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Is The West Still In Denial?
Cardinal Ratzinger in 2001 by Manfredo Ferrari.
Yes it is, says Samuel Gregg in a Catholic World Report retrospective on the address given nearly ten years ago by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — now, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI — on faith and reason. I have had recourse many times to quote this address here at Ricochet, primarily in response to threads on Islam, and particularly with regards to the section Benedict devoted to the lack of reason as part of Islam’s understanding of God. Without reason, the God would be nothing but pure will, commanding his followers to make choices and take actions against reason. But Gregg focuses less on Islam than on the loss of reason in the West, which was the bulk of the Pope’s address. Following his explanation of this loss, he writes:
These developments have left much of Christianity spectacularly ill-equipped to even begin grappling with Islamic jihadism, let alone making meaningful contributions to combatting this phenomena. One does not need to look hard within the Christian world — including the Catholic Church — to find those who endlessly repeat the “religion of peace” mantra, or who equate reasoned, carefully-worded, and historically-informed critique of various Muslim tenets and customs with “Islamophobia.” To this degree, they echo the same banalities of those Western political leaders who, immediately after an attack by Islamic terrorists, immediately assert that it has nothing to do with Islam. Unfortunately for them — and the rest of us — those Muslims who immolate themselves while carrying out suicide-bombings clearly believe their actions do owe much to their religious faith.
As we see the mess that is Europe today, overrun by Muslim migrants and refugees and afraid to recognize their Christian roots, Gregg offers this warning:
([T]he danger for Christianity at present is surely less one of fundamentalism but rather of sentimentalism: that which characterizes far too many contributions to public discourse in the West today—including those made by more than a few Christians—and which lies helpless and befuddled in the face of Islamist terrorism.
This is the stupor from which a gentle man, who has always tempered intellectual rigor and moral courage with genuine humility, tried to awaken Christians and the West at Regensburg. Ten years later, it seems, many remain fast asleep.
Gregg’s essay and Ratzinger’s address are both well worth your time today; they’ll likely still be ten years from now.
Published in General
Great speech, great response from Gregg. Of course, the discussion about the abandonment of reason applies to the West as a whole. Dennis Prager had a piece in NRO today that (probably unintentionally) brushed some of the same issues. Reason and faith are inextricably linked.
There is a lot to absorb in these articles, and worth taking the time to read. I think part of it is fear. Muslims believe in their faith and do not compromise that belief. The radical side of it does as well, but take to the extreme their doctrine, leaving no room for any other faiths or even a discussion.
Christians ( I cannot speak for Jews, but I suspect they feel the same) have been berated into a corner of political correctness, and there is an element of fear in that corner. If the Christian world stood its ground (like the centuries past when forced to confront Muslim aggression) and cast fear aside, maybe things would be different.
There can be a bridge offered, like the last 3 popes have offered, but the truth must be spoken without fear. Our faith depends on it.
I recall reading the Pope’s address early in college, 2008, and his remarks were instrumental to me discovering that the Christian faith was not only compatible with reason, but was in fact the only source of true reason.
I had such hope while in my undergraduate studies that the West was waking up to the truth, and would quickly rediscover it’s Christian (if not explicitly Catholic) roots, and we’d see a spiritual revival across the West reaffirming the integrated nature of faith and reason.
Sadly none of that happened, and we slip only deeper into ignorance and our own dissolution.
I’ll need a longer hope.
Good for you – there is no one who writes more clearly on the Christian faith than Joseph Ratzinger.
Amen to that.
Prager’s piece was very good. Our increasingly godless and secular society continually looks to government for answers but as he says:
Prager agrees that we remain asleep:
Everything he says about Regensburg strikes me as correct — except that it has anything to say about political correctness and sentimentalism.
One of the benefits of a classical Catholic education is that it allows you to recognize nonsense when you hear it. You are also able to defend the faith using reason rather than your fists.
Todays education, including alas many so called Catholic schools has become screaming out hate speech, micro aggression and seeking out a safe space that contains a blanket and binky has now been substituted for reasoned thinking.
Those who believe in everything really believe in nothing and are ill equipped to meet Jihad whether it is with reason, or whether it is with their fists when the Jihadist cannot be swayed with reason.
Why is it so very attractive to take the easy road? Ok, stupid question. It’s attractive because it’s lazy. The work of rigorous thought and reasoned argument is not recognized, not rewarded and not elevated so it’s even less attractive to those who might be inclined to pursue it.
An example. My daughter attends a classical Christian school. It is intentionally ecumenical, but majority Roman Catholic, which makes sense when you consider who might have affinity for classical education. Where focused on Scripture, history, literature and philosophy, students are encouraged to practice rigor. One departure baffles me. In the 9th grade year when they study doctrine rather than scripture, they split into Protestant and Roman Catholic classes. It has become apparent that the protestant doctrine class is far more rigorous, exploring history and doctrine developed over 2000 years along diverent paths, and culminating in research of each student’s own family’s faith tradition. The Roman Catholic class is far less ambitious; that is what baffles. As a Protestant, I know the depths that could be plumbed there. From the outside, it almost appears a defensive posture and not a rationally affirmative one. One can’t argue a defense without knowing the context of the opposition. Don’t fear knowledge!
Getting that first post down to 250 words took effort! Here’s some more.
Vishal Mangalwadi is pretty hard on the deficits of the evangelical movement. See http://www.revelationmovement.com. One of his points is that Truth and knowledge have been separated in our culture and this is reinforced when academics operate in silos. Science and philosophy and theology etc should have nothing to fear from the other disciplines if they dare seek truth rather than self referential affirmation. This is pretty apparent in evangelicalism and has driven actual reformed theology underground to some extent. I fear the same influence dumbs down Roman Catholic teaching in addition to the sentimentalism Gregg is describing.
It can’t happen. The whole kata holos church must stand solidly for the hardest of Truth.
I may be missing the nuances, but I think that I disagree with the premise of this post about the existence of a harmony between the Christian faith and reason. It seems to me that the core of Christianity is the acceptance of several beliefs that are not reasonable:
I believe these things, but they still strike me as unreasonable, in the sense that I have never directly witnessed any similar events.
Both Paul and the author of Hebrews used reason to argue, from the Hebrew Scriptures, that Jesus is the promised Messiah. But that argument presupposed the truth of the Hebrew Scriptures.
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Paul also wrote, in 1 Corinthians 1:
I do not say that faith is completely contrary to reason. But it seems to me that the central truths of the Christian faith are outside the province of reason.
If you would like to delve into the relationship between faith and reason spend some time with Fides et Ratio, the encyclical letter written by Pope John Paul II on the relationship between faith and reason.
Beware of the trap Samuel Gregg writes about:
I saw that retrospective too Scott, and had thought about posting it here. I’ve just been too busy for stuff like this, and plus baseball season has started up and there are priorities. ;)
Pope Francis, God bless him though, has shifted direction from Pope BXVI and is sending the wrong signals. You might want to read William Kilpatrick’s article in Crises, “The Problem with Multicultural Footwashing.”
I disagree with Trump on most things, but he is correct in shutting down Islamic immigration.
All reason rests on foundational truths. It’s not isolated. There is no reason that bodies have gravitational attraction, it just is, and from there you build other principles through reason. Christ’s resurrection is a foundational truth. You use reason to build on it. Reason is not something in isolation. It works within a box of assumptions.
AP, it’s not simple harmony. Reason and faith are inseparable. God is Reason (cf. John 1). The degree to which humans are able to use reason is an index of faith in the general sense.
Recall it was the Roman Centurion who had a faith greater than all Israel, simply because he believed that when he issued commands, they would be obeyed, as he obeyed commands given to him. This faith is more accurately called trust.
Trust is integral to reason, for without it we would be bound to ignorance, a skeptic to all things.
Yes, faith may be, in part, outside of or greater than reason. But reason, apart from Truth, is worthless. Truth is what makes reason a good to be desired. And finally, reason is edifying to those who contemplate Truth.
And 3 of us posted similar thoughts within 21 seconds!
I’ll have to wait until later for that one – reading that looks like it needs to be accompanied by a stiff drink or two.
Have fun with the baseball – I was happy to see my Astros beat the Yankees on opening day.
This strikes me as an unreasonable standard of reasonableness. I’ve never directly witnessed a moon landing, a living dinosaur, or the birth of a child, but I don’t think these events are unreasonable merely because I’ve never been in the right place and time to directly witness them.
I was happy to see that too. I was thrilled that my Orioles won their first game in the bottom of the ninth. :)
I would suggest Father FC Copleston’s S.J. A History of Philosophy. Originally written for seminarians and consists of about 11 volumes. It might be too advanced for most high school students. Although the first four volumes if outlined by a good teacher could be a good start for juniors or seniors in high school.
As far as faith and reason are concerned about science I would suggest this:
Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître 17 July 1894 – 20 June 1966) was a Belgian priest, astronomer and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Leuven. He proposed the theory of the expansion of the universe, widely misattributed to Edwin Hubble. He was the first to derive what is now known as Hubble’s law and made the first estimation of what is now called the Hubble constant, which he published in 1927, two years before Hubble’s article. Lemaître also proposed what became known as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe, which he called his “hypothesis of the primeval atom” or the “Cosmic Egg”.
There is also the Vatican’s partnership with the University of Arizona.
I read that too, Manny. Highly recommend it. In fact, I have so many tabs up with articles from Crises I thought about starting a Catholic reading thread, but I’m too busy reading. ;-)
On faith and reason, I like Bishop Barron’s short reflection:
While we’re handing out reading assignments, don’t forget Alasdair Macintyre’s God, philosophy, universities: A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition. On similar ground: https://vimeo.com/8361474