Romano Guardini - Letters from Lake Como: Explorations in Technology and the Human Race (Ressourcement: Retrieval & Renewal in Catholic Thought)

The middle years of this century marked a particularly intense time of crisis and change in European society. During this period (19301950), a broad intellectual and spiritual movement arose within the European Catholic community, largely in response to the secularism that lay at the core of the crisis. The movement drew inspiration from earlier theologians and philosophers such as Mohler, Newman, Gardell, Rousselot, and Blondel, as well as from men of letters like Charles Peguy and Paul Claudel.

The group of academic theologians included in the movement extended into Belgium and Germany, in the work of men like Emile Mersch, Dom Odo Casel, Romano Guardini, and Karl Adam. But above all the theological activity during this period centered in France. Led principally by the Jesuits at Fourviere and the Dominicans at Le Saulchoir, the French revival included many of the greatest names in twentieth-century Catholic thought: Henri de Lubac, Jean Danielou, Yves Cougar, Marie-Dominique Chenu, Louis Bouyer, and, in association, Hans Urs von Balthasar.

It is not true - as subsequent folklore has it - that those theologians represented any sort of self-conscious "school": indeed, the differences among them were important. At the same time, they were united in the double conviction that theology had to speak to the present situation, and that the condition for doing so faithfully lay in a recovery of the Church's past. In other words, they all saw clearly that the first step in what later came to be known as aggiornamento had to be ressourcement- a rediscovery of the riches of the whole of the Church's two thousand year tradition. According to de Lubac, for example, all of his own works as well as the entire Sources chretiennes collection are based on the presupposition that "the renewal of Christian vitality is linked at least partially to a renewed exploration of the periods and of the works where the Christian tradition is expressed with particular intensity."

In sum, for the ressourcement theologians theology involved a "return to the sources" of Christian faith, for the purpose of drawing out the meaning and significance of these sources for the critical questions of our time. What these theologians sought was a spiritual and intellectual communion with Christianity in its most vital moments as transmitted to us in its classic texts, a communion which would nourish, invigorate, and rejuvenate twentieth-century Catholicism.

The ressourcement movement bore great fruit in the documents of the Second Vatican Council and has deeply influenced the work of Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.

The present series is rooted in this twentieth-century renewal of theology, above all as the renewal is carried in the spirit of de Lubac and von Balthasar. In keeping with that spirit, the series understands ressourcement as revitalization: a return to the sources, for the purpose of developing a theology that will truly meet the challenges of our time. Some of the features of the series, then, will be:

a return to classical (patristic-mediaeval sources;

a renewed interpretation of St. Thomas;

a dialogue with the major movements and thinkers of the twentieth century, with particular attention to problems associated with the Enlightenment, modernity, liberalism.

The series will publish out-of-print or as yet untranslated studies by earlier authors associated with the ressourcement movement. The series also plans to publish works by contemporary authors sharing in the aim and spirit of this earlier movement. This will include interpretations of de Lubac and von Balthasar and, more generally, any works in theology, philosophy, history, and literature which give renewed expression to a classic Catholic sensibility.

The editor of the Ressourcement series, David L. Schindler, is Gagnon Professor of Fundamental Theology at the John Paul II Institute in Washington, D.C., and editor of the North American edition of Communio: International Catholic Review a federation of journals in thirteen countries founded in Europe in 1972 by Hans Urs von Balthasar, Jean Danielou, Henri de Lubac, Joseph Ratzinger, and others.

With an Introduction by

Louis Dupre

Translated by

Geoffrey W. Bromiley

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ix

xi

FIRST LETTER

SECOND LETTER

THIRD LETTER

FOURTH LETTER

FIFTH LETTER

SIXTH LETTER

SEVENTH LETTER

EIGHTH LETTER

NINTH LETTER

hese letters initially appeared in the Schildgenossen, the first in the Pentecost copy in 1923 and the last in the fall copy of 1925. In answer to requests I am now publishing them in this separate edition. In all essentials they have retained their original form, even though many arguments might be advanced against this. A path leads from the first letter to the last, on which many things became clearer to the author and were expanded and changed. It would have been natural to revise the whole series in the light of the insights gained. But the letters were not concerned simply with the philosophy of culture. It thus seemed permissible and right to let them stand as they are, i.e., as testimonies to the path taken with all that proved to be unattainable and even wrong on it. Perhaps they will be welcome as such to others also on the road "between the times."

To say that, however, is also to say that the road continues. Hence the ninth letter, whether in its thoughts or in its attitude, must not be regarded as definitive. It is indeed particularly incomplete and hardly does justice to its theme. Today already I would say much in it differently, yet not in the sense of deviating from the inner line and above all not in the sense of retracting. That is what justifies me in again presenting the letters to my readers, even though they come from hours that are long since past.

Varenna on Lake Como,

September 1926

Munich 1960

his short book may well be the jewel in the crown of Guardini's writings. Its casual format of occasional letters has preserved the freshness of the author's original vision. Returning to the homeland he never knew - Guardini's parents emigrated to Germany when he was one year old - he records impressions as they reach him, feelingly but without preestablished order. As the wandering continues, observations turn into symbols. Ideas long held and theoretically articulated here assume the concrete shape of visual intuition and nostalgic emotion. If Guardini's theoretical works contain the justification, the Letters present the vision. One may disagree with his concept of modern culture - wishing to rearrange the chain of cause and effect, or at least to replace the accents - but it is difficult not to share his vision. In the Letters "ideas" return to what they were originally: not abstract universals but contemplated forms. Around the ancient lake the visitor witnesses the delayed victory of the modern world over the remains of classical culture and the traditional Christian one that assumed it.