Disarming Beauty: Essays on Faith, Truth, and Freedom

The wide-ranging essays in this collection defy easy categorization. Generally, they seek to address Christian (primarily Catholic and European) culture and its stagnant malaise with respect to post-Enlightenment striving for certainty: "What is at risk today is precisely man, his reason, his freedom and the freedom of critical reasoning." The fulcrum of these pieces is the work of Fr. Luigi Giussani, founder of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation (FCL) movement. Here, Fr. Carrón (theology, Catholic Univ. of the Sacred Heart, Milan; president, FCL) reflects on Giussani's writings and the issues facing Catholics today. For Giussani, a relationship with God is the locus of meaning in the midst of mounting, primarily European, cultural discontent. More social criticism than formal theology, this book attacks bankrupt European culture head-on, urging a reinvigorated, theologically informed understanding of education, human relationships, and questions of meaning. The testimony, he claims, that all Christians are called to—is to affirm the value of others and the common good above our own prejudiced concerns.