mrtoupee :
"I thus repeat my profession of faith, whether it be pleasing or displeasing to my listeners: l am a Christian. I am a Christian because I believe in the religion of the spirit. But I would like to immediately add, to avoid any misunderstanding: I am a Catholic. And not merely since today; let this also be very clear."
"I have been rigorously Catholic since June 1875, i.e. since the day I was born. And so I regret not being able to announce to you a story about a crisis, a storm of the soul, a sudden conversion, a stroke of lightning. I have been prosaically on the road to Damascus since the day I was born. [...]"
"I told you why I am a Christian. The Christian religion is the religion of the spirit, by which God is spirit; but He is spirit inasmuch as man is spirit; and in the reality of the spirit God and man are two and they are one: so that man is truly man only in his unity with God: divine thought and divine will. And God for his part is true God insofar as he is one with man, who completes His essence (figurative): God incarnate was made man and was crucified."
"Why Catholic? Because religion is church; like any spiritual activity (scientific, philosophical, artistic, practical) it is universal, proper to a subject that expands to infinity: unlimited community, in which my God is God if He is God of all."
— Giovanni Gentile, Speech in Florence, February 9, 1943
Conference in the Aula Magna of the University of Florence (My Religion)
Source: http://bibliotecafascista.blogspot.com/2012/03/speech-in-florence-february-9-1943.html
2025-09-29 07:59:31