Sandro Magister Introduces The New Book And Provides an Interview with

Cardinal Ruini

Discovering God. With Ruini As Guide

And not just any sort of god, but the one of whom Jesus is the great sign. A book for those who already believe, but even more for those who are perplexed, uncertain, uneasy. On a topic that is also the greatest priority of this pontificate by Sandro Magister ROME, September 13, 2012 For many years, Joseph Ratzinger had his heart set on writing a book about Jesus. And he has succeeded. For Cardinal Camillo Ruini, it is the same way. For a long time, writing a book about God had been uppermost in his thoughts. And now his "Interview on God," published by Mondadori, has been in all of Italy's bookstores for a few days. The chosen expository form is the interview, with intelligent and balanced questions from Andrea Galli. But the exposition does not proceed by fits and starts. As in the medieval "summ," here as well each "qustio" is one step of a journey that traces out an organic and profoundly unified whole. The index of chapter headings gives an overview of this: - The situation of faith today - The religious dimension in the history of humanity - The eclipse of God in the West - The question about God is special - The multiple ways of the encounter with God - The path of being - The path of the understanding of nature - The path of freedom - For reason, God is light and obscurity - The God of the Old Testament - Jesus Christ, the great sign of God - The face of the God of Jesus Christ - God for us Already from this index, it can be intuited that the intention of the book is to trace a pathway to God for the wings of reason alone, for persons who are seeking him or want to verify the reasons of their faith. The three "paths" of the central chapters approach God from the starting point of wonder in the face of our existence, of our unexhausted understanding of nature, of the yearning for freedom present in every man.

Even in the last four fascinating chapters, in which the Bible and the Gospels are largely present and in which the figure of Jesus is dominant, the arguments remain those of reason. But a reason open to the possibility that God might reveal himself to men. And therefore capable of recognizing that great sign of God planted in history which is Jesus Christ. From this it can be seen how the two capital books of Benedict XVI and Cardinal Ruini, the one about Jesus and the other about God, the one in a horizon of faith, the other in a horizon of reason, are two stages of the same adventure. It is the adventure that pope Ratzinger has called "the supreme and fundamental priority of the Church and of the successor of Peter in this time": that of "leading men to God." And "not to any sort of god, but to that God who spoke on Sinai, to that God whose face we recognize in love driven to the very end, in Jesus crucified and risen." Benedict XVI wrote this in the striking letter that he sent to all the bishops of the world, dated March 10, 2009. And a few days earlier, on March 1 of that year, although he was unaware of that letter, Cardinal Ruini had identified the "greatest priority" of this pontificate precisely in God, that God in whom today faith is tending to weaken and die. As president of the committee for the cultural project of the Italian episcopal conference, Ruini spearheaded two major international conferences. The first, in December of 2009, on "God today." The second, in February of 2012, on "Jesus our contemporary." "With him or without him, that changes everything," was the subtitle of the conference on God. In reading this book by Ruini, one understands the reason why. That God may exist is not to be derived from a geometric demonstration. But the arguments of reason that approach him are enough to suggest that his existence remains "the best hypothesis," again in Ratzinger's words. In the upcoming "year of faith," the books about God and about Jesus written by Ruini and by Benedict XVI will be two essential readings. The third and last volume of the pope's book, that on the infancy narratives, is on its way. As for the book by the cardinal, here are a few sample pages. ____________

FROM "INTERVIEW ON GOD" by Camillo Ruini FOR WHOM THIS BOOK IS WRITTEN (pp. 276-277) This book has certainly been helpful for me as well: it has obliged me to carry out a comprehensive reflection on my relationship with God, on the solidity of this relationship, and on the objective reasons that support it, in addition to its value for me. Writing it has cost me some effort, but I consider it a gift that the Lord has given me. My hope is that the book can be useful to many: I have therefore sought to make a presentation that would be, as much as possible, at the same time simple and serious. In concrete terms, the book is written to help those who believe to have a more explicit awareness of the reasons for their faith, and thus to become whole in their awareness as believers not of the past, but of our time. It is also written for those who would like to believe, but are uncertain or perplexed, and I hope that they may be able to find in these pages some help in freeing themselves from the difficulties that are holding them back, and instead strengthen themselves in their motivations for believing. I am not under the illusion that a book of this kind is able to change the decision of those who have chosen not to believe, or in any case prefer not to express themselves concerning God: but if this is able to contribute in some way to such a result, I will be happy and grateful to God. The book, therefore, is intended for all, even if the problems addressed often are not simple. Moreover, it could be of support for priests, catechists, and anyone who may desire to bear witness to their faith in an explicit manner. Students of theology, and also of philosophy, can find here an aid for summarizing the question of God. In writing, I had in mind particularly the many persons today who have a scientific education: I hope to have offered them a foothold, however small, in bridging the distance that often seems to separate scientific issues from the question about God. This book, finally, is not at a level that allows it to be presented to students of theology and philosophy. This does not mean that I exempt myself from their

judgment: I ask only that they keep in mind that I have avoided many arguments which although of unquestionable significance did not seem to me indispensable for presenting, in an intellectually honest way, God to everyone. THE MANY WAYS THAT LEAD TO HIM (pp. 11-12) I would like to make one thing clear right away: I do not think at all that one arrives at God, or better, that God arrives at us, enters into our lives, only, or even predominantly, by the intellectual way. The ways that lead to God, and above all those by which God comes in search of us, are truly infinite, as a popular saying reminds us. Every experience, encounter, circumstance, can open the way to God: even, and sometimes mainly, those negative experiences of suffering and difficulty that would instead seem destined to distance us from him. In particular, God is encountered in prayer, which certainly, at least to some extent, already presupposes faith, but is also an act of humility and trust that opens the door to God. In the same way, when we do good for others we open the door to God. Dedicating our intelligence to the search for God, as we seek to do in this book, is therefore not the only way to find him, and not even the most important. It is, however, an aspect that we cannot ignore, if we do not want to create within ourselves a fracture by which we may be believers in the desire of our hearts, but our intelligence does not know why, or is even convinced that nothing can be known about God, and perhaps that he does not even exist. THE DUTY OF DEFENDING THE REASONS FOR FAITH (pp. 10-11) I recognize my limitations: it is true that I was born, theologically, above all as an apologist, or a defender of the faith. This, moreover, was the kind of formation that was given at the Pontifical Gregorian University during the years in which I went there, and this was also the ecclesial experience of my youth. I share some of the decisive criticisms of neo-Scholastic apologetics: an insistence upon polemics much greater than the capacity to grasp the positive aspects of the new that comes along, and a certain rationalism that restricts the horizons and leads to a dead end the very defense of the reasons for faith.

But I would also like to recall that, after the apostolic Fathers, the most ancient generation of Fathers of the Church is referred to as the apologist Fathers. Today, with good reason, the preference is to speak of fundamental theology rather than apologetics. Polemics has been replaced, among theologians, by a mainly dialogicalttitude, and there is an effort not to fall back within the limitations of rationalism. But as the dialogue between believers and nonbelievers gradually took concrete shape after the Council, it has been necessary to take note that no method or approach can eliminate the difference between faith and non-faith: those believers who take such an illusion to its ultimate consequences end up, almost without realizing it, pulling away from faith themselves. Benedict XVI dedicated to this problem a particularly profound page of his first address of Christmas greetings to the Roman curia, on December 22, 2005. So this is not a matter of trying to eliminate the difference between faith and nonfaith, but of living it in freedom and mutual respect. And both believers and nonbelievers have the duty, even before the right, to give the reasons for their positions: apart from the names used, this is a substantial and permanent task of the apologist. BETWEEN REASON AND FAITH THERE IS CONTINUITY, BUT ALSO RUPTURE (pp. 256-257) The word "wager," although it can be traced back to a great Christian thinker like Blaise Pascal, does not entirely convince me, because it seems to imply a separation between reason and will, in which the latter of these would have to make up for the insufficiency of the former. A similar limitation is found in the other alternative, of a gift received independently of rational seeking: this can certainly happen, but it is the exception rather than the normal dynamic of our journey to God. In the unity of the person, in fact, either reason, will, and grace, and also sensibility, affections, and circumstances of life, work so to speak together to open us to God, or the human factors oppose grace to drive us away from him. In concrete terms, the decision to believe in God is rationally motivated, rather better than the opposite choice, and the two ways of reason and faith are complementary: the first opens access to God to all, not only to believers in Jesus Christ, the second enlightens us concerning God's attitude toward us, which for reason alone remains a question that is difficult to answer.

Together with synergy and complementarity there exists, however, and is very profound, even distressing, the dimension of rupture: St. Paul speaks to us of this when he contrasts the wisdom of the world with the power and wisdom of God that is revealed in the cross of Christ. That is, the becoming man of the Son of God, his death and resurrection allow us to know the true face of God in a way that is completely unexpected for us, that transcends all human logic and precisely in this way is the mark of the true God, and not imagined or constructed by us. In our journey to God, there is first of all the journey of God to us, and so continuity and rupture go together, because as intelligent and free beings we are open to enter into relationship with God, and yet God always remains infinitely beyond the measure in which we can receive him. THE BEAUTY OF PRAYER (pp. 265-266) The relationship with God is fundamental for each one of us, and its most direct form is prayer. Even if only in the chiaroscuro of faith, prayer introduces us to a certain experience of God that in some way confirms itself, because praying increases the desire to pray, and faith is strengthened and becomes joy. Precisely because of this it is difficult to communicate something about prayer to someone who has never practiced it. When prayer then reaches the level of mystical contemplation, the experience of God becomes much stronger and more full, as attested for us by the great mystics who accompany the history of Christianity. In their testimony, the mystical union with God maintains a clear personal character, configuring itself as a relationship with the Father and with the Son Jesus Christ in the light of the Holy Spirit. It never separates itself, moreover, from the demand of concrete love of neighbor, in harmony with the words of the first letter of John: "If we love one another, God remains in us and his love is perfected in us. In fact, he who does not love his own brother, whom he sees, cannot love God, whom he does not see." In concrete terms, prayer has a central role in the life of believers: it makes us free and capable of taking in all of reality with a purified gaze, in order to face it not in a selfish way but in the light of the merciful love of God. Thus also prayer, in resemblance to martyrdom, is a lived confutation of our selfsufficiency and that of the world, as also of the idolatry of action and its results: it makes room, in fact, for the experience of gratuity and for the more beautiful side of life.

____________ The book: Camillo Ruini, Andrea Galli, "Intervista su Dio. Le parole della fede, il cammino della ragione", Mondadori, Milano, 2012, pp. 300, euro 18.50.

English translation by Matthew Sherry, Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.A.