Between «Last Crossroads» and «Seminal Reserves»: Human Nature, Religions and Planetary Exigencies in Ernesto Balducci|TRA «ULTIMO BIVIO» E «RISERVE SEMINALI». NATURA UMANA, RELIGIONI ED ESIGENZE PLANETARIE IN ERNESTO BALDUCCI

Deeply involved in the Catholic and Italian traditions, the Piarist Ernesto Balducci (1922-1992) engaged in intense confrontations between those traditions, on the one hand, and the current, transversal exigencies of all cultures and religions, on the other, first and foremost the problems of the increasingly destructive wars of men among themselves and of the increasingly destructive aggression of the human species against all the other species on the planet. To respond structurally to these dangers, for Balducci we must question ourselves about «human nature», which, however, he writes, «is not something to be left behind, it is an inexhaustible range of possibilities to which it is necessary to continually return as to its sources, because it is never identified with the fulfillments in which it took shape at a moment in its history». Religions, like every other human community, are, continues Balducci, «at the last crossroads»: either to pursue a will for sectarian power, with apocalyptic risks, or to instead build from within themselves a prospect of reciprocal peace, favoring a «transition» towards a humanity that is still «unprecedented», but whose realization is possible as it is inscribed in the human «seminal reserves».