Communion and Liberation

Communion and Liberation, or CL, is a lay ecclesial movement within the Catholic Church.

Overview

CL grew out of the educational and catechetical methods of Msgr. Luigi Giussani, whom the movement identifies as its founder. Giussani developed these methods through his work within the Catholic youth association Gioventù Studentesca (GS, literally "Student Youth") born in 1954 at Berchet High School in Milan, where Giussani was a teacher. In its official literature CL emphasizes its continuity with Gioventú Studentesca, to the extent that CL traces its founding to 1954 and celebrated 2004 as its fiftieth anniversary. However, the name "Communion and Liberation" was first used in 1969 among a group who were a minority of the former "giessini", or GS members. Although it remains primarily an Italian phenomenon, CL established an international presence during the pontificate of John Paul II and is present today in approximately seventy countries around the world, including the United States, with a particularly strong presence in Spain and Brazil. The current leader of CL is the Spanish priest Julián Carrón (successor to Giussani, who guided the movement until his death in 2005). Communion and Liberation is occasionally confused with the similarly-titled, but unrelated liberation theology.

Regarded by many Italians during its early history to be a Catholic integralist and anti-Marxist political organization, today CL has an international presence beyond Italy and has shifted its energy away from partisan politics and towards cultural, charitable and educational works. Its adherents are predominantly lay Catholics. However, there are also priests and religious who belong to the movement, as well as consecrated lay men and women who are committed to lifelong celibacy, known as the Memores Domini. Some bishops (Luigi Negri, prelate of San Marino-Montefeltro, Gianni Danzi, prelate of Loreto, Giancarlo Vecèrrica, prelate of Fabriano-Matelica, in Italy; Filippo Santoro, prelate of Petròpolis, and Giancarlo Petrini, auxiliary prelate of Salvador de Bahia, in Brazil; Javier Martinez, archbishop of Granada, Spain; and one cardinal (Angelo Cardinal Scola, Patriarch of Venice) are former members; all of them have officially withdrawn from activity in CL immediately upon elevation to the episcopacy. The leaders of the movement include both lay persons (including non-celibate laity) and priests.

While it has a hierarchical organizational structure, CL does not issue membership cards or keep an official register of adherents, opting instead for a free and flexible form of membership. Participation in the CL movement can involve a relatively low degree of commitment, such as attending a weekly catechesis known as a "School of Community", or a high degree of commitment such as enrollment in the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation. It is difficult to estimate the number of adherents; in Italy, over 100,000 persons participate in the weekly School of Community. Since 1982 CL's official canonical recognition within the Catholic Church is through a structure called the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, an association of pontifical right composed of the more committed members.

Pope Benedict XVI is said to view CL favorably. A longtime friend of Msgr. Giussani, then-Cardinal Ratzinger personally celebrated the funeral Mass of Msgr. Giussani, who died on the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter and whose funeral was the same day that Pope John Paul II was checked into the hospital before his subsequent death.

Charism, Methods, and Spirituality

CL describes its purpose as "the education to Christian maturity of its adherents and collaboration in the mission of the Church in all the spheres of contemporary life." It aims to communicate the awareness that Christ is the one true response to the deepest needs of people in every moment of history. CL says that it requires only that Christ be recognized as immediately present. The person who encounters and welcomes the presence of Christ undergoes a conversion that affects not only the individual but also the surrounding environment.

CL describes its charism by focusing on three dimensions:

the wonder of the Incarnation, an enthusiasm for it and a recognition of its reasonableness
the affirmation that Jesus of Nazareth is a present event in a sign of communion
only in his presence can man be truer and mankind be truly more human.

The main method by which members of CL are formed in the faith is a weekly catechesis meeting, known as a "School of Community". Each School of Community is a group typically of several up to 10 people. In cities with a larger CL presence there may be multiple Schools of Community. The Schools of Community usually open up with prayer, often in the form of the Angelus. This is usually followed by the singing of songs. Next, the School of Community will read and discuss together some text, focusing both on what it says and comparing it to one's own lived experience. Often, the text comes from a portion of Monsignor Luigi Giussani's trilogy of works (known as the Per Corso Trilogy): The Religious Sense, At The Origin Of The Christian Claim, and Why The Church?. Finally, the School of Community will close with prayer, usually the Memorare.

A distinctive element of CL spirituality is the prayer, "Veni Sancte Spiritus, Veni Per Mariam", or "Come Holy Spirit, Come Through Mary". Msgr. Giussani described it as a synthesis of the Catholic faith, given how the prayer links the Holy Spirit, the Creator of all through time and the One who works through the Church, with Mary's "yes" that allowed the Incarnation to proceed.

History

CL emerged from the GS experience during the late 1960s, a period of rapid change in Italian society and within the Catholic Church. Following Giussani's appointment to a chair in the theology department at Milan's Catholic University in 1965, GS had begun to drift away from Giussani's methods and was adopting social and political ideals popular among student movements in Italy at the time. By 1968, a significant number of GS members had left to join the secular revolutionary student movement, and many had become active Marxists. The group that became CL openly opposed these new revolutionary movements in the universities, in contrast to the increasing trend within the official Catholic youth and lay organizations to abandon their traditional antagonism toward secularism and Marxism. The contrast had become a deep division by the time of Azione Cattolica's revision of its official statutes in 1969 and its adoption of a new policy of "religious choice" (a withdrawal from the sphere of partisan politics and a shift in focus towards spirituality and social justice, ostensibly in response to the Second Vatican Council). The faction of former GS members who rejected both the leftist student movement and the new direction of the official Catholic organizations took the name Comunione e Liberazione (originally the title of a manifesto they had authored and distributed).

During the 1970s, Giussani took an increasing interest in CL, which had resumed many of the distinctive practices and methods of GS and was operating as an unofficial Catholic organization in Italy outside the traditional lay Catholic structures, tending to be viewed with suspicion by the church hierarchy. Nevertheless, during the 1974 Italian referendum on divorce it was CL rather than the official Catholic organizations that undertook the task of defending the Catholic Church's position to Italian society. Through its role in the referendum CL gained the sympathy and trust of many Italian bishops and of Pope Paul VI, who voiced his support of Giussani and CL at a Palm Sunday youth event in 1975. During this time CL acquired a reputation as an integralist organization and was the target of violence, culminating in 120 attacks on persons and CL offices in 1977, during leftist students riots.

GS

Today, GS is the name of the High School chapter of CL. There are several active communities in the US, including ones in Brooklyn, Washington, Boston, and the Midwest. GS functions much like CL, holding weekly schools of community and twice-yearly regional vacations.

Involvement in Italian society

In 1975 CL members founded Movimento Popolare, a political organization outside the Italian Christian Democratic Party that supported candidates favorable to CL's social views, succinctly described by the formula Più società, meno Stato ("More society, less state"). This slogan expressed a position rooted in the Catholic principle of subsidiarity. Movimento Popolare exerted considerable influence in Italian politics in the 1980s and 1990s and successfully engineered the election of many of its representatives. The weekly newspaper "Il Sabato" was launched to give expression to CL's vigorous opposition to communism, advocacy of subsidiarity and support for an increased role for the Catholic Church in Italian society. The paper's circulation rose to 300,000. A related organization, "Compagnia delle Opere", was established in 1986 as a non-profit umbrella group promoting cooperation between businesses, assisting struggling enterprises and helping the unemployed to find work. An annual week-long cultural festival known as the "Meeting for friendship among peoples" organized by CL beginning in 1980 has grown to be a major Italian cultural event, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors.

Controversy and Crisis

In the late 1980s CL's relationship with the Italian episcopacy and in particular Milan's Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini became increasingly strained. The tension peaked when "Il Sabato" questioned the scientificity of the method used by Bible experts in analysing the Dead Sea Scrolls (Martini is a renowned Biblical scholar). Many Italian bishops publicly voiced their displeasure with "Il Sabato", which had begun to question the orthodoxy of certain groups and individuals within the Italian church. In a gesture of deference to the church hierarchy Giussani declared in 1989 that Il Sabato was no longer an official organ of CL. The paper continued to publish without Giussani's official endorsement for a few more years, ceasing publication in 1993.

The direction of CL's activities underwent change in the wake of the Tangentopoli corruption scandals, in which some CL adherents were allegedly implicated, but subsequently found innocent. Movimento Popolare ceased all its operations in 1993 and, after the Rimini Meeting of 1994, the focus of CL's activities shifted away from political participation and towards a renewed emphasis on the problem of education.

Groups that Have Grown Out of the CL Experience

The Fraternity of CL
Memores Domini
The priestly Fraternity of the Missionaries of St Charles Borromeo
The priestly Fraternity of Studium Christi
Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of the Assumption
The Fraternity of St Joseph
CLU, the college chapter of CL
GS, the high school chapter of CL
Ecclesial Carmelite Movement (Movimento Ecclesiale Carmelitano)

References

Erlandson, Greg (October 17, 1984). "Europe: Italian Group Challenges the Marxist Gospel". Wall Street Journal. p. 1.

Harris, Michael P. (September 8, 1986). "The Pope's Youthful "New Jesuits"". Time. pp. 70–71.

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External links

Critical literature

Gordon Urquhart: The Pope's Armada: Unlocking the Secrets of Mysteries and Powerful New Sects in the Church, Bantam Press (June 1, 1995), ISBN 0-593-03388-4
Comunione e Liberazione: A Fundamentalist Idea Of Power di Dario Zadra in Accounting for Fundamentalisms: The Dynamic Character of Movements (vol. 4 of series) Part I: Accounting for Christian Fundamentalisms (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1994 - Fundamentalism Project)
Martin E Marty, R Scott Appleby, Fundamentalisms Observed (University of Chicago Press, 1 lug 1994), ISBN 0-226-50878-1
Frederic Spotts, Theodor Wieser, Italy: A Difficult Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 30 apr 1986), ISBN 0-521-31511-5
Gabriel Abraham Almond, R Scott Appleby, Emmanuel Sivan, Strong Religion (University of Chicago Press, 15 gen 2003), ISBN 0-226-01498-3