Francesco Guccini is dead but God is not – EDIZIONI L'ISOLA DI PATMOS

FRANCESCO GUCCINI IS DEAD BUT GOD NO

Using "God is dead" as a premise and "God rises again in what we want" as a solution simultaneously betrays two thoughts that both deserve greater respect: traditional Friedrich Nietzsche, reducing his tragic diagnosis to a lyrical pretext; and betrays the Christian theology of the Resurrection, reducing it to a collective inspiration of good intentions.

- Church news -

Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo

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Given that the topic could lend itself to easy misunderstandings and sterile controversies, it is appropriate to clarify things immediately: the target of these lines is not Francesco Guccini, passed away today in Pavana, fraction of Sambuca Pistoiese.

One can not appreciate the thought of this singer-songwriter — and who writes, in truth, he never shared it - even though he unreservedly recognized his talent and the place he deserves in the history of Italian songwriting. It's not him, today, the problem, but an article appeared on Future, newspaper of the Italian Episcopal Conference, the signature of Umberto Folena (see article who), who in commemorating the musician writes a sentence that would deserve much more caution from those who publish in the newspaper of the Bishops of Italy. Quoting the famous song God is dead (cf.. text who), this colleague observes that in the text in question «God is no longer at the center of man's thoughts […] but God rises again: “In what we believe, in what we want, in the world we will make”». And he adds, of his own, that it is «a hope that is neither vague nor vain, but supported by a faith". Statement, this, which is not a neutral paraphrase at all: it is an approval.

Like this, directly from the columns of Future, we ignore that the Resurrection is not a human project. Let's try to be surgical, because the material requires it: the Resurrection of Christ, in the Catholic faith, it is not an event that depends on our belief, by our will, or from the world we will build. It's exactly the opposite: it is a historical-salvific fact that precedes faith and establishes it, not that it depends on it. Christ was resurrected on the third day, really and physically, regardless of who believed it and who didn't. Incredulous and terrified, the apostles themselves had to surrender to the evidence of an empty tomb and a living Lord (cf.. LC 24,36-43), not the other way around.

«The formula cited by Umberto Folena — «in what we believe, in what we want, in the world we will make" — overturns this logic: makes the Resurrection a projection of the human will, an immanent project, something that happens within history and at the hands of man. It is theology reversed: not God who saves man, but the man who, believing and wanting intensely enough, “rises up” God within his own collective project. In other words: if the Resurrection really depended on what we believe, we want or build, At that time “It gave” it would merely become the name we give to our best collective intentions, that is, something that exists as long as we continue to want it and which would disappear if we stopped believing in it or committing ourselves. It is the exact opposite of the Christian faith, for which Christ was truly resurrected, Once for all, regardless of who knew it, believed it or wanted it, as demonstrated precisely by the initial disbelief of the apostles in the face of the fait accompli (cf.. LC 24,11). And all this, which from a theological point of view is an authentic aberration of the entire mystery of salvation, it certainly cannot be called "a hope supported by a faith", because without a line of distinction, without a single reference to the Creed, it is an operation that any newspaper could also afford, the official organ of the Bishops, absolutely not.

There is more and it concerns the other side of the coin: the death of God, not his resurrection. When that genius Friedrich Nietzsche wrote «God is dead» (God is dead), he was not composing a consolatory song about the ultimate destiny of the sacred, but I was diagnosing, with ruthless clarity, the collapse of the moral foundations of the modern West. His was a tragic announcement, not a springboard for an optimistic humanism. He knew well that the man who killed God has no idea how to bear the weight of that act:

"God is dead! God remains dead! And we killed him! How will we console ourselves, the killers of all killers? […] It's not too big, for us, the greatness of this action? We must not become gods ourselves, to at least appear worthy of it?» (F. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, aphorism 125).

A man forced to become god just to support the void left by God: nothing but cheap consolation like the They're just songs, as another very talented singer-songwriter sings, Edoardo Bennato.

Use “God is dead” as a premise and "God rises again in what we want" as a solution simultaneously betrays two thoughts that both deserve greater respect: traditional Friedrich Nietzsche, reducing his tragic diagnosis to a lyrical pretext; and betrays the Christian theology of the Resurrection, reducing it to a collective inspiration of good intentions, careless about it, as the Apostle Paul teaches, our faith can be born or it can die:

"But if Christ has not been raised, therefore our preaching is in vain and your faith is also in vain" (1Color 15,14).

It is therefore not up for debate whether Francesco Guccini had faith, he didn't have it, or cultivated - as Umberto Folena writes in his conclusion - "an ever cultivated hope". It's his business, now entrust yourself to the judgment of God, the true one. The question that remains and which concerns not Guccini but whoever commemorated him in this way is another: can a newspaper that presents itself as the voice of the Italian Bishops publish, without a single word of doctrinal distinction, an equivalence between the Resurrection of Christ and the collective good will of man? Such an equivalence is not theologically neutral: expresses a clearly heterodox thought of modernist origin condemned by Saint Pius Feeding of Dominic's Sheep (1907), that is, the reduction of dogmatic truth, objective and revealed, a projection of the immanent religious feeling of the believing subject. And if this happens without anyone, in the editorial office of the Bishops' newspaper notice this, where we should look for a healthy ecclesiology today, maybe on the Manifesto, maybe up Micromega? Undoubtedly, the third page of Manifesto as well as the culture articles of Micromega are and remain of a highly superior level to those of Future.

Francesco Guccini is dead. Dio no.

From the island of Patmos, 7 August 2026

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