A revival of Romano Amerio's thought -
and how it relates closely to
the themes of Benedict XVI's Magisterium
Two outstanding works of Catholic culture are returning to Italian bookstores.
And the taboo on one of the greatest Christian intellectuals of the twentieth century
is crumbling definitively. The question he highlights is also at the center of
Benedict XVI's pontificate: how much can the Church change, and in what way?
ROME, July 15, 2009 – Tomorrow, two volumes that have taken their place among the classics of modern Catholic culture will return to Italian bookstores, published by Lindau. Their content is in striking harmony with the title and foundation of Benedict XVI's third encyclical:
Caritas in Veritate.
The author of the two volumes is Romano Amerio, the Swiss scholar, philosopher, and theologian who passed away in 1997 at the age of 92. One of his great admirers, the theologian and mystic Don Divo Barsotti, summed up their contents as follows:
"Amerio essentially says that
the gravest evils present today in Western thought, including Catholic thought, are mainly due to a general mental disorder according to which 'caritas' is put before 'veritas', without considering that this disorder also overturns the proper conception that we should have of the Most Holy Trinity."
In effect, Amerio saw precisely in this overturning of the primacy of Logos over love – or in a charity separated from truth – the root of many of the "variations of the Catholic Church in the 20th century": the variations that he described and subjected to criticism in the first and more commanding of the two volumes cited:
Iota unum, written between 1935 and 1985; the variations that led him to question whether with them, the Church had not become something other than itself.
Many of the variations analyzed in
Iota unum (one iota, i.e., the smallest part) – although just one of them would suffice, one "iota," according to Matthew 5:18*, from which the book's title is taken – would lead the reader to think that there has been an essential mutation in the Church.
*[In the Sermon on the Mount, after the Beatitudes, Jesus says: "Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place" (mt 5,18).]
But Amerio analyzes, he does not judge. Or better, as the fully formed Christian that he is, he leaves the judgment of God. And he recalls that "
portae inferi non praevalebunt" (the gates of hell shall not prevail), meaning that
for the faith, it is impossible to think that the Church could lose its way. There will always be continuity with Tradition, even if it is amid turbulence that obscures it and leads one to think the contrary.
There is a close connection between the questions posed in
Iota unum and Benedict XVI's address to the Roman Curia on December 22, 2005, a fundamental address in terms of the interpretation of Vatican Council II and its relationship with Tradition.
This does not change the fact that the state of the Church as described by Amerio is anything but peaceful.
In the address on December 22, 2005, Benedict XVI compared the babel of the contemporary Church with the upheaval in the fourth century after the Council of Nicaea, described at the time by Saint Basil as "a naval battle in the darkness of a storm."
In the afterword that Enrico Maria Radaelli, a loyal disciple of Amerio, publishes at the end of this new edition of
Iota unum, the current situation is instead compared to the Western Schism, meaning the forty years between the 14th and 15th centuries before the Council of Constance, with Christianity leaderless and without a sure "rule of the faith," divided between two or even three popes at one time.
In any case, republished now,
Iota unum reasserts itself as a book that is not only extraordinarily relevant, but "constructively Catholic," in harmony with the Church's magisterium. In the afterword, Radaelli demonstrates this in an irrefutable way.
[Magister later presents the conclusion of Radaelli's afterword.]
As for the second book,
Stat veritas (In place of truth), published by Amerio in 1985, it is in linear continuity with the previous one.
It compares the doctrine of Catholic Tradition with the "variations" that the author identifies in two texts of the magisterium of John Paul II: the apostolic letter
Tertio Millennio Adveniente, November 10, 1994, and the address at the Collegium Leoninum in Paderborn on June 24, 1996.
The return to the bookstores of
Iota unum and
Stat veritas brings justice both to their author and to the de facto censorship that for long years bore down on both of these consummate books of his.
In Italy, the first edition of Iota unum was reprinted three times for a total of 7,000 copies, despite the fact that it ran to almost 700 pages of demanding reading. It was then translated into French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Dutch. It reached tens of thousands of readers all over the world.
But for official Catholic bodies and Church authorities it was taboo, as of course it was for its adversaries. More of a singular case than a rare one, the book was an underground "long seller." Requests for it continued when the bookstores ran out of copies.
The breaking of the taboo is recent. Conferences, commentaries, reviews.
La Civiltà Cattolica and
L'Osservatore Romano have taken part in breaking the taboo.
At the beginning of 2009, a first reprinting of
Iota unum appeared in Italy, published by the publishing house Fede & Cultura. But this new edition of the book produced by Lindau, together with that of
Stat veritas, has the added value of editing and annotation by Amerio's greatest student and intellectual heir, Radaelli.
His two extensive afterwords are genuine essays, indispensable for understanding not only the profound meaning of the two books, but also their enduring relevance. Lindau intends to publish Amerio's "opera omnia" in the next few years, with Radaelli as editor.
The whole Church in one 'iota'
by Enrico Maria Radaelli
Translated from the Afterword
to the new edition of IOTA UNUM
Lindau, 2009
[...] The conclusion is that Romano Amerio shows himself to be the most relevant and invigorating thinker of the moment. With the intellectual elegance that distinguishes all of his writings, he offers with
Iota unum a very constructively Catholic reflection, filling a philosophical and theological void where otherwise there is uncertainty about serious questions.
He identifies and indicates a crisis in the Church, a crisis that even seems to overpower it, but demonstrates that it has not overpowered it; that seems to ruin it, but has not ruined it.
He then clearly identifies the first cause of this crisis in a shift that is anthropological, or even more, metaphysical.
Finally, he identifies and indicates the logical instruments (inscribed in the Logos) that are necessary and sufficient (heroically sufficient, but sufficient) to overcome it.
And Amerio does this by developing
a "model of continuity" with Tradition, of ordered and therefore perfect obedience to the Pope, of intimate adherence to the immediate rule of the faith, which would seem to clarify in full the correct understanding of that "hermeneutics of continuity" called for by Benedict XVI in his address to the Roman Curia on December 22, 2005, in order to stay safely on the path of reason, which is to say on the path of salvation, or on the path of the Church in pursuit of life.
Romano Amerio: yes, he was a critic, but never a discontinuist.
This entirely Amerian "model of continuity" is waiting only to be recognized at last, or better, to be appreciated at last. Who knows: perhaps even followed, for the common good (theoretical and practical, philosophical and ethical, doctrinal and liturgical) of the City of God, with the simplicity and courage necessary.
If the use of ambiguity and contradictions was able to effect
an anthropological revolution toward the most empty fantasies [a rather involved way of defining the so-called 'spirit of Vatican-II'!] - all the more so will it be possible to effect, with less effort, a more sound anthropological revolution toward Reality, since it is easier to be simple than complex.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/07/2009 18:31]