Over the course of the summer, the CL community of Columbus, Ohio met virtually with old and new friends from the greater Midwest area to read and discuss Fr. Giussani’s book The Risk of Education. The original aim of this initiative was to prepare a public event on the book, organized by Holly Peterson, with Nuncio Cardinal Christophe Pierre, Bishop Earl Fernandes, and three local speakers: Ryan Michelle Pettit, principal of Cristo Rey Columbus High School, William Keuhnle, Associate Director for Social Concerns Catholic Conference of Ohio, and Silvia Guslandi, Visiting Assistant Professor at Kenyon College. The virtual discussions ended up being a wonderful opportunity to invite new friends, colleagues, and fellow parents to share their experiences of education and compare them with the proposal of Fr. Giussani.

Three friends from Columbus share their judgment about the work and the final public event:

As a community we shared lunch with Cardinal Pierre when he arrived in town. I was present for the panel discussion on The Risk of Education and at a later talk by the Cardinal for a fundraiser for Christians in the Middle East. The Cardinal and Bishop Fernandes also stopped by to visit the St. Thomas More Newman Center, where I serve as the chaplain. I was struck and moved in all my interactions with the Cardinal by his fatherly care. I saw it in the genuine conversations over lunch and the concern he had for our lives and our experience of the Church. I saw in particular the fatherhood of Fr. Giussani in the Cardinal’s explanation of his approach to education. I saw it in his fatherly pride for and joking interaction with Bishop Fernandes. I experienced both the gaze of Fr. Giussani and ultimately the gaze of the Father through the experience. This was quite worthwhile and fulfilling, but what was more was that it was all within the context and atmosphere of reflecting on The Risk of Education. I saw in my own attempt to be faithful to Giussani’s educational charism in my work with college students at the Newman Center, that I was able to be a father to them by handing on a tradition and assisting them in learning to critique, verify, and make personal judgements. A father hands on a tradition and gives his sons and daughters the freedom to verify it. In summary I was left with a genuine experience that for me to be a father one must first be generated.
– Fr. Adam

The five weeks of discussion and preparation for the event with both friends and friends of friends was an occasion to not only meet new people, several of whom have asked to continue to journey with us, but for me to be moved again by the words of a “master,” as Cardinal Pierre referred to Don Giussani.

I swim in Giussani’s writing daily, easily taking the revolutionary nature of his words for granted. So, to rediscover the extraordinary nature of his experience and the impact they have with fresh eyes was a big gift and correction for me. The practicality of the word criticism, for example, and the necessity to judge with another in the journey to truth, challenged my thinking about my profession. We work in silos (physically in offices and practically by design), and the silo-ing is not a “problem.” The individualistic air I breathe has convinced me that what I produce is a measure of success. The result, however, is always a dead end of a task. Complete, but nothing new happens. Thus, I’m happy to continue to read with our new friends.
– Holly

Reading The Risk of Education with friends, particularly those who were reading Giussani for the first time, allowed me to rediscover the originality of the charism that I have met and to become more aware of the contribution that I have to offer the world, as a mother, as a professor, as a friend etc. Preparing the public event, it was clear that what we were putting together was the fruit of a lived communion, a community that was able to be a presence, to generate a place and therefore to invite others to that place – like Davide Prosperi says in his document to the Italian Cultural Centers. The event was well attended and was the occasion to meet new people, but there were also some who misunderstood parts of what were said – like the reporter who wrote a piece about the event for the local Catholic Times – or who were put off by some of Fr. Giussani’s positions. My initial reaction was frustration and the temptation to reduce these reactions to a difficulty in communication. But Davide Prosperi’s text helped me to judge the event’s outcome differently. He reminds us that we often think that because there is an attractiveness to the Christian proposal, then the measure of success of an event, a judgment, etc. is that it attracts others. But “beauty, if it is the beauty of Christ, is also a sword, it attracts and also challenges, wounds – insofar as it opposes our measures, the world. And thus it challenges us, it enters into a struggle, into conflict with what we normally think.” These reactions once again helped me to see the radical nature of Fr. Giussani’s educational proposal, and the way it judges the educational realities around us.
– Sally