Bergoglio and the Ultimate Questions

Bergoglio and the Ultimate Questions | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. | Catholic World Report

A 2003 essay by Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio reflects on modern man’s failure to pursue answers to life’s deepest questions

Someone sent me a book chapter entitled “For Man.” Its author was Jorge Mario Bergoglio. The book, Generative Thought:  An Introduction to the Works of Luigi Giussani (Mcgill Queens University Press, 2003; edited by Elisa Buzzi), is an appreciation of Msgr. Luigi Giussani’s own book, The Religious Sense. Msgr. Giussani is the founder of Communion e Liberazione, a dynamic religious movement now found in some sixty countries. [Editor: Bergoglio’s chaper is available in PDF format on theCommunio website.] 

What struck Bergoglio about Giussani’s influential book was that it hardly ever spoke of God, of any of the normal questions about his existence or meaning. Rather it was about man. Reminiscent of John Paul II’s Redemptor Hominis and many writings of Benedict XVI, the issue was the being of man—of whether he bore within himself the image of God, of the nature of human knowledge. 

At the time this essay was written, John Paul II had just published Fides et Ratio. Bergoglio cites the famous beginning passage of this powerful document wherein John Paul lists the important questions about the meaning of human life and death, of evil and good, of our final destiny. Pope Wojtyla had noted that such questions are present in almost all human cultures and traditions, not merely in Christian ones. He concludes from this survey that these very questions reveal something basic about human nature. They must be asked and considered if we are to face what we really are.

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