Two thousand years ago, Plutarch, historian, philosopher and priest of the temple of Delphi, asked himself: "Why are the temples of the Gods deserted?" In different words, it is the same observation. Elsewhere Plutarch had reported the heart-rending scream that announced to the world the god Pan’ death, the most pagan of the Gods, and therefore the death of paganism, noting the slow but unstoppable decline of classical civilization: he had seen well, because four centuries later the decline would culminate in the barbarian invasions and the establishment of another civilization. Today that civilization that had settled and that with a single word we can call European, that is, our civilization, in turn shows the signs of a decline perhaps equally unstoppable. One of the first attestations of the Christian Europe decline dates back to two centuries ago, when Hegel in his lectures at the Berlin University stated: "We might come up with the idea of ​​establishing a comparison with the time of the Roman Empire when the rational and necessary took refuge only in the form of law and private well-being, because the general unity of religion had disappeared and general political life was equally annulled, and the individual, perplexed, inactive and distrustful, was concerned only with himself and not with what it is in itself and for itself, which was abandoned even in thought." For Hegel, and even before him for Plutarch, the decline of religion goes hand in hand with the decline of politics. Both indicate the state of the human spirit health with respect to History: when the spirit is healthy it produces a religion and politics that make history and then nature evolves; when instead the spirit is weak and sick, it is History and even more so nature that takes over, reducing everything to a merciless struggle for survival of one against the other. "Bellum omnium contra omnes", to use Thomas Hobbes’ famous expression: "War of all against all". Hegel continued: "As Pilate asked: what is truth? so nowadays we seek well-being and private enjoyment. Today a moral point of view, an action, opinions and convictions that are absolutely particular, without truthfulness, without objective truth, are current. The opposite is welcome: I recognize only what is my subjective opinion." And he concluded: "We do not know; we know nothing about God."

Isn’t it perhaps so? I believe that each of us has daily attestation of this state of affairs for which only subjective will is valid, in the complete absence of an objective canon that regulates ethics, aesthetics, education and other expressions of human subjectivity. Only the right to keep us together is left, but it can work and only does so thanks to force. The result is that our civilization is crossed by growing quarrelsomeness and conflict, we are in the grip of anger and rage, of a limitless aggressiveness that generates complaints, lawsuits, sentences, appeals, and more appeals without end, and a general state of anxiety, fear, panic (a term that derives from Pan, meaning that the old god, in reality, is not dead at all). Where religio is lacking, humanitas is missing; and lacking humanitas, the conditions for understanding each other are missing, starting from words and good manners, and thus living together if not exactly as partners, at least as good neighbours are also missing. At the end, we are not good neighbours to each other, we are strangers: moral strangers, the highest degree of foreignness. And we are reduced to this because, as Hegel said, "we no longer know anything about God." The more a civilization knows the divine the stronger is, and the weaker it is the more it ignores it. Obviously, this is not a matter of catechetical and doctrinal knowledge; rather, it is that concrete and existential experience that leads the human being to have an altar in the centre of his heart, an ideal space that makes him recognize and venerate something more important than his own particular interest or "private enjoyment." The common sharing of this altar makes an anonymous mass of individuals a group of members, a society; and in this way the individuals transcend their own particular interest and give rise to a civilization, a term that in Latin, significantly, is called humanitas.

Today, however, the absence of religio goes hand in hand with the absence of societas and humanitas. The whole world suffers from it, but in particular the West, the most secularized and therefore most uprooted territory.

The problem raised by the Turin’s Archbishop therefore has a dimension that goes well beyond the religious dimension alone: ​​it is not a question of the survival of a particular religion and the institution that represents it; it is, much more profoundly, a question of the survival of a civilization, ours, and of the mental and existential health of each of us, starting with our children who are the first victims of this lack of ideals, hope, vision, trust.

There was a time when Christianity thought it could propose itself as a remedy for the ills of the world, today instead it is part of the problem. Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini had already noted this almost twenty years ago: “I once had dreams about the Church. A Church that proceeds on its path in poverty and humility... that gives space to people capable of thinking more openly. A Church that instils courage, especially in those who feel small or sinners. I dreamed of a young Church. Today I no longer have these dreams” (from Night Conversations in Jerusalem).

The seriousness of the crisis is evident from the fact that the Church seems to lack minds capable of perceiving the dimensions of the problem. It is still believed that a few tweaks here and there are enough, a few half-openings that are more superficial than substantial, like those proposed by Pope Francis’ pontificate. The situation, however, is the one photographed by the Archbishop of Turin: "We live a Christianity that does not offer true paths of spirituality." But if a religion does not offer true paths of spirituality, what is her value? It is like keeping a restaurant open that does not offer food.

I conclude by quoting Cardinal Martini's thought again: "I have always been enthusiastic about Teilhard de Chardin, who sees the world proceeding towards the great goal, where God is everything in everything... Utopia is important: only when you have a vision does the Spirit raise you above petty conflicts."

The last thing I am interested in are petty conflicts. If I have allowed myself to take up and comment on the statements of the Archbishop of Turin, it is to help glimpse a new utopia, given that what for centuries governed Christian minds, that is, the Christianization of the world, is over. Today, no one can legitimately hope that the entire world will become Christian. For this reason, it is no longer sustainable to affirm that "there is no other name in which there is salvation, except Jesus Christ". Not only is the axiom "extra Ecclesiam nulla salus" (there is no salvation outside the Church) outdated, but so is the even more decisive one "extra Christum nulla salus". Salvation (from sin, from nihilism, from evil, from wickedness, from the internal war that devours our hearts) comes to all those who seek it by invoking the names that each one knows and living according to the spirit of love and justice. It is the Spirit who wants it this way, that Spirit who guides the world and who always speaks through his great prophets, from Gioacchino da Fiore to Teilhard de Chardin and Carlo Maria Martini and many other blessed names.

See, Vito Mancuso: Conoscere il divino rende forti le società. Se manca la religione, manca l’umanit