Vita e pensiero

Vita e pensiero is a magazine that was established on 1 December 1914 in Milan. It was proposed to be a mediator between the Catholic faith and the world and is still published as a magazine of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart.

History

Medievalist Manifesto

Here is our program! We are MEDIEVALISTS. Let me explain. We feel profoundly distant, indeed enemies of the so-called modern culture, so poor in content, so glittering with false riches all external, whether it struts in university lectures or philanthropic descends in popular universities to break the bread of modern science to the humble. It is an aggregate mechanism of parts that are not intimately elaborated, put together without an intimate, organic connection. It is a mosaic built by an abnormal boy, who has no sense of colors and figures. Again. We are afraid, afraid of this modern culture, not because it raises its weapons against our faith, but because it strangles souls by killing the spontaneity of thought. Again. We feel infinitely superior to those who proclaim the greatness of modern culture. This is infertile and incapable of creating a single thought and instead of thought has erected as a deity the erudition of the vocabulary and encyclopedia.

The Franciscan Agostino Gemelli, Ludovico Necchi, and Francesco Olgiati established the magazine in 1914 for Catholics in order to discuss the political, economic, and social issues of the time.

Vita e pensiero advanced a manifesto no less famous than the Futurist one published five years earlier by Marinetti: the Medievalist Manifesto, written by Father Gemelli. Extremely hard, the medievalist manifesto was motivated by the situation in which Catholic culture was then, fought by positivism and idealism, attacked by materialism and free thought. With the return to the Middle Ages, Father Gemelli envisioned a model of harmonious society in which faith could return to animate culture so that Christian thought could still influence everyday reality.

After World War I, from the debate and the initiatives promoted by the magazine sprang the idea of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, a center of culture, which would be realized in 1921.

On the political terrain, the magazine fought liberal Catholics and polemics with the aconfessionalism and interclassism of the Popular Party, until the March on Rome, the fall of the constitutional state and the advent of Fascism.

Between 1921 and 1927, the executive group of Vita e pensiero, of medievalist and neo-Thomist orientation, while recognizing Mussolini's merit of having overcome liberalism, socialist democracy and Freemasonry, distrusted the Fascist political movement and its ideology.

In 1929, the Lateran Treaty stipulated between Italy and the Holy See partially resolved the Roman Question, but the enthusiasm with which Vita e pensiero was able to welcome the turning point of the Conciliation did not eliminate the problem of civil and political liberties opened up by the new laws.

In the period between the Conciliation and the World War II, the Catholic University and its three journals (in fact, it added to Vita e pensiero, the Rivista di filosofia neoscolastica and the Rivista internazionale di scienze sociali) were actively engaged updating Catholic circles in modern scientific research.

Its express purpose was to give much attention to the new fields of experimental psychology, economics, and legal studies in order to form "a cultural, social, and religious elite" capable of promoting "the Christian rebirth of society."

Since 2003, the magazine has been renewed, giving space to the analyses of international authors such as Charles Taylor and Zygmunt Bauman, René Girard and Tzvetan Todorov, Julia Kristeva and Philip Jenkins. Topics such as the future of Europe and hospitality, classical culture and neuroscience, rationality and dialogue between cultures and religions are some of the topics frequently addressed, both by professors of the Catholic University and by external figures, faithfull or not.

Notably, the magazine has a fixed column entitled "L'intruso" (The Intruder), in which personalities from the world of show business, TV and sports such as Milena Gabanelli, Fiorello, Giorgio Faletti, Piero Chiambretti, Pif, Antonio Albanese, Linus, Giacomo Poretti, Giovanni Trapattoni and Riccardo Iacona have found space.

References

• Palano, Damiano (2020). "Il nuovo clima intellettuale cattolico. La battaglia per la «ricostruzione» nelle pagine di «Vita e Pensiero» (1918-1922)." In: M. Agostino, ed., Santa Sede e Cattolici nel mondo postbellico 1918-1922. Roma: Lev, pp. 577–613.

External links

• Official website
• Vita e pensiero at Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma