Faith and Reason

Always the debate right? One of my latest pasttimes when I want to do something other than study is browse through news stories on my Yahoo home page. (By the way, this is an especially dangerous pasttime now that I'm taking notes on my computer and UW has wireless internet everywhere!) One of the RSS feeds on my page links to stories on the site Catholic World News and it was something on there that led me to want to comment.

Pope Benedict XVI was recently asked to speak at a Roman University called La Sapienza, which means "wisdom". The university, according to the Holy Father's speech, was actually founded by Pope Boniface VIII in 1303. However, as soon as it was announced that he was coming, a small, but vocal, group of faculty and students began to protest his coming, and protest, and protest, and protest. Finally, the Pope was forced to cancel his visit to prevent demonstrations. (If you'd like, here is the speech he would have given.)

What was the cause of this unrest? Comments made in 1990 by then Cardinal Ratzinger regarding the Church's trial of Galileo, in which he claimed the Church was "rational and just" in acting as they did, taking into account those times. However, in the same speech he stressed that the Church was not hostile to science and that Galileo continued his research with the Church's support. Pope John Paul II also publicly acknowledged the Church's fault in bringing him to trial.

What this comes down to is not necessarily your personal beliefs on whether the Church was right or not 400 years ago in acting as it did against Galileo. What is most surprising to me, is that a university, as an institution of higher learning, should be one that is open to all ideas so that we are able to rationally decide on what we believe. Yet, it seems that sometimes those who cry "free speech" (which I wholeheartedly endorse) are the fastest to strike against allowing it in those that they don't agree with, and that to me is so saddening. I think that nowhere is this more apparent than in the science and faith debate.

Recently, a friend of mine on Facebook posted a link to an article, that was about the finding of a unique dinosaur fossil. What she was pointing out, however, was the comments section. It had immediately turned into a debate between a creationist telling everyone they were unintelligent for not believing the Bible, and evolutionist telling him he was unintelligent because he believed the Bible...believe me, it was not a dialogue. As an undergrad science major who had to sit through professor telling us why religion was a hoax, I know the difficulty that exists in reconciling faith and reason today. While there are many great philosophers and Christian and Catholic professors in all fields, I wanted to ask that we just take a second to pray for our society, that attempts at dialogue and learning may not meet the closed door that Pope Benedict just did and that we all may grow as a result.

To end this (long...) post, here's one of my favorite quotes from Pope John Paul II:
"In my reading and in my studies I always tried to achieve a harmony between faith, reason and the heart. These are not separate areas, but are profoundly interconnected, each giving life to the other. This coming together of faith, reason and the heart is strongly influenced by our sense of wonder at the miracle of a human person - at man's likeness to the Triune God, at the immensely profound bond between love and truth, at the mystery of mutual self-giving and the life that it generates, at our reflections on the succession of human generations."