Identità e missione

(Identity and Mission)

Abstract

“What triumphs in elections is money, favors, tricks. Yet not to accept such means is considered as an unforgivable naivete... . Everything falls apart. All ideals disappear. Parties no longer exist. What exists is simply little groups and clienteles. From the Parliament, the sad spectacle extends to the country. All parties are divided. The great forces give up in front of the moral mashing and breaking up of all centers of union.” Of which Italy is this piece talking? Of today’s Italy? Actually, this is a text by Giuseppe Prezzolini, written one hundred years ago on the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the Unification of Italy in 1911. Setting out from here, the author of the essay depicts the Italian situation in the three anniversaries respectively, in 1911, 1961, and 2011, and focuses on the feature of national resource that Italian Christianity entails. The conclusion looks at the future: Italy was an important country in the small world of the cold war; now, it is a small country in the world of globalization. We are the generation of the transition. Such a change is not the end of the country; it is the end of a certain kind of country. From here, one must start again realistically with a vision.