Monsignor Luigi Giussani was a committed teacher of young students and an author whose books have been translated into many languages worldwide. “The religious sense” is one of the main ideas he discussed. He even wrote a book titled “The Religious Sense.” He described the term in these words:

“The religious sense is reason’s capacity to express its own profound nature in the ultimate question; it is the “locus” of consciousness that a human being has regarding existence. Such an inevitable question is in every individual, in the way he looks at everything. (The Religious Sense)”

Fr. Giusanni admired reason.

The human person participates in the light and power of the divine Spirit. By his reason, he is capable of understanding the order of things established by the Creator.

Catechism, 1704

Reason is—

• The capacity to understand the order of things.
• That which judges acts as good or bad.
• That which gives ordinances for the sake of the common good.
• That which recognizes the voice of God.

Fr. Giusanni thought that the religious sense is an operation of reason and that it’s our awareness of the ultimate question. In fact, Giussani spoke of leading questions, plural. Here are a series of questions that he asks in The Religious Sense:

“What is the ultimate meaning of my existence?” or “Why is there pain and death, and why, in the end, is life worth living?” Or, from another point of view: “What does reality consist of, and what is it made for?” Thus, the religious sense lies within the reality of our self at the level of these questions.”

The Religious Sense

Those questions grab the attention. They require concentration and may even be intimidating. That’s why reason is not meant to be left alone. Reason should be bound with faith, the moral order, or divine law, with different outcomes from different pairings. Reason alone is prone to error. Faith and reason belong together.

The most important thing that the religious sense needs is God’s Revelation. God brings “man a superabundant light as he searches for the ultimate meaning of his life. (Catechism, 26)”