The lecture not given by Pope Benedict–now in English
January 18, 2008, 7:27 am
Posted by Joseph A. Komonchak
EWTN has made the full speech of the pope available in English, as translated by Asia news. The Vatican website continues to give only the Italian and the German.
Here are extracts from the lecture that Pope Benedict had planned to give at La Sapienza University.
And here is the full text in Italian (the Vatican website also offers it in German).
According to a report this morning on NPR, the Pope received a standing ovation, in absentia, after the speech was read on his behalf.
John Allen reports on this in hiw weekly column for NCR, and notes how BXVI comes across as conciliatory.
Allen adds a sidebar attachment at the end about the controversy,”The canary oin the coal mine,” indicating they see most of Benedict’s actions as a move to pre-Vatican II days and a desire to wipe out the Council.
I don’t think it’s hard to appreciate that perception, whether one agrees or not.
At bottom, they should not have protested Benedict’s coming, let him speak and then made whatever critique they though appropriate,
But how effectively Benedict is reaching the Church in the modern world (if you’ll pardon the expression), except for his true believers is quite debatable.
I thought this passage in one of the linked articles was interesting:
Maybe part of it was the fact that the organization Benedict XVI represents maintained an Index of Forbidden Books for almost four hundred years, and works by Voltaire were on it. In another thread, there is some argument not about whether (but just how many) theologians were silenced by Benedict XVI when he was head of the CDF. Maybe some feel that Voltairean tolerance is a two-way street.
And what kind of Voltairean tolerance is it to oppose a minority protest, anyway?
I don’t agree with the protesters, especially the faculty, but it is clear they didn’t prevent the pope from speaking. He withdrew. It is a bad precedent to let a vocal minority prevail in a case like this.
We should be clear that the objector’s point was that the talk would be given on the last day when there would be no questions.
You said it David. The Vatican quoting Voltaire. Can Harry Potter and Hans Kung be far behind?
I suggest that both conservatives and liberals debate the role of the papacy in today’s world. Truly, both have disagreed with the pope.
” For He was not, as might be imagined, circumscribed in the body, nor, while present in the body, was He absent elsewhere; nor, while He moved the body, was the universe left void of His working and Providence; but, thing most marvellous, Word as He was, so far from being contained by anything, He rather contained all things Himself; and just as while present in the whole of Creation, He is at once distinct in being from the universe, and present in all things by His own power,-giving order to all things, and over all and in all revealing His own providence, and giving life to each thing and all things, including the whole without being included, but being in His own Father alone wholly and in every respect,- thus, even while present in a human body and Himself quickening it, He was, without inconsistency, quickening the universe as well, and was in every process of nature, and was outside the whole, and while known from the body by His works, He was none the less manifest from the working of the universe as well. Now, it is the function of soul to behold even what is outside its own body, by acts of thought, without, however, working outside its own body, or moving by its presence things remote from the body. Never, that is, does a man, by thinking of things at a distance, by that fact either move or displace them; nor if a man were to sit in his own house and reason about the heavenly bodies, would he by that fact either move the sun or make the heavens revolve. But he sees that they move and have their being, without being actually able to influence them. Now, the Word of God in His man’s nature was not like that; for He was not bound to His body, but rather was Himself wielding it, so that He was not only in it, but was actually in everything, and while external to the universe, abode in His Father only. And this was the wonderful thing that He was at once walking as man, and as the Word was quickening all things, and as the Son was dwelling with His Father. So that not even when the Virgin bore Him did He suffer any change, nor by being in the body was [His glory] dulled: but, on the contrary, He sanctified the body also.
For not even by being in the universe does He share in its nature, but all things, on the contrary, are quickened and sustained by Him.
For if the sun too, which was made by Him, and which we see, as it revolves in the heaven, is not defiled by touching the bodies upon earth, nor is it put out by darkness, but on the contrary itself illuminates and cleanses them also, much less was the all-holy Word of God, Maker and Lord also of the sun, defiled by being made known in the body; on the contrary, being incorruptible, He quickened and cleansed the body also, which was in itself mortal: ‘who did’[lviii] for so it says, ‘no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth.’”
Athanasius, On the Incarnation Chapter 17
Kathy,
Can you tie in your post with this thread? How does it apply? What did I miss?
Pope Benedict at least seems to be admitting that freedom from ecclesiastcal authority in secular universities is a good thing for society. That’s a big step in the right direction.I thnx.
Sorry, Bill.
What I mean is that it seems to me that Pope Benedict is in fact saying challenging things. He’s recalling people to reason, and there is a deep vein in Christian thought which pretty much identifies reason and Christ.
En arche o logos (John 1:1)
…And it’s pretty obvious that the Pope is underlining the identification of reason and Christ in his speech, by employing 2 of the Calcedonian adverbs to speak about the relationship of philosophy and theology.
It seems to me to be a very bold move–using the Calcedonian adverbs, as such, for anything except for the 2 natures. Quite remarkable.
(I’m sorry for being obscure before. I was just quoting Athanasius as an illustration of the identification of Christ and reason. Shouldn’t have just quoted without comment–I apologize.)
“In another thread, there is some argument not about whether (but just how many) theologians were silenced by Benedict XVI when he was head of the CDF. Maybe some feel that Voltairean tolerance is a two-way street.”
And yet: they still publish. They still have tenured academic positions. They still hit the lecture circuit. They still give interviews. Clearly the Inquisition is not what it used to be.
But that’s the easy layup. If the Inquisition in its toned down form and its former boss are expected to partake in suppressive tactics, tolerance and free expression are the bywords of the secular academy now. And in that regard, the ones at La Sapienza haven’t quite lived up to billing this month. Free speech for me but not for thee?
Especially given that…Ratzinger simply didn’t say what the protectors accused him of saying.
I also have my doubts whether it was right of the Ope to withdraw. But however it happened, the goal of the protestors was achieved.
R.M. Lender,
What you seem to be saying is that the pope had a right to free speech, but the minority who protested his appearance didn’t. If he had appeared and they had shouted him down, that would be one thing. But a small minority protesting is another matter. Doesn’t it seem unfair to blame the entire university for having protesters among the faculty and student body? Do you think they should be dismissed and expelled for protesting?
As for silencing, there is a difference between, say, Charles Curran and Hans Kung, on on the one hand, and John McNeill, Leonardo Boff, and Matthew Fox, on the other. Curran and Kung merely lost their licenses to teach Catholic theology. McNeil, Boff, and Fox were truly silenced, which means no publishing, no lecture circuit, and no interviews (unless you leave, which they all did).
Karl Rahner, a towering figure in 20th century Catholic theology, was silenced by Pope John XXIII, rehabilitated by Pope Paul VI, and under scrutiny again under John Paul II.
By the way, what to you think of banning presidential candidates who are pro-choice from appearing at Catholic colleges?
Nobelist Dario Fo has a piece in an Italian paper (wretchedly translated at Fr Zuhlsdorf’s site) praising highly the ideas expressed in the Pope’s lecture, but pointing out, rightly, that these ideas are contradicted by his actions against Catholic theologians for the last thirty years.
I guess the question, to put it sharply, would be: suppose the head of Planned Parenthood were scheduled to speak at a Catholic university. And a small but vocal group of peaceful protesters–faculty and students –indicated that they were going to protest the event (but not disrupt it). And suppose the head of PP decided not come, rather than to face the protesters.
Would you consider that a victory for free speech (the successful speech of the protestors) or a defeat (for the speech of PP)? Why?
That’s quite an inapt analogy, Cathleen.
Unless it’s already taken for granted that the Pope is opposed to the values of the academy in the same way that the head of Planned Parenthood is opposed to the values of Catholicism.
Hello David,
“What you seem to be saying is that the pope had a right to free speech, but the minority who protested his appearance didn’t.”
Not at all.
“If he had appeared and they had shouted him down, that would be one thing. But a small minority protesting is another matter. Doesn’t it seem unfair to blame the entire university for having protesters among the faculty and student body? Do you think they should be dismissed and expelled for protesting?”
How small was the minority?
It seems to have been fairly substantial – certainly a failry substantial percentage of the faculty.
I am not sure how you gloss my comments as suggesting the dismissal or expulsion of anyone from La Sapienza. My inquiry was strictly directed into the primacy and consistency of tolerance and free speech in the (apparently) reigning secularist orthodoxies at La Sapienza.
Some suggest the problem is that the Pope would only have spoken, not taken any questions – a one way street of speech. Yet this is true of many public engagements in the academy. Should all of them be protested until they withdraw? In any event, this is the first pontiff who has actually interacted in dialogue format with a lay audience, and more than once – how controlled the setting were I can’t say, but nonetheless it seems odd to strongly task this Pope with an aversion to dialogue.
For my part – I have mixed feelings as to whether the Pope made the right decision.
“As for silencing, there is a difference between, say, Charles Curran and Hans Kung, on on the one hand, and John McNeill, Leonardo Boff, and Matthew Fox, on the other. Curran and Kung merely lost their licenses to teach Catholic theology. McNeil, Boff, and Fox were truly silenced, which means no publishing, no lecture circuit, and no interviews (unless you leave, which they all did).”
Precisely my point: even in the cases of McNeill, Boff and Fox, each man had taken special vows of obedience. In the end, each privileged the freedom to speak at large over those vows, and each resumed their public careers. Three theologians silenced, and only briefly – how does this compare to Pius X, let alone Pius V? (Let us concede there were a handful of others besides these – the point remains the same) There is, I think, a certain air of unreality in the perceptions of the oppressiveness of Ratzinger’s CDF.
“Karl Rahner, a towering figure in 20th century Catholic theology, was silenced by Pope John XXIII, rehabilitated by Pope Paul VI, and under scrutiny again under John Paul II.”
True enough. But Ratzinger was – if anything -a critic of the Holy Office’s actions during John XXIII’s pontificate.
“By the way, what to you think of banning presidential candidates who are pro-choice from appearing at Catholic colleges?”
Perhaps the larger question is: Is is appropriate to have presidential candidates appearing on Catholic campuses at all?
That’s a fair debate to have. Certainly whatever the rule is, it ought to be applied consistently.
At La Sapienza, one cannot escape the impression that the only consistency is not free speech, but the upholding of certain progressive principles. There is a term for this – and some might call it hypocrisy.
Kathy, Happy New Year to you too.
We might want to distinguish between two ways of conceptualizing the right to free speech. The first is a principle of freedom of TRUE speech. The second is a principle of freedom of speech without regard to content. Let’s see how this runs:
A Catholic university could contend that the search for truth can never call into question the truths proclaimed by the magisterium. Therefore, they could favor bringing people to campus those who further the quest for truth, and not those who impede it by arguing for what they know (by faith) is falsehood. This isn’t a principle of non-content restrictive free speech, it’s a principle of free TRUE speech–with truth being defined (or at least falsehood excluded) by the magisterium).
There’s no reason a secular university couldn’t have a parallel principle. “Secular universities believe that religions have systematically impeded the search for scientific knowledge. We are not convinced by their efforts to argue otherwise. Therefore we are not in favor of bringing people to campus those who attempt to argue that religion can help rather than hinder science.” This isn’t a principle of non-content restrictive free speech, it’s a principle of free TRUE speech –with truth being defined by the tenets of a secular materialistic worldview.
One could also have a true liberal university which defines freedom of speech in as content-neutral a fashion possible (consistent with the need to avoid physical harm to others–crying fire in a crowded theater.) Such a university would allow the Ku Klux Klan to speak, it would allow the Pope to speak, it would allow Putin to speak, it would allow the president of the flat earth society to speak, –and it would allow safe protests to the CONTENT of all the speeches above, considering the protests also to be a valuable form of speech. It would not accede to requests to BAN any of those speeches.
It is logically consistent to say that a given Catholic university is committed to free TRUE speech (and therefore can ban speakers inconsistent with it), but that a given secular university is committed to free speech regardless of content (and therefore can’t ban the Pope).
Although it is logically consistent, it strikes many people intuitively as unfair– Devout Catholic College can rightly protest the head of Planned Parenthood, but Liberal University in the same town can’t protest (say) Apb. Chaput on a book tour.
R. M. Lender,
In all the accounts I have found, the number of faculty members involved in the protest was 67. Accordian to Wikipedia, the staff of of the university is over 10,000. The number of protesting students is generally not given, although several articles give it as “dozens,” one account put it at 50, and someone writing from Italy in another thread put the number of students at 150. According to Wikipedia, the university has 147,000 students. Here is an excerpt from a letter from the Vatican Secretary of State to the Rector of Sapienza University with emphasis added by me:
I think we can all agree that if the university had rescinded the invitation to the pope based on the protest of a tiny minority of student and faculty members, there would be almost unanimous agreement that it was unconscionable. But in fact it was the pope who backed out. And yet I have seen headlines talking about the “silencing” of the pope, and the pope being “forced” to back out.
You say
Please note that it was the official act of the university to invite the pope, and they did not disinvite him. What happened was the result–as even the Vatican itself acknowledges–of a small minority within the university protesting. One headline I saw read ” A Black Eye for La Sapienza.” But how in the world can the entire university, who offered the invitation in the first place, be harshly judged because the pope decides not to show up?
It is either very good luck or political genius on the part of the pope to garner so much sympathy as a victim in all of this and generate so much ill feeling and criticism aimed at his alleged opponents by cancelling an appearance!
Cathy,
Best wishes for a good year.
I attended a “liberal” college. Anything could be said, any speaker could speak. Though they were usually pretty wonky. And a grueling question period followed for 3-4 hours, so you might as well be able to back up what you said.
But one Friday night the most extraordinary thing happened. A guy was giving his lecture–I remember it was about Chinese calligraphy as a liberal art–and a woman in the audience interrupted him. Extraordinary! I think she was asking a political question about China, from the 2nd row. Faculty corrected her, “It is not our custom to ask questions in the lecture!” The formal situation came to a complete standstill.
Security was called, but I’ve forgotten now whether she was escorted from the building or left on her own, or whether she quieted down. I still remember the consternation of everyone involved. Of course a violent outburst would have been more damaging, but I seriously don’t know if it would have come as more of a shock.
If I understand correctly, this was the agenda of the protesting group: disruption. Now my question is, what is a “safe protest” when ideas are involved?
Cathleen,
Not that I think you are taking the side of the world versus La Sapienze, but I think it is important to point out that La Sapienze invited the pope to speak, and the pope accepted and then backed out.
If the university acted improperly in any way, I would like to know what it is. I think the protest was basically silly, but what was the university supposed to do about a small minority of protesters in its midst?
I would not want to make a quick judgment one way or the other as to whether the “Pope is opposed to the values of the academy in the same way that the head of Planned Parenthood is opposed to the values of Catholicism.”
Kathy, these seem to me the key questions to ask.
1. Is Sapienza a content-neutral free speech university (in which case it should have been totally clear that the protest would not be allowed to disrupt the speech) or a free TRUE speech university (committed to the truth of secular materialism)? Maybe the University itself is committed to the first option, but the protesters wanted to push for the second.
2. Your question is essential–what is a safe protest? I think at a minimum it includes: no threat to the physical safety of the speaker or the audience; no disruption of the normal method of giving a talk (the problem with your Chinese political question), and no monopolization of the q and a period after. So I guess I would try to formulate “time, place and manner” restrictions. At the same time, I think if you’re a controversial person, talking about controversial topics, you might have to expect some protest on a college campus.
What do you think about David’s point–it was a small protest, and the Pope pulled out, his talk wasn’t canceled. Does that make a difference to you?
David, I’m not taking the world’s side. I see your point. I don’t think the University acted improperly. They didn’t dis invite the pope. Did the professors and students protesting act improperly? If the professors who protested really wanted the pope banned–then I think they are committed to a very dogmatic free TRUE speech policy, not a free speech policy that is content neutral. If they were just saying he’s wrong–in a vociferous way, that’s something else. If they were trying to intimidate him into not coming, well, I guess I’d put that on the wrong side of the line.
I guess the question I have for you is, what should the Pope have done? And what should the University have done? And if you really disagree with the Church’s approach to science, how should you responsibly protest the Pope’s talk?
Cathy, you ask: “And if you really disagree with the Church’s approach to science, how should you responsibly protest the Pope’s talk?”
Is there a prior question: If you really disagree with the Church’s approach to science, should you protest the Pope’s talk? Must you? Why yes? Why no? My question is why a university-type would want to protest a speech?
Cathy,
I realize that legal training (not to mention Yale theology) includes mastering the skill of reframing questions.
Yet I must persist in suggesting that prior to the question of whether the Pope was the one to pull out, comes the question of the form of the protest. Is it correct that it was a threatened disruption? Was it under control or not?
Kathy,
Note the following:
http://www.agi.it/italy/news/200801151415-cro-ren0052-art.html
Now, these don’t sound like my kinda people, but there is no evidence to indicate they were planning a disruption. (You may believe in your heart that’s what they were up to, but there is no evidence.) Fifty students out of 147,000 were demanding a change in security arrangements so they could protest. I have read nothing to suggest the university made any concessions to their demands.
If world leaders backed down from attending an event because a protest was expected, would George Bush (or anyone else, for that matter) ever go anywhere? And aren’t there safe protests all the time? There certainly are in Manhattan. Lots of them. Isn’t that why the first amendment guarantees “the right of the people peaceably to assemble”?
David,
They were OCCUPYING THE RECTOR’s OFFICE in an escalating situation and demanding complete access to everywhere, in order to “express disapproval.”
I think one could lay even odds that heckling would have been on the agenda!
Larry Cunningham is going to KILL me. I owe him an essay, which I’m 95% finished–but I need to stay off the blog to finish it.
1. Kathy I agree that a key question is whether there was intimidation on the part of the protestors–if they were threatening to disrupt, that’s not acceptable. The University should have made clear that this wouldn’t be tolerated, assuming it wants to hold on to its Free Speech-content neutral approach. I also don’t think occupying a rectorate falls within the bounds of free speech, so this doesn’t help their case.
2. Joe, you’re asking the wrong person. I don’t do protests. Or marches. Or winter camping. Or, come to think of it, anything that involves being cold. BUT, I can see how someone who does do those things, and who really thought a speaker represented values that were antithetical to the ones most dear to her, might want to protest. If President Bush were speaking, someone might want to protest. Both are powerful leaders with influential positions on the world stage; if someone thinks they’re using that influence for ill, they might plausibly conclude that it’s important to voice some dissent. Otherwise, they might reasonably fear that the event would be portrayed as a love-fest, thereby further entrenching the wrong values.
Kathy,
First, do you know anything about the security arrangements for the pope’s speech at Sapienza? And second, are you saying the pope is right to cancel any appearance where there is a 50-50 chance he would be heckled?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=508440&in_page_id=1811
http://www.agi.it/italy/news/200801151945-pol-ren0129-art.html
http://www.agi.it/italy/news/200801151944-pol-ren0127-art.html
David,
I think that people have certain rights over their persons: where to go, what to do.
Some of these rights are sacrificed in any form of public service. Ambassadors can be told where to go and what to do by their sovereigns, for example, and military personnel sacrifice make huge sacrifices of self-determination.
Some of these rights are sacrificed in a special way by clerics. And as the Pope tells every consistory, cardinals in particular must be willing to be martyred.
What rights does the Pope have regarding the cancellation of public appearances? It’s a fair question–though I wouldn’t take the spin of politicians as hard evidence that there was complete safety.
In the US at least, so much depends on the culture of the University. If the Pope went to Steubenville, my guess is he’d get a roaring, unanimous totally supportive welcome–they wouldn’t need to manufacture it. At places like ND or BC, there might be people who disagreed privately with his positions, but who would feel it highly inappropriate to mount a public protest to his visit. At UC-Berkeley, well, that’s a totally different story, I guess. If he wanted to give a speech there, I’d hope his advisors would prepare him well for the full range of responses he’d likely receive.
Anybody know what the culture of La Sapienza is?
I was hanging out at UC Berkeley one afternoon, and on the upper plaza there was this evangelical guy preaching, and on the lower plaza there was this very good rock band.
What kind of audience would the Pope have been hoping for, given this speech? I don’t think he would need to bother saying such things at Steubenville. But at BC or ND it might be worthwhile to ask certain questions:
In modern times, new dimensions of knowledge have opened up, and in the university, they are appreciated most of all in two spheres: above all, in the natural sciences, which have developed on the basis of the link between experimentation and the presumed rationality of matter; and in the second place, in the historical and humanistic sciences, in whuich man – scrutinizing the mirror of history, and clarifying the dimensions of his nature, seeks to understand himself better. This development has opened to mankind not only an immense meassure of knowledge and power, but it has also developed the knowledge and acknowledgment of human rights and human dignity, for which we can only be grateful. But man’s journey can never be said to be complete, and the danger of falling into inhumanity can never be simply abjured – as we see in the panorama of current affaris. The danger for the Western world – to speak of this alone – is that man today, especially considering the greatness of his knowledge and power, surrenders when faced with the question of truth.
This would mean that reason ultimately folds up from the pressure of interests and the attractiveness of utility, being forced to recognize it as the ultimate criterion. Stated from the point of view of the structure of the university, there is a danger that philosophy, no longer feeling capable of its true mission, degenerates into positivism; that theology, with its message addressed to reason, becomes confined to the private sphere of a group or groups. If however, reason, solicitous of its presumed purity, becomes deaf to the great message that comes from the Christian faith and its wisdom, it would wither up like a tree whose roots no longer reach the waters that give it life. It would lose its courage for the truth and will stop being great – it would diminish.
Applied to our European culture, this means: if reason wishes to self-construct itself circumscribed by its own argumentation and that which convinces it for the moment, and – preoccupied with its secularity – cuts itself off from the roots through which it lives, then it does not become more reasonable and pure, but will decompose and break up.
My question is: Is La Sapienza more like Berkeley or BC in its academic culture?
At the risk of being repetitive, I think we’re conflating two issues here (though there’s some overlap:)
1) The Pope and Sapienza:
Should the faculty/ students hav eat least heard what he had to say before protesting?
Of course
Granted they protested, should the Pope have gone? Of course. Insulating oneself from criticism only projects a close minded perceptiopn
(I’m reminded of a current lawsuit here in Bernalillo county (Albuquerque) by anti-war protestors agains the Bush campaign folks for insulating GWB.
More and more folks get easily bent out of shape by protest. Taking the example of the rude interruptio nof a lecture as more than an isolated incident strikes me as where we are at. Being a somewhat serious bridge player, I’m reminded of the incident recently at the victory dinner at the world championships in Beijing, where the victorius US women held up a small sign at lunch saying “Dump Bush.” That caused a major brouhaha among world administrative mavens, but was quickly settled here by a simple “we won;t do that again “by the women’s captain It often strikes me that folks who object to protesat do so on the basis of whose ox is goired and generate a lot more heat than light. O this MLK day (and recalling my own protest days of yore), when the levers of power and control have tightened so much in the fields of religion and politics, I think we should celebrate protest more!
2.) Speakers on Amerivcan campuses: Despite an ad hominem on Cathy’s academic background, I think her ooints are right on target.
In general on a secular campus, a broad variety of speakers is desirable and also a lot of rough and tumble, but not rude, discussion be allowed.
On Church campuses, it is surely the right of management to bar those they find to be untrue.
I do think, however, they they often do not sufficiently consider how effecacious emphasizing content and not the who and how of what’s presented may affect the young minds they seek to develop.
Bob, I also think that a content-neutral free speech policy is attractive to many Catholic students, most of whom do NOT go to Catholic schools for college. We here a lot about Catholic parents who send their kids to conservative Catholic colleges–they dont’ want them exposed to “unorthodox” ideas, at least without an immediate and effective counterpunch. What needs to be said as well, however, is that there are at least an equal number of Catholic parents who don’t want to send their kids to a religious hothouse–they fear the moral influence of what they believe to be a closed intellectual environment.
Conservative Catholics frequently say that they don’t want their kids hanging around unorthodox Catholics and secular liberals. But the moral judgments go both ways, in my experience. Both sets of Catholic parents are uneasy about too much influence on their kids by the children raised by the other group.
I think the Pope was justified in withdrawing if he had a reasonable fear that his talk would be interrupted, and he would not be permitted to say what he had to say in an orderly and peaceful manner. I don’t think he would be justified in withdrawing if he merely thought he would encounter –or his audience would encounter –an organized but peaceful protest outside the auditorium (e.g., people handing out flyers, holding signs, etc). I think this is what a controversial speaker –pope or president — ought to expect when giving a talk at a big secular university.
Now, I don’t think he had any obligation to accept an invitation to give a speech at a university in the first place. And I think his advisors ought to have advised him what he was getting into before he accepted.
Ad hominem! That was admiration!
Still, I wonder if anyone at all would care to engage this statement (which is almost as bold as saying philosophy and theology are analogous to the two natures):
” If however, reason, solicitous of its presumed purity, becomes deaf to the great message that comes from the Christian faith and its wisdom, it would wither up like a tree whose roots no longer reach the waters that give it life. It would lose its courage for the truth and will stop being great – it would diminish… If reason wishes to self-construct itself circumscribed by its own argumentation and that which convinces it for the moment, and – preoccupied with its secularity – cuts itself off from the roots through which it lives, then it does not become more reasonable and pure, but will decompose and break up.”
When reason is divorced from theology, does it come into its own? Or is it diminished?
Hello David,
1. I think it is clear that a distinction must be drawn between the university’s actions and those of the protesting faculty and students – it was the latter’s actions that were in controversy. I had hoped that it was cleear from my remarks that I was aware of the distinction. The university administration itself appears blameless so far as I can tell.
I suppose we can quibble about the relative size of the protest. La Sapienza is an enormous university – perhaps the actual numbers here are quite small as a percentage. But they were certainly numerous enough and exercised enough to create a real issue. It was not unreasonable to think (as Kathy suggests above) that protestors willing to break the law by occupying the rector’s office would also be willing to engage in more disruptive behavior if the Pope had actually come. More on that in a moment.
2. I find Professor Kaveny’s distinction between two different speech rules very useful here. Generally when most of us think “free speech” I believe we think of the content neutral approach. Certainly this seems to be the sort priveleged and understood in classic liberal thought.
Perhaps we are at a point where institutions might want to adopt Prof. Kaveny’s rule of free “true” speech. In this regard sectarian institutions who take their identity seriously might wish to adopt it formally (as some already do), although this might still leave all sorts of grey areas to be sorted out. What would be more surprising is if public or private secular institutions decided to adopt their own version of it, formally. This certainly seems to be the position of the La Sapienza protestors. They did not merely want to register their disagreement with the Pope; they did not want him to appear at all. And in fairness, I think that there are probably more than a few advocates of such a position at many western universities and colleges.
Such a position would certainly have the advantage of candor. One would understand that when such communities speak of free speech or tolerance, their idea would not be the traditional, Lockean-derived one, but a relative, limited one in the service of certain higher principles and beliefs. The risk, of course, would be the perception that such institutions would be establishing themselves as simply secularist versions of the sectarian institutions – willing to clamp down and create speech codes, only for different ends, thereby limiting their appeal to potential students, faculty and donors.
But perhaps a point has been reached where some institutions might have sufficient consensus to establish such “free true speech” codes more formally. Obviously it would be more problematic (in the U.S.) for publicly funded universities than for private ones.
Kathy,
I don’t see how the quote you reproduce from the Pope’s speech can be reconciled with the following from the Catechism:
The protest seems to have originated in the physics department, and the following list demonstrates to me you don’t need to pay attention to the great message that comes from the Christian faith and its wisdom” to be a great physicist: Albert Einstein, Max Born, Werner Heisenberg, Richard Feynman. They were all Jewish.
I personally would stick with the Catechism’s statment about faith and reason.
David,
Personally I’m for probably more autonomy for philosophy than the Pope is. I understand the project of recalling Europe to the Christianity that, like it or not, deeply informs its culture (including the institution of universities), but I’m not sure that’s a proximate or possible solution to rampant nihilism.
A better solution might be recalling the universities (as the Pope’s speech also does) to the Greek schools that “won”–in Plato and Aristotle–the Greek disputes over whether or not truth can be sought and recognized when it is found. The Pope says that this question was answered again and again in Plato. He mentions Euthypro; Meno and Thaeatetus would be two other examples among many in Plato.
Still, openness to revelation (certainly the orientation of Einstein) is a safeguard against philosophy’s tendency to degrade into subjectivity. Continental philosophy has been wallowing in epistemology for centuries now and, accompanied by the loss of a sense of synderesis, it leads to despair among the young. This was a danger mentioned in Fides et Ratio:
“Modern philosophy clearly has the great merit of focusing attention upon man. From this starting-point, human reason with its many questions has developed further its yearning to know more and to know it ever more deeply. Complex systems of thought have thus been built, yielding results in the different fields of knowledge and fostering the development of culture and history. Anthropology, logic, the natural sciences, history, linguistics and so forth—the whole universe of knowledge has been involved in one way or another. Yet the positive results achieved must not obscure the fact that reason, in its one-sided concern to investigate human subjectivity, seems to have forgotten that men and women are always called to direct their steps towards a truth which transcends them. Sundered from that truth, individuals are at the mercy of caprice, and their state as person ends up being judged by pragmatic criteria based essentially upon experimental data, in the mistaken belief that technology must dominate all. It has happened therefore that reason, rather than voicing the human orientation towards truth, has wilted under the weight of so much knowledge and little by little has lost the capacity to lift its gaze to the heights, not daring to rise to the truth of being. Abandoning the investigation of being, modern philosophical research has concentrated instead upon human knowing. Rather than make use of the human capacity to know the truth, modern philosophy has preferred to accentuate the ways in which this capacity is limited and conditioned.
This has given rise to different forms of agnosticism and relativism which have led philosophical research to lose its way in the shifting sands of widespread scepticism. Recent times have seen the rise to prominence of various doctrines which tend to devalue even the truths which had been judged certain. A legitimate plurality of positions has yielded to an undifferentiated pluralism, based upon the assumption that all positions are equally valid, which is one of today’s most widespread symptoms of the lack of confidence in truth. Even certain conceptions of life coming from the East betray this lack of confidence, denying truth its exclusive character and assuming that truth reveals itself equally in different doctrines, even if they contradict one another. On this understanding, everything is reduced to opinion; and there is a sense of being adrift. While, on the one hand, philosophical thinking has succeeded in coming closer to the reality of human life and its forms of expression, it has also tended to pursue issues—existential, hermeneutical or linguistic—which ignore the radical question of the truth about personal existence, about being and about God. Hence we see among the men and women of our time, and not just in some philosophers, attitudes of widespread distrust of the human being’s great capacity for knowledge. With a false modesty, people rest content with partial and provisional truths, no longer seeking to ask radical questions about the meaning and ultimate foundation of human, personal and social existence. In short, the hope that philosophy might be able to provide definitive answers to these questions has dwindled.”
David: May I ask what is the difficulty you see in reconciling the Pope’s paragraph with the one you quote from the Catechism? I don’t see any contradiction, nor even any great tension.
RL Lender had written:
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When I was an undergraduate at Loyola-Chicago, there would have been no question that a major presidential candidate would be welcome to appear, regardless of his/her views on specific issues. At that time (and presumably still) Loyola had a large political science deparment, and IIRC political science was part of the core curriculum. Political engagement was viewed, correctly in my judgment, as being core to the contemporary adult experience. The Catholic bishops certainly invest a lot of resources every election cycle making this very point.
Fr. Komonchak,
As I read the passage of the Catechism I quoted above, it says that scientific investigation, since it is investigating God’s creation, cannot arrive at anything that is in conflict with faith.
Here is another quote from the Catechism:
So it’s not just scientific reasoning that investigates God’s creation. It’s moral reasoning as well. And yet the pope says (in the translation given by EWTN):
I read the Catechism to say that both scientific and moral reasoning are investigations of God’s creation and do not lead away from God. But the pope is saying that reason without Christianity will become “undone.”
And one more quote from the Catechism:
This passage, as I read it, says that reason is the prerequisite for understanding revelation. The pope, on the other hand, seems to be saying that heeding revelation (“the great message that comes from the Christian faith and the understanding it brings”) is the only thing that can save reason from becoming “undone.”
The Catechism, as I read it, says you begin with reason and move on to faith, but reason doesn’t lead you astray. The pope seems to be saying you need faith to reason correctly.
I was always taught there is no conflict between faith and reason. That is a rather meaningless teaching if, in order for reason to arrive correct conclusions, it is required that reason must have faith as its underpinning.
It seems to me the pope is saying pretty much the opposite of what the Catechism is saying.
Vatican I, from which the Catechism derives its teaching on the impossibility of conflict between faith and reason, was working with abstractions, that is, with what reason, per se, can do and with what faith, per se, can do; that is, if reason does as reason should, and faith does as faith should, there can’t be any conflict. The Pope has always been suspicious of these “per se” arguments because he thinks there is no such thing as universal reason, but only reason as the reason of this person or that person, so that you never find either reason or faith in pure form. In his “Introduction to Christianity,” he also made the argument that all reasoning of concrete human beings rests upon a certain faith, that is, certain basic commitments. He’s also convinced that reason (logos) in any person is ultimately a participation in the Logos through which God created the universe, so that the reasons (logoi) of things and the reason (logos) that uncovers them are all ultimately dependent on the Logos of God. He thinks that modern science and much modern philosophy have avoided the question of the meaning of things and that modern scientific and philosophical reason has thereby cut itself off from the deep truth of things and the deep springs of reason itself. As I read him, he is concerned with the shrinking of the great intellectual tradition of the West down to within the limits of scientific, positivistic,instrumental reason.
I don’t think that the Pope was denying, or wouild deny, that in principle there can be no conflict between faith and reason. The problem is, as Newman put it a century ago, that often enough there seems to be a conflict between faith and reason, and that it may take a long time before it becomes clear whether the problem lies with a misunderstanding of the faith or with mistaken hypotheses of reason, and that great patience is required in the meantime.
1. I think Fr. Komonchak hits it on the head.
2. Jim Pauwels writes:
“When I was an undergraduate at Loyola-Chicago, there would have been no question that a major presidential candidate would be welcome to appear, regardless of his/her views on specific issues. At that time (and presumably still) Loyola had a large political science deparment, and IIRC political science was part of the core curriculum. Political engagement was viewed, correctly in my judgment, as being core to the contemporary adult experience. The Catholic bishops certainly invest a lot of resources every election cycle making this very point.”
I think few would disagree with Loyola’s approach.
But it remains a sticky question how the engagement should take place, and where (if at all) the bright lines should be drawn. Certainly there are ways to engage even figures who hold positions which the Church considers to be intrinsically immoral – that they must submit to questions or rebuttal, for example. Ultimately the debate is part of the larger one of how the Church can legitimately participate in the larger public square. In Italy these questions are even more sensitive and freighted with explosive potential, as I think others here noted on the previous thread on la Sapienza.
The debate over the Church’s role in Nazi Germany is instructive in this regard. The degree to which Cardinal Pacelli/Pius XII is still tasked for failing to do more suggests that deep down, most of us still think there’s a role to play when the moral stakes are grave. We simply just disagree on when those stakes are in play. One is led to woner how a Catholic university in 1930′s Germany ought to have reacted if, say, Robert Lay or Alfred Rosenberg might come to campus. Should they be barred? Or questioned and challenged?
Questions worth pondering.
3. I noticed one other comment, by Mr. Nunz, that was worthwhile for discussion but seems to have been swamped in the debate over free speech: “But how effectively Benedict is reaching the Church in the modern world (if you’ll pardon the expression), except for his true believers is quite debatable.”
This is perhaps grist for its own thread – and perhaps there have been some that I have missed.
Especially since I think there are few questions pondered more extensively or worriedly than this one in the Vatican these days. And plenty of chancery offices throughout Western Europe.
I wonder, Joe, how much longer there will be such a thing as “the great intellectual tradition of the West,” if by that is meant a tradition of rational inquiry on a wide range of matters that controlled by those formed in the Western tradition. Like it or not, we’re becoming one world –at least in scientific endeavor and in markets –and maybe morals, too (international law, human rights). And there are people who have made enormous contributions from China and Japan and India. So the idea that “reason” or intellectual inquiry needs Christianity to stay on track seems to me, at the very least, to be highly susceptible to misinterpretation and misuse.
Now Christianity has a highly particular way of conceptualizing universality–due to the Greeks, initially due to the encounter of early Christians with hellenized Jews (e.g., Philo of Alexandria). To what degree are we bound to this particular way of conceptualizing universality–or universality of reason? To what degree can we conceptualize universality in a different philosophical/ cultural system?
What’s interesting, to me at least, is that the Black Pope and the White Pope seem to have different sensibilities on this question. I think this is a good thing. We’re in a new world, and we need to consider a variety of approaches.
Translation is such a compromise. It’s usually more important to be precise and accurate than to convey the rich layers of meaning underlying the text. Besides, you’ve got to maintain something of the flow of the original: you don’t want to give 10 lines where the original has only one. You’ve got to make hard decisions.
The first verse of John’s gospel has stabilized into the translation, “In the beginning was the Word.” That’s probably the best possible translation, but it leaves out quite a lot.
Poorer yet still accurate translations include:
-In the beginning was the (self-) expression
-In the beginning was reason
-Meaning always was
-Meaning was primary
-Reason ruled
Cathy;
How much longer there will be such a thing as “the great intellectual tradition of the West” depends entirely on whether people continue to inquire and think within it. It now has no existence outside of minds, and it won’t in the future.
This seems to be your definition of it “a tradition of rational inquiry on a wide range of matters that [is] controlled by those formed in the Western tradition.” I’m not sure what noun “controlled” modifies here: tradition? rational inquiry? range of matters? You’re familiar, I know, with MacIntyre’s work on tradition, and I suspect he thinks there is a western tradition, and that it’s worth preserving and extending.
You write: “Like it or not, we’re becoming one world –at least in scientific endeavor and in markets –and maybe morals, too (international law, human rights). And there are people who have made enormous contributions from China and Japan and India. So the idea that “reason” or intellectual inquiry needs Christianity to stay on track seems to me, at the very least, to be highly susceptible to misinterpretation and misuse. ”
What is interesting about your examples–science, the economy, international law, human rights–have been urged most prominently in the west; if they’re becoming international, it’s western notions and practices that are being universalized. (Think of the resistance to the idea of human rights, or at least of some of them, on the grounds that it is an imposition of western values.)
I don’t know of many ideas that are not susceptible (even highly) to misinterpretation and misuse,” so all one can do is say what one thinks as clearly and precisely as possible. That a Christian should think that reason is rootless if not rooted in God is not surprising. It is not so much that any particular track of reasoning requires reference to the Christian God, but that the full meaning of the universe will not be known without reference to the God whom Christians worship.
You write: “Now Christianity has a highly particular way of conceptualizing universality–due to the Greeks, initially due to the encounter of early Christians with hellenized Jews (e.g., Philo of Alexandria). To what degree are we bound to this particular way of conceptualizing universality–or universality of reason? To what degree can we conceptualize universality in a different philosophical/ cultural system?”
I am not sure what you mean by “conceptualizing universality”; I don’t understand the phrase. Does it mean how one defines “universality”? Where one locates universality? Are there different, culturally specific notions of “universality”? Or would everyone everywhere understand that when you say that something is universal, it means “found everywhere”? So could you clarify what you mean by the phrase?
Fr. Komonchak,
Thanks for taking the time to respond in such detail.
What is still bothering me is the implication that human beings without Christianity are somehow cut off from something essential. In addition to all those cultures Cathy mentioned that are not predominantly Christian, there are the pre-Christian cultures, and the cultures in which there was no possibility of hearing about Christianity until long after Jesus lived (as in the Americas prior to 1492, and probably still some remote places today).
Now, I know some Christians (but no Catholics any longer, I trust) believe that all the American Indians (or, if you prefer, Native Americans) before the time of Columbus went to hell when they died, because they did not acknowledge Jesus as their savior, and it simply doesn’t matter that they could not possibly have acknowledged Jesus, since there was no way they could know of his existence. What you are saying doesn’t even come close to that, but it does give me the feeling that “outside the Church there is no right reason.” I was just browsing web sites about reason and morality and came across this quote from Cicero:
That seems to me closer to what I understand the “old” teaching of the Church to be–that men and women of good will are in touch with ultimate reality and watched over by God whether they have ever heard Him, or Jesus, or any religion.
David:
I don’t think Pope Benedict is denying the possibility of reaching the truth about things by reason; he himself is urging the question of natural law. He certainly isn’t saying, not even in the text at La Sapienza, that if you don’t believe in God, the Christian God, you can’t know anything about anything.
But these are other questions than the one you raise when you write: “What is still bothering me is the implication that human beings without Christianity are somehow cut off from something essential.” Well, if Jesus Christ is the eternal Word of God made flesh, the one through whom and in whom and for whom all things are made, the one who by his death and resurrection have reconciled us to God and given us a share in the divine life, then not to know this is surely to be lacking something essential. I would say that this is true even of those who, although never having heard of God or of Jesus Christ, have been or are in the grace of this God and may enjoy life with him eternally. It is no small thing to be without the knowledge of what God has done for us in Christ. But perhaps by “essential”, you meant “necessary.”
I must say I never thought of the question of the salvation of the non-evangelized as being at stake in what the Pope said, or was going to say.
Fr. Komonchak,
I did not mean to imply in any way that the pope or the Church taught that those who never heard of Jesus could not be saved.
Basically what I was saying is that some Christians believe that the non-evangelized are damned, which strikes me (and the Catholic Church) as not the kind of thing a loving God would permit. And although the pope is not relegating the non-evangelized to hell, he is relegating them to a lesser participation in the fullness of this life than I understand from my Catholic upbringing or the Catechism. And were that true, that would strike me as unjust in somewhat the same way (though to a far lesser degree, with far less drastic consequences) as relegating them to hell would be. So I would prefer the Catechism to what the pope says (although, of course, I may be misunderstanding one or both). I am aware, of course, that the Catechism is basically a starting point and the pope’s talk is an extended discussion of one point. (I am also aware that you know a lot more about both than I do!)
Let me put it in what is basically silly terms, but I can’t think of anything better at the moment. Assuming the truth of everything the Church teaches, I would prefer to think of the non-evangelized who get to heaven and find it all out at that point as saying, joyfully, “Awesome!” rather than, regretfully, “If only I had known.”
David:
Why not both: “Awesome! I wish I had known!” If I come late to an appreciation of Bach’s music, I could wish I had known it earlier. If I fall in love with a woman, I could wish I had met her earlier. If I get to heaven and, to borrow Barth’s quip, recently evoked by Bob Imbelli, I hear the angels playing Mozart, I could say, “Wonderful! I wish I had known it on earth!”
If it is a blessing to know Jesus Christ, an unmerited one, no ground for boasting, then those who do not know Jesus Christ have not this blessing. I don’t see the difficulty of admitting this.
Fr. Komonchak,
My question would be: Why is this blessing given to so few, if it is important to the way we live our lives? This is not the way I learned it from my grade school Baltimore Catechism, but a version I found this similar question and answer on line:
How can a person fulfill his or her purpose if they have never heard of the Christian God?
I hope if there is Mozart in heaven it is limited mainly to his operas. Kathy insists angels can sing. If so, I hope it is not just choruses but great performances of Verdi, Puccini, Donizetti, and Bellini.
Joe, you’re right–I am familiar with MacIntyre–in fact, I did my dissertation on him.
In my view, the key book is not After Virtue, but Whose Justice Which Rationality. His thesis, as he describes it on p.9 “So rationality, itself, whether theoretical or practical, is a concept with a history; indeed, since there are a diversity traditions of enquiry, with histories,so it will turn out, rationalities rather than rationality, just as it will turn out that there are justices rather than justice.”
I’m not going to summarize the book, which runs 400 pages or so here. But I think he’s right on the tradition=constituted nature of both practical and theoretical rationality.
In terms of how traditions change, and grow, and die, for that matter, the last three chapters are crucial: “The Rationality of Traditions,” Tradition and Translation, and Contested Justices, Contested Rationalities.” He elaborates his notion about how a tradition can face a crisis–a question brought about by new circumstances that it is unable to answer–upon which time it either dies or enriches its resources by borrowing from or integrating other traditions.
It’s my view that the smallness of the world, the close ties that many people have with people of other faiths, the increasingly deep recognition of the integration of those faiths with other cultures, mean that many people are rethinking how they conceive of other religions. I don’t think the old answers to these questions about the status of other religions are satisfactory to an increasing number of people–so in MacIntyre’s terms, I think this may be a point of epistemological crisis here for Christianity. Solving these crises, according to MacIntyre, requires something genuinely new–not merely repeating old formulas.