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The Theologian and the Teacher

Fr. Giuseppe Quadrio
Theology Teacher and Master of Life

Translation by John Rasor of Remo Bracchi (ed.), Don Giuseppe Quadrio: Docente di Teologia e Maestro di Vita (Rome, LAS 1989), pp. 9-22. These are the proceedings of a 1989 symposium on Fr. Quadrio at the Salesian Pontifical University in Rome.

Presentation

Fr. Giuseppe Quadrio spent the last fourteen years of his brief and intensive life as a teacher of dogmatic theology in the Theology Department of what was then the Salesian Pontifical Athenaeum of Turin (now Salesian Pontifical University in Rome). He was also chairman of the Department (from 1954 to 1959), up to the time his illness forced his retirement.

Teaching theology was the main job given him, and he consecrated his best energies to that, with great seriousness and dedication, bringing to fruition what he had matured in the years of preparation for this task.

But more than an assignment or a duty, he always saw a privileged and unique mission. He pushed himself to make an authentic existential synthesis of study, teaching and life; of his study and his life; of theological investigation and contemporary reality; of its problems and challenges.

For the students, this was – as numerous testimonies demonstrate – the most important and eloquent lesson of Fr. Quadrio: doing theology with gaze turned with constant attention to those hearing the doctrine, to the students in front of him as well as those far off, but no less important, men of today with their conditionings and culture.

He succeeded above all in “doing theology” in the crucible of his own life. The proof came out spontaneously, day after day, from the lectern, from personal dialog with the students and the many persons he touched whether in his priestly ministry, or in particular the hospitals to which he was repeatedly admitted during his last illness. Whoever approached found him constantly serene and courageous, even in the focused consciousness of the irreversibility of his sickness and inexorable, impending death.

The contributors to this present volume^¹ reflect some of the major phases of his figure, in particular those that touch his mission of researcher and teacher. But they do not neglect other essential dimensions of his person and life: indeed, they put into relief that basic coherence and that irresistible efficacy which is a distinctive characteristic of all Christian holiness.

Juan Picca

Theology Department Chairman

Summary

The Theologian and the Teacher3

A Teacher's Relations with the Students6

The Priest, the Shepherd7

Reading God in Fr. Quadrio's Letters10

Fr. Giuseppe Quadrio, Theology Teacher and Master of Life. Through the Initiatives Leading to Introduction of the Cause12

Fr. Giuseppe Quadrio and the Dogma of Mary's Assumption:
Historical and Dogmatic Considerations17

The Fathers of the Church
in the Writings of Fr. Giuseppe Quadrio20

The Responses of Fr. Quadrio
to Readers of Meridiano 1222

The “Fr. Quadrio Sources” in the Archives
of the Salesian Pontifical University:
Preliminary Organization and Inventory26