Romano Guardini | |
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 Guardini in 1920 | |
| Orders | |
| Ordination | 28 May 1910 (Priest) by Georg Heinrich Kirstein |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Romano Michele Antonio Maria Guardini (1885-02-17)17 February 1885 |
| Died | 1 October 1968(1968-10-01) (aged 83) |
| Nationality | German (1911) |
| Education | University of Tübingen University of Freiburg |
Romano Guardini (17 February 1885 – 1 October 1968) was an Italian, naturalized GermanCatholic priest,philosopher andtheologian.
Romano Michele Antonio Maria Guardini was born inVerona in 1885 and was baptized in the Church ofSan Nicolò all'Arena. His father, Romano Tullo (1857–1919), was a poultry wholesaler. Guardini had three younger brothers. The family moved toMainz when he was one year old and he lived in Germany for the rest of his life. He attended theRabanus-Maurus-Gymnasium. Guardini wrote that as a young man he was “always anxious and very scrupulous.”[1]
Fluent in Italian and German, he also studied Latin, Greek, French, and English. After studying chemistry inTübingen for two semesters, and economics inMunich andBerlin for three, he decided to become a priest. He studied theology inFreiburg im Breisgau and Tübingen. Impressed by the monastic spirituality of the monks ofBeuron Archabbey, he became aBenedictineoblate, taking the name Odilio.[2] Guardini was ordained a diocesan priest inMainz byGeorg Heinrich Kirstein in 1910.
He became a German citizen in 1911 so that he could teach theology in Germany, a job paid by the government.[3] He briefly worked in a pastoral position atSt. Christoph's Church, Mainz before returning to Freiburg to work on his doctorate in Theology under Engelbert Krebs. He received his doctorate in 1915 for a dissertation onBonaventure. He completed his "Habilitation" inDogmatic Theology at theUniversity of Bonn in 1922, again with a dissertation on Bonaventure. Throughout this period he also worked as a parish priest at St. Ignatius, St. Emmeran's, andSt. Peter's and served as chaplain to the Catholic youth movement. During World War I he served as a hospital orderly.[2]
In 1923, he was appointed to a chair inPhilosophy of Religion at theUniversity of Berlin.[1] In the 1935 essay "Der Heiland" (The Saviour) he criticized Nazi mythologizing of the person of Jesus and emphasized the Jewishness of Jesus. TheNazis forced him to resign from his Berlin position in 1939. From 1943 to 1945 he retired toMooshausen, where his friendJosef Weiger had been a parish priest since 1917.
In 1945, Guardini was appointed professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at theUniversity of Tübingen and resumed lecturing on the Philosophy of Religion.In 1948, he became professor at theUniversity of Munich,[1] where he remained until retiring for health reasons in 1962. That same year, he received theErasmus Prize,[2] an annual prize awarded by the board of thePraemium Erasmianum Foundation to individuals or institutions that have made exceptional contributions to culture, society, or social science in Europe.
Pope Paul VI offered to make Guardini a cardinal in 1965, but he declined.[4]
Guardini died inMunich, Bavaria on 1 October 1968. He was buried in the priests’ cemetery of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in Munich. His estate was left to the Catholic Academy in Bavaria that he had co-founded.
In December 2017, theArchdiocese of Munich and Freising opened the cause of canonization for Guardini, thus designating him aServant of God.
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Guardini's books were often powerful studies of traditional themes in the light of present-day challenges or examinations of current problems as approached from the Christian, and especially Catholic, tradition. He was able to enter into the worldview of those such asSocrates,Plato,Augustine,Dante,Pascal,Kierkegaard,Dostoevsky andNietzsche, and make sense of them for modern readers.
His first major work,Vom Geist der Liturgie (The Spirit of the Liturgy), published during theFirst World War, was a major influence on theLiturgical Movement in Germany and by extension on the liturgical reforms of theSecond Vatican Council.[5] He is generally regarded as the father of the liturgical movement in Germany, and in his "Open Letter" of April 1964 to Mgr. Johannes Wagner, the organizer of the Third German Liturgical Congress in Mainz, he "raises important questions regarding the nature of the liturgical act in the wake of individualism, asking whether it is possible for twentieth-century Christians really to engage in worship. Is it possible to 'relearn a forgotten way of doing things and recapture lost attitudes', so as to enter into the liturgical experience?."[6] It was his glad hope that after the call by the Second Vatican Council for liturgical reform, the Catholic Church might shift its focus from the merely ceremonial, important though that was, to a broader idea of true liturgical action—action that "embraced not only a spiritual inwardness, but the whole man, body as well as spirit."[7] He himself gave an example of his meaning: A parish priest of the late 19th century once said (according to Guardini's illustration), "We must organize the procession better; we must see to it that the praying and singing is done better." For Guardini, the parish priest had missed the point of what true liturgical action is. He should instead have asked, "How can the act of walking become a religious act, a retinue for the Lord progressing through his land, so that an 'epiphany' may take place."[7]
As a philosopher he founded no "school", but his intellectual disciples could in some sense be said to includeJosef Pieper,Luigi Giussani,Felix Messerschmid,Heinrich Getzeny,Rudolf Schwarz,Jean Gebser,Joseph Ratzinger (laterPope Benedict XVI), andJorge Mario Bergoglio (laterPope Francis). In the 1980s Bergoglio began work on a doctoral dissertation on Guardini, though he never completed it. Pope Francis cited Guardini'sThe End of the Modern World eight times in his 2015encyclicalLaudato si', more often than any other modern thinker who was not pope.Hannah Arendt andIring Fetscher were favourably impressed by Guardini's work. He had a strong influence in Central Europe; inSlovenia, for example, an influential group ofChristian socialists, among whomEdvard Kocbek,Pino Mlakar,Vekoslav Grmič andBoris Pahor, incorporated Guardini's views in their agenda. Slovak philosopher and theologian Ladislav Hanus was strongly influenced in his works by Guardini, whom he met personally, and promoted his ideas in Slovakia, writing a short monograph.[8] In 1952, Guardini won thePeace Prize of the German Book Trade.
The 1990s saw something of a revival of interest in his works and person. Several of his books were reissued in the original German and in English translation. In 1997 his remains were moved to theSankt Ludwig Kirche, the University church in Munich, where he had often preached.
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