active in Italy, regarding those issues that are considered “ethically sensitive” as well as to those that relate more closely to the current threats to the Italian nation: maintaining its unity, the “ethical nature” of the democratic regime.
As much as for one as for the other, the story of united Italy demonstrates that the presence or absence of political Catholicism has been determinative and will remain so in the future.
Awesome, thanks Owen. I tried reading the google translation of the site but it was too zany.
The “Democratic Party” mentioned in the translation above is Partito Democratico or PD. Read about them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_(Italy)
This is good, but of course it would require a unified effort from all nations, all religions, and all secularists to accomplish such a thing. Good luck though with the politicians and media types who are hell bent on abortion, cloning, and gay marriage, as a basis for their liberalism. They will never submit to the moral principles of the Catholic Church so to make a real distributionist society. And of course it would require all people to give an honest personal commitment each and every day: let the able use their ability. Again, good luck with that. Human laziness, apart from the grace of God, is self perpetuating. So until the Church becomes a vibrant entity once again, throughout the entire world, then cultural pluralism is but a mere a pipe dream.
There is another way.
Walled intentional communities are already used by the rich to form communities with similar, often superficial values. There is no reason at all that the very same laws that allow a home owners association to restrict property use within a walled intentional community, could not be used to create a distributist intentional community of common believers, perhaps even designed around the ancient Catholic parish community.
I don’t know if I could convince my wife to sell our house and move to one- but I do have the dream of one day creating such an intentional community I call Knightshelm (centered on the virtues of Columbianism and Distributism, with enough land that the grocery store will be a full farmer’s market containing gardens, livestock pastures, and butcher’s shop).
Isn’t Ave Maria Florida designed along those lines?
Close, Greg, but Ave Maria is more upscale. A good distributist colony would have fewer waterparks and other recreational activities- and more vegetable gardens and livestock with an aim to being self-sufficient within the community.
More like Catholic Worker Houses, but a congregation of them with a central chapel, a retreat house, an assisted living center, and a farmer’s market.
Ave Maria is an unsustainable blight on Florida’s fragile landscape, an “orthodox Catholic” suburban escape from both the countercultural villages that Ted is describing- which sound a lot like what we were dreaming of in the days of the journal- and from true engagement with the dominant culture.
The difference being that my counterculture is based on piety, charity, unity and fraternity rather than sex, drugs, and rock’n'roll.
But yes. Not all the ideas of the hippies were bad. Those based on the Rule of St Benedict were actually quite good.
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