Monday, November 12, 2012

Family Church is Church Family

Why do you say that to generate is not human generation if it does not generate a people?


Giussani: Procreation isn't truly human if it doesn't create a people in as much as generating one single  person, a principle of further generation is initiated. By its nature, a generation doesn't ever finish, it always expands, it's destined to always expand. And it is only the concept of family that "concludes" the generation; the generative idea is the concept of family. The family is, in miniature, a people. But if a family is closed in on itself, it is no longer a generator, even if it has nine children; to be a generator, a family must be open to the possibility that it communicates itself to others, that it creates other families. It might not create families; for example, two can be married without creating children, but they live their humanity in such a way that they communicate to other families in the block of houses something that makes the others have thoughts, feelings, gestures, that are more human: this is a dawn, a beginning of a new people.


Does the value of the Church lie in the particular Church or in the total Church?


Giussani:  Either it is in the total Church, or it is not in any Church. The particular Church does not have the value of Catholicity, of totality; it does not have the capacity to express a meaning of everything, because  being a particular Church, it exalts its particular aspects, its circumstances. Only the universal Church, that is, the Church as a unity around the Pope, only that is truly a culture that challenges the culture of the world...

The only universal claim that is fulfilled, fulfilled even among three who live in a little house, secluded, is the Church. Therefore a person who doesn't have a consciousness or a conception or a sense of that totality is not a part of a people, and is not the source of a people, is not a facilitating factor for bringing one to the reality of a people: this is adequately given only by faith.

Is It Possible  to Live This Way? Vol.2  Hope, pp. 140-141






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