by

His Most Reverend Eminence Cardinal

Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy

Fides et ratio

"What do Athens and Jerusalem have in common? And what do the Academy and the Church share?" The question posed by Tertullian in the 3^rd Century (De praescriptione haereticorum, VII 9: SCh 46,98) manifests the importance given by Christians, ever since the times of the primitive Church, to the issue concerning relations between faith and reason. They fully accepted reason freed from the bonds of the pagan world’s idolatry, and having abandoned the hopelessness of Greek mythology, opened their minds to reflecting on the authentic transcendent dimension, grafting into this the fullness of the Revelation offered by Christ (see John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Fides et ratio, no. 41).

It is possible to say, with the great scientific historian, Professor Stanley Jaki, that the path of faith leads to a more profound understanding of reality: "Faith is a permanent source of rationality and also an everlasting source of trust. And this because the world’s most profound source of scientific knowledge is the fundamental statement that the universe contains a meaning and an objective" (see S. Jaki, The Road of Science and the Ways of God, Edinburgh 1978, p. 293).

Because faith is not mere theory or abstract ideals, but a path involving humankind’s rational adhesion to words and events that have God as their author and their protagonist, and are historically verifiable. Faith in fact is the intelligent listening to and acceptance of revealed information; it is interpersonal trust, it is entrusting oneself to the truth made manifest by Another; it is, finally, acceptance of the Word made Flesh, Christ, who communicates the truth about man and about life.

Faith and reason are like two wings with which the human spirit flies towards the contemplation of the truth. It is God who placed in the hearts of men the desire to know the truth and, finally, to now Him, because in knowing and loving Him man may reach the full truth about himself ( see Es 33,18; Sal 27,8-9; 63,2-3; John 14,8; 1 John 3,2). These thoughts expressed by the Pope and used in the introduction for the Encyclical Fides et ratio (see Introduction), are perfect for introducing the subject of the thirty fourth international theological videoconference on "Faith and reason"; and wishes to be an invitation to work hard in favour of their reconciliation.

In the divergence between faith and reason in fact there is the expression of one of man’s eternal great dramas, and in particular that of those living at the beginning of this third millennium. The excessive and unilateral rationalism, developed above all in Enlightenment, has led to the radicalisation of positions in the scientific environment, and in particular, in the field of philosophy. The scission that arose in the past, and still lasts, causes serious damage not only to religion but also to culture.

The papers presented today by Theologians, and in particular those by Professor Monsignor Antonio Miralles and by Professor Paolo Scarafoni, speaking from Rome from the seat of the Congregation for the Clergy, will emphasise that the Magisterium of the Church, based on the Aquinate’s fecund thoughts, has the duty to acknowledge and transfer to humankind the link existing between the truth of things as they are and the good of humankind and all that exists.

Today’s papers will remind us to what extent, amidst violent controversies also in the recent past, it was often forgotten that the faith does not fear reason, but searches for it and trusts in it convinced not only of its usefulness, but also of the need for science in a mature faith. Without science, faith runs the serious danger of being reduced to a myth or to superstition. Deprived of reason, faith becomes pure feeling or a mere individual and spiritualist experience, rather than what it should be, a universal proposal, rooted within the truth about existence and the mystery of the Word made Flesh.

Speaking from Sydney His Excellency Julian Porteous, from Taiwan Professor Louis Aldrich, from Manila Professor José Vidamor Yu, from Bogotá Professor Silvio Cajiao, from Johannesburg Professor Stuart Bate, will allow us to better understand that science that does not welcome an adult faith is not encouraged to look to novelties and the radicalism of existence. It from this that the ontological primacy of Christocentric anthropology comes, indicating the ultimate meaning of scientific progress: science is for humankind. Science is blind without the light of the truth about humankind and the cosmos, that truth that science does not cause, but contemplates, analyses and discovers. An isolated science, hence deprived of its meaningful and sense-making dimension, separated from an ethical perspective, determines a systematic transformation of contemporary thought into a "calculating thought", to use a famous expression invented by Heidegger. It is thinking that results in grim and sad utilitarianism and relativism, loosing confidence in being capable of learning the truth and offering humankind the experience of meeting its own happiness within the truth.

The papers presented by Professor Gerhard Ludwig Mueller from Munich, by Professor Alfonso Carrasco Rouco from Madrid, by Professor Michael Hull from New York, and by Professor Igor Kowalewsky from Moscow, will reaffirm that the pragmatism, rooted within ethical and existential relativism of the so-called post-Christian culture, originates above all in the Western culture, a dehumanisation of social cohabitation and a violence exercised against human freedom based on the truth of the person.

It is the exasperated individualism of reason that removes itself from the search for the truth and the common good. It is the dream of an absolute autonomy of reason and its self-sufficiency that leads to Kant’s sapere aude: "You yourself should dare to use your reasoning, separating it from all restrictions and conditioning." (see I. Kant, What is Enlightment?, Rome 1987, p. 48). It is through reason’s separation from the bonds of human nature itself that one accepts what is reasonable and removes all moral requests that are not united to the concept of understanding.

The Christian answers the technicist vision of the world, that only questions the practical possibility of action and not its lawfulness, with his loyalty to the "whole" truth, bringing with him complete Humanism, that christocentric humanism in which faith and reason unite and perfect each other in their complementarities.

I shall close by expressing my heartfelt thanks to the Prelates and Theologians invited to speak, and remind you that they will speak through a live link-up from ten countries in the five continents.

I hope you all enjoy the conference.