Romano Guardini

Romano Guardini on a German postage stamp.

Romano Guardini (17 February 1885, Verona – 1 October 1968, Munich) was a Catholic priest, author, and academic. He was one of the most important figures in Catholic intellectual life in 20th-century.

Life and work

Guardini was born in Verona, Italy in 1885, but his family moved to Mainz when he was one year old and he lived in Germany for the rest of his life. After studying chemistry in Tübingen for two semesters, and economics in Munich and Berlin for three, he discerned a vocation to the priesthood. He studied Theology in Freiburg im Breisgau and Tübingen, and was ordained priest in Mainz in 1910. He briefly worked in a pastoral position before returning to Freiburg to work on his doctorate in Theology under Engelbert Krebs. He received the doctorate in 1915, for a dissertation on Bonaventure. He completed his “Habilitation” in Dogmatic Theology at the University of Bonn in 1922, again with a dissertation on Bonaventure. Throughout this period he also worked as a chaplain to the Catholic youth movement.

In 1923 he was appointed to a chair in Philosophy of Religion at the University of Berlin, which he held until forced to resign by the Nazis in 1939. In the 1935 essay “Der Heiland” (The Saviour) he had openly criticized Nazi mythologizing of the person of Jesus, and emphasized the Jewishness of Jesus. From 1943 to 1945 he retired to Mooshausen, where his friend Josef Weiger had been parish priest since 1917.

In 1945 Guardini was appointed professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Tübingen, and resumed lecturing on the Philosophy of Religion. Finally, in 1948, he became professor at the University of Munich, where he remained until retiring, for health reasons, in 1962. His ill health prevented him playing any active role in the Second Vatican Council.

Romano Guardini died in Munich 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.

Reputation and influence

Guardini's books were often powerful studies of traditional themes in the light of present-day challenges, or conversely examinations of current problems as approached from the Christian, and especially Catholic, tradition. He was able to get inside such different worldviews as those of Socrates, Plato, Augustine, Dante, Pascal, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, and make sense of them for modern readers.

His first major work, Vom Geist der Liturgie (The Spirit of the Liturgy), published during the First World War, was a major influence on the Liturgical Movement in Germany, and so ultimately on the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council.^[1] Pope Paul VI offered to make him a cardinal in 1965, but he respectfully declined.

As a philosopher he founded no “school”, but his intellectual disciples could in some sense be said to include Josef Pieper, Luigi Giussani, Felix Messerschmid, Heinrich Getzeny, Rudolf Schwarz, Jean Gebser, Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), and Jorge Mario Bergoglio (later Pope Francis). In the 1980s Pope Francis began work on a doctoral dissertation on Guardini, though the decision to take a doctorate was later abandoned for other reasons. Even Hannah Arendt and Iring Fetscher were favourably impressed by his work. He had a strong influence in Central Europe; in Slovenia, for example, an influential group of Christian socialists, among whom Edvard Kocbek, Pino Mlakar, Vekoslav Grmič and Boris 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.^[2] In 1952, Guardini won the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.

The 1990s saw something of a revival of interest in his works and person, reflected in the reissuing of several of his books in the original German and in English translation. In 1997 his remains were moved to the Sankt Ludwig Kirche, the University church in Munich, where he had often preached.

Guardini's book, The Lord, published in English translation by Henry Regnery Publishing in the late 1940s, remained in print for decades^[3] and, according to Henry Regnery, was "one of the most successful books I have ever published."^[4] The novelist Flannery O'Connor thought it "very fine" and recommended it to a number of her friends.^[5]

Selected bibliography

• Gottes Werkleute. Briefe ueber Selbstbildung, 1921
• Der Gegensatz, 1925
• Grundlegung der Bildungslehre, 1928
• Das Gute, das Gewissen und die Sammlung, 1929
• Christliches Bewusstsein, 1935
• Das Wesen des Christentums, 1937
• Welt und Person, 1939
• Der Tod des Sokrates, 1943
• Die Lebensalter, 1944
• Freiheit, Gnade, Schicksal, 1948
• Das Ende der Neuzeit, 1950
• Sorge um den Menschen, 1962
• Begegnung und Bildung, (together with O. F. Bollnow), 1956

Major works available in English

• The End of the Modern World. Sheed & Ward, 1957. More recently in a revised edition by ISI Books, 1998. ISBN 978-1-882926-23-7
• The Art of Praying: The Principles and Methods of Christian Prayer. Sophia Institute Press, 1994. ISBN 978-0-918477-21-7
• The Lord. Regnery Publishing, 1996. ISBN 978-0-89526-714-6
• The Essential Guardini: An Anthology, edited by Heinz R. Kuehn. Liturgy Training Publications, 1997. ISBN 978-1-56854-133-4
• The Spirit of the Liturgy. Crossroad Publishing, 1998. ISBN 978-0-8245-1777-9
• Living the Drama of Faith. Sophia Institute Press, 1999. ISBN 978-0-918477-77-4
• Learning the Virtues. Sophia Institute Press, 2000. ISBN 978-0-918477-64-4
• The Death of Socrates. Kessinger Publishing, 2007. ISBN 978-1-4325-5430-9
• The Rosary of Our Lady. Sophia Institute Press, 1998.

Notes

External links

• Works by Romano Guardini at Project Gutenberg
• Romano Guardini (National Institute for the Renewal of the Priesthood)
• The Spirit of the Liturgy by Romano Guardini
• Works by or about Romano Guardini in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• This article includes text from the German Wikipedia.

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