'Political idiot but a saint'
Cunningham, Lawrence S.
THE TESTIMONY OF GIORGIO LA PIRA `Political idiot but a saint' LAWRENCE S. CUNNINGHAM theological thinker but attacked...
...It has been "fools" but even their friends find them suggested, for example, that La Pira may LAWRENCE S. CUNNINGHAM is an associate to be signs of contradiction...
...La biblical themes in Michelangelo...
...armed tension between the East and the was unbalanced or downright dangerous...
...The placed clerics in the Vatican thought he tain rightist elements in his own party...
...Come politico era un cretino, tended Mass daily...
...La Pira had a the increased vote for the Communists 1946...
...This impression of radicalism was West was an unthinkable state of affairs...
...an absolutely new condition into the clustered around the preparatory phases His vigorous intervention on behalf of world: for the first time in human history of the Second Vatican Council, this deworkers who had been laid off at certain it was possible for humanity to bring spite his thoroughgoing orthodoxy, his large factories was much resented...
...on "utopia as the true meaning sonalism and traditional concepts of so- best in pre-Vatican II spirituality...
...A derived from the fundamental prius of Tarrou, a character in Camus's novel The continuing seminar on his thought and its knowing and adoring God...
...its reply...
...Begun as a journal of opin- the late Professor Giorgio La Pira, the ration paper," ion and theological reflection by some mayor of the city of Florence from 1951 (b) corresponded with Nikita Florentine Catholic intellectuals who to 1964...
...its careful analyses of ma anche un santo," was his decisive and lived as a celibate...
...It was inevitable that he would strong sense of the church, as a visible could be partially explained by La Pira's play some role in the public life of the and structured entity, that exerted its own sympathy for the Left...
...In the anonymous and normally preoccupies Schlesinger: how did Robert also rendered a severe indictment...
...After almost as a motto, the dictum of St...
...Deeply influenced by the peace cern for the church in the world arena...
...His letters to Amintore Fanfani La Pira all political and social impulses spirituality of the pre-conciliar church...
...One telling sign of the three administrations until the Com- church as 'a countersign to the ills of the ambiguity with which the "Catholic munists took the majority of the votes in world...
...La Pira never Plague said that he wanted to be a saint, a application has already begun at Catan- wavered from that basic stance although, new kind of saint for an age which did not zaro with the announced intention of pub- as Father Balducci noted, the practical believe in God...
...He wanted the presence of the cratic party itself...
...Its most distinguished contributor Florence hurrying along in his inevitably late, Father Ernesto Balducci (whom I briefly baggy light-colored suits...
...For La Pira, the in- was never asked to be part of any of the controversial especially during the ex- troduction of atomic weaponry created lay commissions or consultancies that treme cold war years of the late Fifties...
...In perfect harmony Catholics in Italy some of whom, like the theological sense...
...Even of Pius XII...
...THE TESTIMONY OF GIORGIO LA PIRA `Political idiot but a saint' LAWRENCE S. CUNNINGHAM theological thinker but attacked by the Fascist press for shuffling "A Masonic, O NE OF the more distinguished presented because we are doubly in its liberal and Christian deck while mixing Catholic journals in Europe (but, debt for publishing (in its April/July, up St...
...lic life in the 1960s...
...merely my own position but also, and Thus, the reviewer in the Irish Times widely admired and President Kennedy more important, the controversy over confessed he "hated" Kennedy as much is venerated...
...ers...
...He took, way of life, it is chastening to remember Europe, etc...
...planations and, indeed, explosions of I, too, have a personal statement to emotion from reviewers and I gather the William V. Shannon make which I hope will illuminate not same has been true in the United States...
...He soon gained the gent large task of the Christian was to entree to papal confidence many high- sobriquet of the "Red Mayor" from cer- lessen the possibility of atomic war...
...La Pira began with the serene observation that a roof sympathetic reading of Communism as a his public career as an esteemed over one's head is a basic and inalienable world movement...
...a) was a conservative Thomist John XXIII which ended in the Commonweal: 84 precedent-setting visit of the Premier's and gave open approval to their demon- convinced absolutely that the most urson-in-law to the Vatican...
...In an extraordistrongly drawn to the renewed scholasti- at the city shelter...
...His close friendship nary letter to Nikita Khrushchev (written cism of the time...
...At any rate, Christian Democratic Party so it came as presence in the world and its mystical La Pira not only lost his mayoral office no surprise that he headed the DC munic- power over the course of history...
...La Pira's incumbency was quite post-atomic period...
...There are over twenty articles on Khrushchev during the height of the Cold were increasingly disenchanted by the La Pira's many-faceted career as a law War with suggestions about pruning the state of the Christian Democratic party professor, political figure, ambassador "Socialist oak" of its "atheistic deadand the more "official" sources of without portfolio in the cause of peace wood" and arguing, in the same letter, Catholic thought, Testimonianze is now a and, above all else, as a man of contem- that the true Marx was rooted in the proquarter of a century old...
...His first publications were ant anti-Communist crusade (which had claims, its sense of the inevitable movescholarly articles on various arcane the blessing and less than covert support ment of history and its international dipoints of the history of Roman law...
...Books: RFK: AN UNFINISHED MAN OBERT R Kennedy has proved as con- ROBERT HEII$EDY AND HIS TIMES cards on the table: this reviewer thinks troversial in death as in life...
...Such types are Paul VI) that was influential at the highThis encomium to Testimonianze is often dismissed by their enemies as est level of Vatican policy...
...La Pira died in 1977...
...Over friend-a fiercely anti-clerical middle- lived in monastic simplicity (for a bit he the years I have been nurtured by its class conservative-what he thought of actually lived in a Dominican friary...
...he participated at Masses with them writings of Thomas Merton, La Pira was In the last decade of his life, La Pira 16 February 1979: 85 devoted more of his energies to prayer (which would make a hefty book) alluded complex than the homogeneous commuand solitude...
...I count it (d) dispensed food, clothes, profiled in these pages in 1972: "Theol- among the sadder decisions of my life not medicines and sermons every day while ogy Italian Style," March 24, 1972) is a to have introduced myself and spoken he was mayor of Florence and, long bemodel of good sense, evangelical fervor with him...
...have already been published in Italy...
...disarm- older spirituality of Neo-Thomism, Per- Pira's life clearly stands for all that was ament...
...You could safely categorized as the most responsi- about La Pira with friends and, on occa- just send a priest up into the nearest ble voice of the Christian Left in Italy sion, would see him on the streets of minaret, La Pira told the scandalized pretoday...
...He made a deep study of with the saintly Cardinal della Costa of in 1957) he begged the Soviet leader to St...
...He gained his degree in the right...
...La Pira's more seriously the character of specific Seventies he went to Chile to see the spiritual development came in that historical circumstance one would have effects of the first democratically elected tension-filled period before the Second to compare La Pira with someone like Marxist government in the world...
...reinforced by La Pira's expropriation of such a stand-off demanded the building O NE COULD multiply these paradoxes unused buildings, properties and villas to of bridges between the two armed camps...
...We praxis became more apparent when La that such lives are not an impossibility in also have the issue of Testimonianze Pira entered public life, an arena far more this day...
...La about the Apocalypse by an act of the evident spirituality and his intense conPira openly sympathized with the work- will...
...Even after the Second with his Constantinian vision of the late Aldo Moro, would play a leading church, La Pira assured Khrushchev that role in the rise of the Christian Democrats f he could be numbered among the great in the postwar period...
...one thinks immediately of Alcide he thought the times mature for Pope de Gasperi in Italy and Konrad Adenauer Paul and Mao to do for the world what in Germany...
...annual subscriptions to the "ubi episcopus, ibi ecclesia" while, on editorial orientation has become increas- U.S.A...
...He seemed to such thinkers as Antonio Gramsci...
...A political idiot but a saint...
...This was formation was not dissimilar to that of not mere hyperbole on La Pira's part...
...ocratic politics after the war and was one Vatican Council he had strong reserva- La Pira and the other Christian Demoof those who worked on the drafting of tions about the "new theology" while crats lost the electoral majority to the the proposed Italian Constitution after the rapid liturgical changes in the church Communists in 1964...
...In that but more and more was emarginated ipal slate in 1957 and was elected to the sense, as he liked to say, he was a ma- within the ranks of the Christian Demooffice of mayor...
...Actu- keep no personal possessions even to the fine research on "popular" religion (a ally, that was not a bad description since extent of giving away his personal library topic which increasingly attracts the at- it was said of La Pira frequently, by in order to remain unencumbered with tention of liberation theologians...
...profound spirituality...
...recited the breviary...
...the idea that he was a "progressive...
...that many of the authentically holy his death there was the immediate begin- Thomas that contemplation was the pur- people of our era-one thinks imnings of what surely will be a flood of pose and goal of all created being: con- mediately of Mother Teresa, Pope John, publications and studies by and about templatio est finis totius creationis...
...on the youth revolt in Saint Vincent de Paul Society...
...And impersonal pages of The Economist, the Kennedy grow and change, particularly this in a country where the Kennedys are critic began a laudatory review: "All in the three years after his brother's asCrnnmonweal: 86...
...c) was conservative enough to tell a mediately to mind-although it has (The editorial offices of Testimonianze dissident parish which was at odds with tended in the past years to become a bit are at Via Gino Caponi, 36...
...I once asked a Florentine fore the pop asceticism of Jerry Brown, and philosophical sophistication...
...At the surface, leaders of history...
...on the "materialism" of the cial action (he was active for years in the those who are tempted to patronize such a Resurrection...
...Such is not the case...
...in extenso but that might leave the provide worker housing...
...For or Dorothy Day-were nurtured on the him...
...a many other Catholic intellectuals of the decade later he told Father Balducci that time...
...In the early time in which they live...
...Italy and Europe...
...leaders like Constanthen, La Pira's intellectual and spiritual tine, Clovis and Charlemagne...
...The that Robert Kennedy was one of the reviews in the Irish and English papers Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr...
...it was said of Pira believed, was a mystical or conCatholic iritellectuais of the time, was La Pira that he knew by name every bum templative dimension...
...To understand between the Americans and the North are saints because they reveal a new way the difference of La Pira's spirituality Vietnamese with A. Fanfani (then at the of living the Christian life peculiar to the from that of a spirituality which takes UN) being intermediary...
...Thomas and political liberalism" alas, little known on this side of the At- 1978 issue) a hefty three-hundred-page and then having his journal shut down by lantic) is the Florentine quarterly Tes- issue totally dedicated to the memory of the same Fascists because of the "need to timonianze...
...He personally dispensed the mensions...
...Despite this contemplative to in the beginning of this article...
...If he would do that, La writings of Maritain and well versed in nal Lercaro of Bologna, gave credence to Pira promised, God would make him a the personalism of Emmanuel Mounier...
...believer and, following that, a builder of He had close contacts with leading young La Pira was hardly a progressive in the human solidarity...
...The critic in the through to a reasonably balanced judg- way pursued the same theme which Irish Press, although more temperate, ment...
...nity of the Saint Vincent de Paul Society...
...La Pira also held himself aloof its materialism and its atheism (which he law and was appointed to the Faculty of from, the rigid demands of Luigi Gedda's considered dehumanizing) but was powJurisprudence in Florence in the early Azione Cattolica with its attendant milit- erfully impressed by its messianic thirties...
...Delegate in Egypt that the fervent public barometer of such a trend in Italian When I was living in Florence in the prayers of Moslems in Cairo was proof Catholic intellectual life) and can be early Seventies I had many discussions that they need no Baptism...
...He made a trip to Vietnam in Italian life and politics...
...For of history...
...atin-depth articles of religious questions in La Pira...
...Individual back another occasion, telling the Apostolic ingly leftist over the years (it is almost a issues may be purchased for L. 3,000...
...concern his efforts at "bridge building" Giorgio La Pira left a sure mark on La Pira's spirituality was ahistorical in continued...
...Despite this strations and sit-ins...
...sanest and most sensitive people in pubhave been the occasion for personal ex- Houghton, Mifflin, $19.95, 916 pp...
...this book...
...All Communism needed, La in this early period La Pira, like many city's largesse to the poor...
...Its issues have plation, solitude, poverty and heroic phet Isaiah and the atheism of Marx was a been blessedly free from that clerico- generosity...
...are L. 17,000...
...Karl Rahner once wrote that saints tured on from his youth...
...Pope Sylvester and Constantine had done La Pira participated in Christian Dem- centuries before...
...Its Italy 50121...
...I knew Robert Kennedy and today as he did when Kennedy was alive, In England, the New Statesman re- wrote a book about him (The Heir Appaand he followed through on that emotion viewer confessed to a personal distas.e rent published in 1967 and now out of with an astonishingly fierce attack on the for Robert Kennedy before he struggled print) which in a much less ambitious subject and the book...
...Vatican Council when new stirrings of Archbishop Helder Camara of Recife or During this same period La Pira con- theology and spirituality were in the air Father Ernesto Cardenal of Nicaragua, tinued to write essays and books on a but were still in the process of becoming...
...Thomas and was widely read in the Florence and, more dangerously, Cardi- free the church...
...La Pira simply Beyond the imperatives of the need for impression that La Pira was merely quix- answered such charges of radicalism dialogue La Pira also had a somewhat otic...
...Florence, the Cardinal Archbishop of Florence that lumpy with neo-marxist catchwords...
...He failed in that desire lishing annual volumes of research de- difficulty of linking contemplation and but persons like Giorgia La Pira testify rived from La Pira's life and work...
...He resolutely resisted academic...
...its per- people who knew much more about poli- worldly goods, suasive understanding of political tics than my friend, that he was a hope- (e) carried on a vast-and yet theology-a slant which has made me less utopian, a notoriously indifferent unpublished-correspondence with more sympathetic to a style of theology administrator, but a person of genuinely three popes (Pius XII, John XXIII, and for which I have little connatural taste...
...What is more character, it derived exclusively from the the Sixties to visit Ho Chi Minh where he interesting about La Pira is the style of his philosophy of esse that he had been nurattempted to open an exchange of views life...
...La Pira served through terialist...
...He felt this most keenly in the Party" viewed La Pira is the fact that he 1964...
...Such a juxtaposition is not meant as a wide variety of subjects: Savonarola, La Pira grew and was nourished by the denigration of what La Pira stood for...
...The issue concludes with a superficial carryover from bourgeois curial language which suffocates the arti- bibliography of over two hundred items prejudices which Marx inherited from cles of so many Italian religious that came from La Pira's own pen and a the French Revolution, journals-Civiltd Cattolica comes im- shorter bibliography of works about him...
...Some thought that the Italian people voted in a republic in simply bemused him...
...After all, have been the catalyst for the exchange of professor in the Department of Religion at what does one make of a man who: letters between Khrushchev and Pope Florida State University...
Vol. 106 • February 1979 • No. 3
