Gregory Wolfe
 WRITER • EDITOR • TEACHER
Communion and Liberation

 

John Paul II and Fr. Giussani
Gius and Pope John Paul II -1998

Back in the late 1980s I read a book by an Italian priest named Luigi Giussani. Normally I don’t read books titled Morality — I find the topic a bit dry — but it was the subtitle that snagged me: Memory and Desire. The allusion to the phrase from T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land was unmistakable. Suddenly the book seemed a lot more attractive. And it struck me in ways that I’m hard pressed to put into words.

I then found out that Father Giussani had founded an international lay Catholic movement with the unlikely name of Communion and Liberation. The meetings were all too far away for me to attend on a regular basis, but I found the same spirit in the events I could attend that I had found in the book.

Then, fifteen years later, I found my desire to explore Father Giussani’s charism so strong that I got up the courage to start a community here in Seattle. And so a group of friends meet together every week, learning how our companionship can help reawaken in us the experience of the event—the encounter—that is the fact of Christ’s presence in our lives.

Seattle CL Community
If you live in the Seattle area and would like to learn more about our community, click here

“Current Event”
When Father Giussani died in 2005, I wrote an editorial statement about him in Image, click here

"Review of Morality: Memory and Desire"
To see a review I wrote twenty years ago of a book by Fr. Giussani--my first contact with CL. click here (PDF)

U.S. National Website for Communion and Liberation click here

International CL Site click here

CL Blogs
Finally, a number of people in CL have produced some terrific blogs. Here are a couple that I try to keep up with:

Deep Furrows

A project of my friend, Fred K. To go to Deep Furrows, click here. (while there, use the link to go to his sister site: "Reconnaissance of the Western Tradition."

Vitus Speaks

The always lively blog of my buddy Alex Edezhath. To go there, click here.

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