The Religious Sense as Praeparatio Fidei in the Thought of Luigi Giussani
Thomas Gourlay
The Catholic Institute of Western Australia , Australiahttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-2546-6056
Abstract
Luigi Giussani’s teaching on the religious sense of man is one of his most unique and enduring contributions. For him, the religious sense is best understood within the context of its relationship to, and contradistinction from faith. Although on a simplistic and superficial reading it may seem that the two concepts simply coincide, this is not the content of Giussani’s teaching. The aim of this paper is to explore how Giussani marked the difference between man’s religious sense and faith, demonstrating that these two distinct realities exist in a complementary and reciprocal enriching, yet essentially asymmetrical relationship. Through analysing Giussani’s presentation of these two phenomena, we observe that the religious sense is understood not as something that must simply be demonstrated rationally prior to the assent of faith, a sort of praeambulum fidei, but rather as a praeparatio fidei, a preparation— which is not merely a preceding activity, occurring chronologically prior the encounter with Christ and the arrival of faith, but which coexists with the experience of faith and also, in a specific sense, arises as the fruit of that experience.
Keywords:
Luigi Giussani, faith, theological anthropology, evangelization, new evangelization, praeambula fidei, praeparatio fidei, religious senseReferences
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The Catholic Institute of Western Australia
Thomas V. Gourlay, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in Systematic Theology and Religious Education at the Catholic Institute of Western Australia (CIWA). He completed his PhD at the University of Notre Dame Australia with a thesis titled ‘To Broaden the Scope of Reason: The Significance of Relational Ontology for the Catholic University’. He holds degrees in education and theology from the University of Notre Dame Australia and the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family (Melbourne). His research interests include fundamental theology, faith and culture, Catholic education, and the theology of Luigi Giussani and Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI. He is the president and co-founder of the Christopher Dawson Society for Philosophy and Culture (Inc.), and an Associated Scholar for the Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Project.
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