Carmine Di Sante

For a Theology of Kindness (edited by Alessandro Paris)

Researchers need a teacher, without which they could not arrive at any discovery.(Plato)

The effort of the philosophy professor Alessandro Paris who edited the book with wisdom and sagacity is deserving and commendable. Carmine Di Sante. For a theology of kindness (Pazzini publisher) because he was able with acuity, in the over one hundred pages of the text, to collect with precision testimonies, interviews, useful correspondences to present a great figure of theologian, biblist and essayist like Carmine Di Sante.

In the Introduction, the editor underlines the importance of the subtitle Kindness theology stating that “Carmine Di Sante embodies the semantic depth of this lemma (kindness), and personifies it in a I kind, especially like I hospitable […] From the testimonies that can be read in this volume – writes the editor – the kaleidoscopic characteristics of this semantic figure will clearly emerge. Kindness is outlined as a perspicuous dimension of a theology that makes hospitality and the blessing acceptance of the gift of divine benevolence, for oneself and for the brothers and sisters, its own characteristic style, which is also embodied in a personality that testifies to all the thickness and texture. For these reasons he concretely proves that he is theology is still possible, it can only be kind“.

Kindness, which can change people’s lives, because being kind means responding with sensitivity and human warmth to the hopes of others, is a dimension that presupposes the ability to listen, dialogue and host. the other. We can agree with what the writer and former Apulian magistrate, Gianrico Carofiglio, wrote, who affirmed that kindness can be “a method for dealing with and resolving conflicts and a key tool for making sense in human relationships”.

The engaging book in its narrative unfolding, which catalyzes the reader’s curiosity and pushes him to deepen the figure and works of Carmine Di Sante, reads like a story and consists of three parts. The first part, consisting of a long interview, reconstructs the fundamental junctions of the human and cultural, spiritual and theological experience of the biblical scholar Carmine Di Sante; the second collects the theological-philosophical contributions written for the occasion (Carmine’s eighty years) and the interesting testimonies of friends who had the privilege of meeting and getting to know the extraordinary personality of a “teacher” of life, capable of broaden the horizons of his “fellow travelers” in the search for a knowledge and a spiritual and theological feeling that is relevant and deep; the third part of the text includes two unique correspondence exchanges with the philosopher Giovanni Ferretti and the theologian Piero Stefani.

From the biographical pages, taken from the interview, it is clear with great clarity the decisive importance that the years of his formation with the Franciscans had, in particular during the period of the Second Vatican Council, full of meetings and convictions for the innovations concerning the Church, the Word of God and the relationship with the world, with the other, with the least, with the suffering people. From the direct testimony of Carmel’s words, it is clear that the fulcrum of his theological thought is based on the idea that “the biblical God is a God who loves man of love of otherness and calls him, in the world, to love his neighbor with the same love of otherness ».

Self-defined theologian Jewish-Christian, scholar and expert of the Jewish world, Carmine Di Sante had as a “lighthouse” and a point of spiritual and thought reference, in addition to the studies and texts of Emmanuel Lévinas, Franz Rosenzweig, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Martini Buber and Paul Ricoeur, above all the theology of his mentor Armido Rizzi, marked by the need for a change of cultural and theological paradigm based on a radical process of de-Hellenization of the Bible to grasp, in full freedom, the essence of the biblical message. Thanks to his teacher Armido Rizzi, Carmine Di Sante, in his heuristic path of Jewish-Christian theology, he overcame the Platonic-Augustinian and Aristotelian-Thomistic rational system, considered necessary for the biblical faith.

From the interview, released to the magazine “SeFer”, subsequently expanded, it emerges that very important biographical elements were the abandonment of priestly and religious status and the return to the lay state, considered by some to be an unforgivable betrayal that led Carmine to face prejudices and misunderstandings overcome thanks to his rigorous commitment to biblical study, his profound Franciscan spirituality and his wisdom and balance.

The key words of his fruitful theological investigation and of his cultural and spiritual alphabet are otherness, hospitality, gratuitousness, benevolence, relationship, “strangeness”, solidarity, justice and universal brotherhoodcontinuously present in the numerous writings that have enriched his interlocutors and admirers who, with attention and interest, have followed his search for a Jewish-Christian theology and his spiritual journey.

The numerous testimonies of friends demonstrate how important and fruitful his activity as a biblical scholar, Judaist and theologian was to be considered, as well as a keen connoisseur and refined interpreter of the biblical message, a guide wise to rely on, a master of generous life, a traveling companion reliable in the path of investigation and study on the complex world of spirituality.