Where Does Cardinal Levada Find Hope?
Yesterday,
institution, presented Cardinal Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith, with an honorary degree.
At the ceremony Cardinal Levada gave our annual Margaret F. Grace
lecture sponsored by the Cardinal Suenens Center on the theme: “Where Do I Find
Hope?” (The text of the address should
be available soon in Origins.)
I cannot possibly do justice to the entire talk here, but
one theme was particularly striking.
Cardinal Levada insisted on the importance of rightly understanding the
relation between reason and faith as a necessary step to “building bridges of
dialogue” across religious traditions and between those who accept the
existence of God and those who do not.
Interestingly, Cardinal Levada cited an opinion piece in the International Herald Tribune by Mark C.
Taylor, the scholar of religion at
point.
writes: “Religious conflict will be less a matter of struggles between belief
and unbelief than of clashes between believers who make room for doubt and
those who do not. The warning signs are
clear: Unless we establish a genuine dialogue within and among all kinds of
belief, ranging from religious fundamentalism to secular dogmatism, the
conflicts of the future will probably be even more deadly.” (A recent Wall
Street Journal piece that conveys the stridency of secular dogmatism, “As Religious Strife Grows,
This might not seem like the ideal sentiment to appeal to in
a talk on the theme of hope, but Cardinal Levada was clear in suggesting that
an appropriate understanding of faith and reason leaves room for a rational
exploration of faith and doubt. The fact
that, unlike secular dogmatism, the Catholic Church understands reason to be
compatible with faith and doubt, the Cardinal seemed to say, is precisely why
the Church can be an agent of hope in the midst of religious conflict.
For an interview with Cardinal Levada, see the April 30,
2007 issue of America magazine.
“For years, I have begun my classes by telling students that if they are not more confused and uncertain at the end of the course than they were at the beginning, I will have failed.”
Thus Professor Taylor. Many students will understand this statement as expressing an intent to undermine their beliefs–religious or nonreligious–and to replace them with uncertainties rather than to foster examination of the grounds on which they believe what they believe.
Yes, atheists can be just as dogmatic as believers. However, dogmatic rigidity has a much greater affect on organized religion as the empty churches and cathedrals in europe attest.
Mark Taylor claims that “the task of thinking and teaching, especially in an age of emergent fundamentalisms, is to cultivate a faith in doubt that calls into question every certainty.”
I’m sufficiently skeptical to wonder if this kind of “faith in doubt” is as thoroughgoing as it may sound. Conventional wisdom no doubt takes more than a few solid hits in college classrooms but the certainties of campus-approved thinkers will almost always fill the vacuum.
The article by Brad Gregory in the post of a few days ago is an interesting contrast to Taylor’s view on religion on campus.
I just read the America article on line -an interview just prior to the John Caroll U address.
Unfortunately, it offers little more than what’s in the post un hope, so we’ll have to wait for the full text. Instead it ranges over the Sobrino affair, Levada abnd Benedct (they meet weekly and talk for 30-45 minutes, in Italian in the style of the curis) , the Catholic Catechism and Compendium and a brief note that an Academy of Theologians could provide a review of theologians works.
Notewoethy is he is now reading “The God Delusion” and has lots poistive to say about John Noonan and doctrinal development.
“a faith in doubt that calls into question every certainty”
I found this language puzzling. Should there be a comma after “faith”, i.e., does he mean “in the face of a doubt that etc.”? Otherwise it seems to me a very odd conception.
Without carrying water for Taylor, Levada, or anyone else, let me make a few comments on “faith and reason” and on teaching.
First, re faith and reason:
a. The term ‘reason’ has no generally accepted univocal meaning. Early Habermas, for example, usefully distinguishes instrumental reason ( finding means appropriate to a chosen end), hermeneutical reason ( figuring out how the component parts of a foreign culture, legal system, etc. fit together), and emancipatory reason ( figuring out how to reform or overthrow oppressive structures, regimes, ways of thinking, etc.)
Other thinkers, e.g. Rawls, distinguish between the reasonable and the rational. Thus, roughly speaking, Rawls seeks a reasonable way fairly to accommodate in one society multiple groups of people who hold competing comprehensive rational doctrines about what makes for a good society.
And Aristotle effectively uses this distinction when he advises that in our enquires we should only seek the degree of clarity and precision that is appropriate to the subject matter we are considering. For, example, the study of ethics cannot reasonably be expected to yield the same clarity and precision as the study of logic can.
So, when we talk about the fit between faith and reason, just what do we mean? I think I have some sort of answer, but the remarks of others about this matter sound too comfortable to me.
b. re faith: Let me talk here in terms of belief. There’s a key differrence between ” believing in” someone (God, the the Scriptures, etc,) and “believing that” believing some specific statement. I can well believe, as I do, that Jesus is really prresent in the Eucharist without believing that there is just one privileged statement that captures the “complete” meaning of His presence there. I, for one, do not think that it makes sense today to talk about transubstantiation.
Second, re teaching: I have never taught theology. Only philosophy. But does not good teaching of such matters not have to go beyond simply informing students what some doctrine, e.g., the Incarnation, means in Catholicism? Would it not be intellectually deficient to present this doctrine as one that no one could in good conscience either doubt or deny? Taylor’s doubt sounds too Cartesian, and thus “hyperbolic,” to me. But certainly at the college level, students should be capable of and expected to consider the meaning and challenge of the philosophical or theological positions they are asked to study.
I do not mean to suggest that students be encouraged to suspend their Catholic faith when they study Catholic theology until they arrive at a fully justified conviction (whatever that would look like) that all conceivable challengees have been successfully met. If that’s what Taylor wants, then he’s simply another, though supposedly “post-modern,” child of the Enlightenment. But Catholics ought to be helped to see why it is that some good and intelligent people do not accept our beliefs.
P.S. I think that what I’ve said fits well with Brad Gregory comments that were recently posted.