Politics Cannot Save Anyone, by Regis Martin

By Regis Martin, Crisis Magazine, March 15, 20211

Regis Martin is Professor of Theology and Faculty Associate with the Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. …

There is a section in Monsignor Luigi Giussani’s The Religious Sense in which he identifies various ways of escape people choose when confronted with questions of unwelcome ultimacy. For instance, the meaning of one’s own existence, about which a great many people appear to be strangely incurious. The section is called “Emptying the Question,” and in it he reproduces an exchange between a well-known Italian journalist named Augusto Guerriero, who writes a popular column on politics, and an anguished reader, who turns to him for answers to questions which have nothing to do with politics but which nevertheless painfully drive him to distraction. “I turn to you as the only one who can help me,” he writes. And documenting his difficulties, which include years spent as a prisoner of war, where he contracted tuberculosis, he pleads for a letter that “would be a great relief for me and would make me stronger. I ask you please to help me.” …