In their Handbook of Christian Apologetics, Peter Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli cause us to reflect on the fact that, even when we do not embrace the Christian faith, but whatever religion catches our fancy, we will still be relying on some kind of faith: “No human being ever existed without some faith. We all know most of what we know by faith; that is, by belief in what others-parents, parents, teachers, friends, writers, society-tell us. Outside religion as well as inside it, faith and reason are roads to truth.” Indeed this is a warning against the tight boundaries of rationalism, boundaries that cannot contain the whole of human existence. Even atheists have faith in atheism, because faith is an important component of what we are. Our modernity has many faiths too, only we call them in different ways. Take certain trends in architecture.

When I was going around Hong Kong, before this damned pandemics, I was amazed by the great skyscrapers that surrounded me everywhere and I could see that for a population so numerous they are probably the only possible solution. My friend Camillo Langone in his book, Pensieri del Lambrusco, has his reservations about tall buildings and I can understand that. I also think that those little houses in many Italian villages have a flavor that no skyscraper could ever have. You feel that life there is proportioned to individual people, while all this accumulation of apartments makes everything feel like carnage…but is this not the price of modernity?