Ferruccio Pinotti
La lobby di Dio

Comunione e Liberazione (CL), founded by don Luigi Giussani as "Gioventù studentesca" at the Berchet high school in Milan and transformed over the decades into a religious group with a strong lay dimension, summarized in the "Compagnia delle opere" (CdO), certainly stands out as one of the most discussed politico-religious-social phenomena of recent decades.

Like any original product of society, emerging almost from nothing and without an actual tradition behind it, this entity is destined from the beginning to divide, more than to unite: obviously, I don't delve into the religious details, nor into the relationship between Giussani's doctrine, originally imbued with the communicative style typical of American Protestantism, albeit steeped in conservative Catholicism, instead limiting myself to recalling, concerning my activity of dissemination and deepening, how it has been at the center of divisions especially on the economic-political level.

On this aspect, the characteristic trait of CL, seen through the historical lens of recent decades, has been one of substantial third-party stance and autonomy from political parties, while simultaneously—this entity always has a sort of contradiction of opposites that requires full meditation, perhaps a child of Giussani's mystical irrationalism, as well as the concreteness of the Lombard people who form its backbone—an attentive relation with the individual politicians who were, and are, leaders or demagogues of those parties: above all, the Andreotti of the first Republic, who is remembered for being acclaimed at the Meeting of Friendship in Rimini during his voluntary withdrawal from active politics due to the well-known judicial events he was involved in during the '90s; the Berlusconi of the second Republic, subsequently identified as a possible architect of a liberal-democratic change of the State, loyally supported even to the point of overlooking the lay passions, deeply human, of our President.

I am not keen, in this essay, to investigate the superstructure of CL-CdO, its dialogue with power or with politics, the role that, within it, a figure of undisputed prominence such as Roberto Formigoni—perhaps the last heir of the Christian Democratic class of yore—played, but rather the structural profiles that make this movement a reality difficult to ignore, both on the level of intellectual encounter and on the economic impact of the many enterprises affiliated with it.

Let's try to go in order, guiding the average user of the site through a sometimes arduous path, but rich in suggestions, as testified by the book I am about to review, a work by Ferruccio Pinotti, a journalist already known for his works on Opus Dei and Freemasonry, to which this "The God's Lobby" would like to provide, from its title, a completion in an ideal Trilogy of Italian Secret Power.

I will say right away that I am not entirely in agreement with his thesis; the book is interesting, well-written, and excellently documented, but at the same time, it does not persuade me in terms of deontology or the "ought to be": firstly, because I believe that events develop based on a historical rationality that transcends the value superstructure; secondly, because I believe that CL-CdO capture the spirit of our time and position themselves, in relation to it, as a possible resource for the community, not only for affiliates but also for outsiders and laypeople.

The most interesting, lively and, I suppose, vital part of Pinotti's book indeed concerns the way in which CL-CdO have become a necessary part of the socio-economic structure of our country, from the North to Sicily, giving us the chance to understand, beyond the diaphragm of "lobbying," if and how much this entity can be indispensable for the development of our country and for the pursuit of socio-cultural development that goes beyond the capitalist liberalism of which we are perceiving the limits in these tumultuous years and the socialist-communism that has caused many, too many, damages in the world from 1917 to today.

A third way, which, I anticipate already, in a period of crisis of political and especially ideological leadership, could be one of the possible roots of a hypothetical "third Republic", given by the fusion of the antitheses between the first republic (the consociational standstill on a solid framework of "parallel convergences" between DC and moderate left and the historic compromise overseen by the moral authority of the Church and its social doctrine) and the second republic (charismatic leadership and progress-oriented pragmatism of the individual, as a bearer of its uniqueness and sacredness, also conforming to Catholic moral dictates), implementing that contradiction of opposites we know to be typical, according to a Hegelian reading of History, of the Being, and which we have seen, in some way, inherent in the same CL-CdO.

The predicted Third Republic, in which we might see the same opposites pacified, namely the center-right and the Italian left, also thanks to the emergence of figures steeped in Christian-Catholic values, like that Nichi Vendola recently applauded by Berlusconi-favored and League-inclined entrepreneurs of Northern Italy for his ability to narrate and synthesize the Spirit of the times.

Let us now get into the heart and grasp the salient traits of the economic-political doctrine of CL-CdO, well expressed in Lombardy or part of Sicily, delving into the core of this discussion.

The main cornerstone on which it is based is the principle, also reiterated by art. 118 of the Constitution, of horizontal subsidiarity: the man, the individual, the singular person, even in their associative dimension, as a supporting value, as an end to which every social organization must tend, and as an autonomous, responsible subject, capable of undertaking the exercise of public function as a factor of economic development.

This explains the attention to the world of medium and small enterprises, their social dimension of activity, thus the incentive to entrust to enterprises, and therefore to the private sector, the exercise of essential social services subtracting them from the long hand of the State and Power for its own sake; this includes the conducting of tenders for the outsourcing of public functions to the private sector; this reflects the attention to both the working world and young people. Herein lies the vital point where CL-CdO position themselves as an alternative to both unrestrained liberalism (less State, more market: with elimination and not externalization of social services) and to social-communism (more State, less market: with centralization and bureaucratization of the economy, inefficiencies, explosion of public expenditure). Simply put, between closing a small hospital (a right choice) and its maintenance with exorbitant costs for the community (a left choice), the "third" solution would be to entrust its management to CL-CdO.

The second cornerstone, in my opinion, should be identified in the logic of inclusion-exclusion that characterizes CL-CdO, and in the incentive for inclusion that entrepreneurs have in using the subsidiary method of organization, with the replacement of the State with a tendentially headless cooperative network, yet self-regulated: incentive that varies from tax assistance to individual enterprises, to privileged credits guaranteed by certain banks documented by Pinotti, to mutual aid between enterprises in difficulty, with marked social solidarity among the affiliates. Simplifying: the entrepreneur short on liquidity, instead of failing as rejected by the market (right option) or being supported by the community (left option) will have the incentive to enter the "network" of Cl-CdO, as much as it allows obtaining credit benefits, entering a self-regulated market with CL-CdO suppliers and buyers of Cl-CdO, employing CL-CdO labor, and entering into economic partnership with institutions that, based on horizontal subsidiarity, create markets and opportunities for Cl-CdO.

The intuition of don Giussani and his moral heirs (among whom the papal candidate Angelo Scola, the Patriarch of Venice) seems thus strikingly modern, as well as a possible solution for many of the problems afflicting the country, and, perhaps, all of the Christian West and beyond.

Moreover, it shouldn't be assumed that it's a solution well-accepted only by a market-oriented right, in its recently assumed forms, given that even the left, for quite some time now, seems to share the arguments of CL-CdO, drawing inspiration from them and recognizing in them an authentic value dimension, a point of conjunction between secular and religious thought.

These, as proof of what has been observed, are the words, cited in the book, of PD Secretary Bersani at a recent Meeting of Friendship:

«True left doesn't arise from Bolshevism but from the white cooperatives of the 1800s. The socialist party came after the cooperatives, the communist party later still, and the groups born with '68 have all disappeared. Only the ideal launched by Cl in the '70s has remained alive, because it is the one closest to the popular base. It is the same ideal that was also that of the cooperatives: a doing that is also educating». So much so that, he revealed, «when in 1989 Achille Occhetto wanted to change the name of the Italian Communist Party, for a while he thought of calling the new party 'Community and Liberty.' Because between us and you the roots are the same.».

Only time will tell if Bersani's intuition is correct, and if a third Republic will be able to emerge from the synthesis of the opposites practiced, almost as an avant-garde, by CL-CdO. In the meantime, the reading of this book, whatever each one’s values, helps us reflect on the present and future of our economic-political system.