Giovanni Spadolini

"(About Giulio Andreotti) Opposed to general ideas, pragmatic and realistic like few others, with his own streak of “Catholic Giolittism”."

"Mrs Gandhi was moving closer to the West. Even within the non-aligned countries, she was forging ever stronger ties with the world of European democracies. :*In Italy, grief but also fears for the future, “'L'Unità”', 1 November 1984"

"There can be no united Italy without the foundation laid by Garibaldi. The Garibaldi legend is, in reality, the only national thread running through our modern history."

"Solve the mystery of the Mig23 and you will have found the key to discovering the truth about Ustica."

"It will be under the aegis of the invincible Axis, the new Europe of Law, Justice, Freedom and Love. The Europe of the future, which is the goal of that bloc of countries headed by the tripartite pact between Italy, Germany and Japan."

"Yes: the case of Prezzolini was one of the most significant in contemporary culture in our country. Prezzolini embodied a constant critical and sceptical need in a world of culture increasingly tending towards conformism and orthodoxy, or rather conformism and orthodoxies."

"(About Carlo Donat-Cattin) A man who constantly fought to maintain a strong link between institutional structures and the needs of the world of work."

"(About Bettino Ricasoli) Grumpy, reclusive, wild: almost always shut away in his Brolio, from which he rarely descended, and with the calculated slowness of a sovereign. But the only one who exercised undisputed authority over all the other notables of Tuscany: “the only eminent individual known, revered and esteemed in Italy and abroad” (as Celestino Bianchi, his devoted secretary and incomparable collaborator, would say a few years later, even though he would not grant him the intimacy of “tu” in return for his many services). He was also the court of last resort in all doubtful or difficult cases, such as during the days of bloodshed and tension that followed the Aspromonte incident. (I partiti politici nella Firenze capitale, Ch. II, pp. 82-83)"

"Ricasoli embodied the concept of the modern state, which does not tolerate limitations and competition from other powers, which is based on the irreplaceable and pre-eminent values of civil morality, which replaces religious morality with military discipline, which attributes to the authority of the officer the value of priestly authority, which contrasts combatants with missionaries, the armed forces to the regular clergy, and universities to seminaries and convents. (Appendix, 1. Ricasoliana, Ch. I, p. 262)"

"If Mazzini is the prophet of the left, Ricasoli can rightly be considered the prophet of the right: among all the successors of Cavour, among all the politicians who governed the new state in the fifteen years from 1861 to 1876, among all those who appeared “moderate” and in reality carried out the only profound revolution in our history, the Tuscan baron is the only one who inspired his political action with a religious conception of life, the only one who instilled in the acts of power a secret “reformist mysticism”, such as to justify all his audaciousness and allow all his conquests. (Appendix, 1. Ricasoliana, Ch. I, p. 277)."

"Nothing more than messianic socialism, socialism that aims at a golden age, a city of sunshine, perfect justice, nothing more than such socialism repels the Christian conception. Christianity, due to its insurmountable pessimistic prejudice, cannot even conceive of the total salvation and liberation of men on earth, and by virtue of an earthly order. Hell is the punishment for violated charity. Only punishment can achieve justice. Eternal damnation is the great disciplinary force of the world. (I, I; p. 16)"

"Charity and forgiveness: this is the “socialism” of Christ, this is Christian society. In life there is not, there cannot be, absolution (only God will absolve); but there can be, there is, and there will be an amnesty, a daily amnesty. Life is a punishment (this is the meaning of original sin, the deepest interpretation of human pain): but it is a punishment that is pardoned in life and absolved in death. This is the greatest justice. (I, I; p. 17)"

"The purpose of the Church, the sole and supreme repository of revelation, remains in any case to summarise and resolve politics in religion. But the purpose of the State, of any State worthy of the name, is precisely the same, reversed: to resolve religion in politics, God in man. Every State is also a Church; political authority is necessarily moral authority; political history logically takes the form of “sacred history”. Its political ends are also moral and religious: they encompass and reabsorb within themselves all possible morality and religion. (I, I; p. 20)"

"Nothing contrasts more with the Christian conception of hope in the earthly paradise, in the kingdom of freedom and justice. None of the liberal and secularist philosophies escapes the sin of Adam. Every revolution hides the temptation of Eden. On the contrary, the only freedom left to the believer is that of ascending to God to achieve justice. (I, I; p. 21)"

"This is why the Reformation, which frees man from authority on the religious level, creates the conditions for Marxist rebellion, in that it frees men from all fear of higher forces regulating social life and launches them into a conflict without rules and without restraint, aimed at conquering humanly perfect orders. (I, I; p. 27)"

"It is the bourgeoisie that has opposed its morals to those of the Church, its philosophy to that of Catholicism, its politics to that of Christianity, within the framework of an entirely secular and earthly conception of life. The “people”, who represent the antithesis of the bourgeois spirit, the “moral protest” against the law of force, are best qualified to embody the values of Christian ethics, which alone, by devaluing the world, ideally allows for the peaceful coexistence of men on earth. It is no coincidence that “populism” is the socially permanent tendency of the Church: only the people can implement Christian teaching, which is one of renunciation and poverty. (I, I; p. 32)"

"But by abolishing property, the Church would legitimise an overly vivid hope in an overly “just” world. Catholic socialism has an insurmountable limitation: Christian pessimism. The idea of happiness is beyond this perspective. But not that of balance, with the mediation of charity. Christian socialism is ultimately nothing more than this: the search for a social balance that saves charity. (I, I; p. 33)"

"So what? Is not Christian socialism the most powerful explosive charge against bourgeois society, which is based on the idea of confrontation and the reality of luxury, enjoyment, pleasure, vain and superfluous things? When Leo XIII praises the worker, he always takes as his example “the frugal and well-behaved worker”. (I, III; p. 57)"

"The Reformation, through Calvin, had laid the foundations of capitalism, legitimising individual initiative aimed at any goal, sanctifying the effort and daring of the individual even if it aimed at greatness and domination, consecrating gain and success as signs of predestination and divine election. By rejecting the modern State and capitalism, the Papacy rejects the very principle of “struggle” that underpinned both. The new social order, conceived by Catholic socialism, resolves the struggle and dissolves the state itself. It is a challenge to Protestantism. The Church, which has always opposed the Faustian conception of life, the reduction of existence to the category of war, the idea of progress and becoming, the principle of competition, selection and class struggle, and action as the measure of the world, the Church aims to achieve its greatest victory by once again launching and imposing its message of peace, love, brotherhood, and charity. (I, III; p. 59)"

"On a historical level, what is communism if not the last heir of the Reformation, Romanticism and classical German philosophy? By definition, it is the sworn enemy of the Church. Its foundation is the state; its principle is revolution; its method is struggle; its ideal is immanence; its goal is justice. (I, III; p. 64)"

"In the eyes of the Enlightenment thinkers themselves, it was clear that the revolt against authority, the basis of their polemic, could only escape the temptations of anarchism by falling back on the contemplation of an absolute model of justice that would frame human life, giving it meaning and justification. It is the unlimited faith in the “'law”', in the equality of all before the law, that alone legitimises the function of the State and elevates it from the political to the moral plane, rightly making it “part of the heavenly”. The “general will”, the powerful idea that must justify the source of power, will coincide with a law of nature and become the very expression of natural fatality. Thus was born the “mystique of democracy”, which found its point of origin in The Social Contract and its historical conclusion in universal suffrage. Law and freedom became one and the same: absolutism no longer had any reason to exist. (II, I; p. 78)"

"Religious criticism denies mystery; historical criticism destroys legend; literary criticism dissolves creation: it is the era in which secularism reacts to ancient traditions and conventions in the name of “fully explained reason”. Salvation is sought in erudition, which demolishes prophecies and ghosts. The demands of faith are resolved in the thirst for knowledge: the problematic nature of life allows the unity of religion to be overcome. Dogma, the unity consecrated in dogma, is answered with faith in antinomy, with an awareness of multiplicity, with the torment of contradictions that are at the basis of the human spirit and are only resolved on the plane of history. (II, II; p. 91)"

"The cause of authority is sacred to the Church, inasmuch as a ray of God lives in authority. (II, III; p. 102)."