POPE BENEDICT XVI AND THE CHURCH’S TEACHING ON FAITH AND REASON

Fr Paul Kelly

My remit is to talk about faith and reason, which is a favourite theme of Pope Benedict and which was very much there in his recent visit. I shall quote from the Pope’s address in Westminster Hall and try to link this with the theme of faith and reason in Catholic tradition, refrerring also to Pope John Paul II’s encyclical on faith and reason (Fides et Ratio) and the teaching of the First Vatican Council in 1870 on faith and reason. In recent months there has been a lot of publicity about MPs expenses. The upshot was that, whereas a number of MPs did not actually break the law, they nevertheless returned money they had claimed. There was a general feeling that what was not against the law was still wrong. There has been a similar situation with the banks. While it may not have been against the law for banks to behave stupidly and selfishly, what they did was seen to be wrong. This shows that the law of the land is not enough to regulate social behaviour. We need some kind of objective moral norms or rules to which all can adhere. As Pope Benedict himself said in Westminster Hall concerning the banking crisis: “There is widespread agreement that the lack of a solid ethcal foundation for economic activity has contributed to the grace difficulties now being experienced by millions of people throughout the world.” Whereas laws are based on a social consensus, ethical norms need a firmer basis because the social consensus changes. (Ultimately of course laws must take account of ethical norms.) Religion is needed, not to supply the moral norms, but to help in the process. That really is Pope Benedict’s point and is an aspect of the Church’s teaching on faith and reason. An example of this happening was the abolition of the slave trade by the British Parliament in 1807, which was preceded by a discussion that went on in Parliament for over twenty years of the moral principles involved and which had the effect of raising the level of moral consciousness of the issue. Some people, like William Wilberforce, were motivated by religious faith. Others like William Pitt or Henry Dundas were not strongly religious and were probably motivated more 1 by personal connections. Thus Pitt was a friend of Wilberforce and Henry Dundas had nailed his colours to Pitt’s mast and went drinking with him. When Pope Benedict says that society needs religion to establish its moral foundations, he does not mean that somehow the whole message of the Christian Gospel has to be taken on board by non-Catholics and secularists or that it must prevail in civil society. It has always been the teaching of the Church that questions of right and wrong are not necessarily based on Scripture and Revelation, but simply on the faculty of reason and that objective moral norms are accessible to reason. Pope Benedict puts it this way: “The Catholic tradition maintains that the objective norms governing right action are accessible to reason, prescinding from the content of revelation.” This means that people of different beliefs can sit down and reason together – that’s all the Pope is asking for – he simply suggests that religion has something to say about morality and society which can be valuable for everybody. Pope John Paul II’s encyclical, Fides et Ratio, lays out for modern thinkers the Church’s view on the relationship between faith and reason and is itself a reaching out to the secular world. Pope Benedict has also recenly appointed Archbishop Salvatore Fisichella to head a department in the Church whose main business is to establish a dialogue with modern secularism. I might add the Pope Benedict and his predecessor have been accumstomed to dialogue with non-believers. John Paul was a “card-carrying” philosopher, much influenced by the ideas of the Jewish philosopher, Edmund Husserl. Pope Benedict has co-authored a book with Jurgen Habermas, a left-leaning and non- believing philosopher and sociologist. The Church has already profoundly influenced the development of civil society in all kinds of ways. I will choose just one little known example that is very apt in view of the setting in Westminster Hall. The Order of Preachers (Dominicans) was founded by St Dominic in the early 13th century. Subsequently, the order developed as an extremely effective international organisation with a system of chapters and general chapters and so forth. That organsational development influenced the subsequent development of representative institutions in Western Europe. The origins of our democracy lie somewhere in there. At the same time, reason can influence faith – as the Pope says this is a two- way thing. Reason can guard against religious fundamentalism. Pope Benedict says: “Distortions of religion arise when insufficient attention is given to the purifying and structuring role of reason within religion.” Events in the secular world can also have an influence on the Church. One good example of that must be modern discoveries and senstivity about the issue of child abuse. In that instance the Church has needed civil secular society to help clean up its act. Pope Benedict acknowledged as much on his recent visit to Portugal. At the same time, Pope Benedict also suggested that the Church, having learnt many 2 lessons in this regard, is in a position to help the state in the matter of child protection. Ethical norms have not always been fashionable outside of religious circles. What we see as atheistical secularism today in the West (which I would say is an aberration from true secularism) is a combination of atheism or agnosticism and the utilitarian philosphy of the nineteenth century - “the greatest happiness of the greatest number” – of which the main exponents were Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. In the last century, Richard Mervyn Hare (1919-2003), Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford, argued that norms really are relative – it depends on what you want. Hare was influenced by the logical postivism of A.J. Ayer, another Oxford philospher, who would argue that the only objective truths are facts; and values (on which moral norms are based) are merely relative. Where Pope Benedict refers to the “dictatorship of relativism”, he means a situation in which people do not recognise any objective moral norms other than “if you are comfortable with it, do it” and where further discussion is thereby ruled out. This indeed is the main problem with relativism – it limits the discussion – it limits the use of reason. As such it is also a form of laziness. This also affects Catholics. I wonder how many people have even read Pope John Paul’s encyclical on faith and reason or have even heard of this aspect of the Church’s teaching. And relativism means also that there is no such thing as objective truth. One of the aims of Pope John Paul’s encyclical, Fides et Ratio, is to affirm the existence of objective truth accessible to reason alone. As Pope Benedict points out, ultimately relativism will lead to the disintegration of society because there is no common basis for anything. This will lead to dictatorship of some kind. I think that the 17th century philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, who was almost certainly an atheist and possibly a relativist, reached that conclusion when he argued that the only hope for civil society was the construction of monstrous dictatorial power which would be strong enough to control and protect everybody and which he called the Great Leviathan. Pope Benedict commented on 20th century totalitarian ideologies as things which happen when we ignore the role of reason. He says: “This is why I would suggest that the world of reason and thre world of faith – the world of secular rationality and the world of religious belief – need one another and should not be afraid to enter into a profound and ongoing dialogue for the good of our civilization.” Needless to say, in Catholic social teaching, there has always been an insistence on objective moral norms; but this insistence is not only in Catholic teaching or the teaching of other religions. For example, Philippa Foot (1920- 2010), another Oxford philosopher argued against moral relativism and for the objectivity of moral norms. Now Philippa Foot was not a religious believer but had, for example, very pertinent things to say about the wrongness of abortion. Clearly there can and must be a dialogue between religion and secularism where the common ground is reason. We do not agree with many of the religious 3 beliefs of Bhuddists or Hndus or Muslims or the non-religious beliefs of humanists; but we can all reason together. One area where this needs to happen is abortion. In big moral issues, people occupy entrenched positions on both sides. What needs to happen is some kind of discussion based purely on reason and logic, not on religious or indeed athiestical beliefs.And where there are philosphers like Philippa Foot around, we could have that dialogue. Sadly, in the case of abortion, there seems to have been little dialogue on the basis of reason alone – or maybe religious believers have been increasingly excluded from the debate. One cannot fail to notice that both politicans and political commentators are more interested in sound bites rather than the investigation of substantial ideas. As a church we should not fall into the same trap but persist in reasoned argument. The intellectual level of moral debate is not high. One suspects also that there is something lacking in the education of those in public life. A dialogue is also needed in the case of euthanasia. You do not need to be a religious believer to show that euthanasia has a questionable history – just think of Nazi Germany - and has potentially dangerously anti-social consequences. You do not need to be a religious believer to show that the morality of “I should be able to do what I like with my own life” is based on a myth – the myth of an individual disconnected from the rest of society. (We owe a lot to the philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, in exposing this myth) In the dialogue with secularism, the Church does not seek to impose its faith on the rest of society – there has been a lot of misunderstanding about that. All that the Church seeks to do is contribute to the dialogue. And the Church has a right to do that. But there are those who would deny that any dialogue should take place. The Church teaches that there is an essential unity between faith and reason and this teaching is definitively set out in the decrees of the First Vatican Council, though it is a teaching which has been there implicitly from the beginning. Historically, the Church has steered a middle course between fideism (the view that divine revelation is the only source of knowledge and certitude) and rationalism (the view that everything is explicable and can be brought within a single system of knowledge). In 1835 the Roman Magisterium condemned the fideist views of Louis Eugene Bautain and in 1855 those of Augustin Bonnetty. In 1866 Rome condemned the Idealist philosopher, Jakob Frohschammer, specifically for attempting to bring within the scope of natural reason the supernatural mysteries of faith, and for asserting the absolute independence of philosophy from the authority of the Church. 1 And in 1870 the First Vatican Council declared: “And the perpetual agreement of this Catholic Church has held and holds that there is a twofold order of knowledge, distinct not only in its origin, but also in its object. Concerning the source, we know at one level

4 by natural reason, and at the other level by divine faith. Concerning the object, besides those things to which natural reason can attain, there are proposed for our belief mysteries hidden in God which, unless they are divinely revealed, are incapable of being known” (Hoc quoque perpetuus Ecclesiae catholicae consensus tenuit et tenet, duplicem esse ordinem cognitionis non solum principio, sed obiecto etiam distinctum principio quidem, quia in altero naturali ratione, in altero fide cognoscimus obiecto autem quia prater ea, ad quae naturalis ration pertingere potest, credenda nobis proponuntur mysteria in Deo abscondita, quae, nisi revalatur divinitus, innotescere non possunt).” It is part of our understanding of faith that there can be no discrepancy between faith and reason; for human reason itself comes from God and is therefore under the influence of grace, and God cannot contradict himself: : “Even though faith is above reason, there can never be any real disagreement between faith and reason, since it is the same God who reveals the mysteries and infuses faith, and who has endowed the human mind with the light of reason. Moreover, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth contradict truth” (Verum etsi fides supra rationem, nulla tamen umquam inter fidem et rationem vera dissensio esse potest: cum idem Deus, qui mysteria revelat et fidem infundit, animo humanis rationis lumen indiderit. Deus autem negare se ipsum non possit, nec verum vero umquam contradicere).” 2

Pope John Paul II notes in Fides et Ratio: “The teaching contained in this document strongly and positively marked the philosophical research of many believers and remains today a standard reference-point for correct and coherent Christian thinking in this regard.”

This means that what we believe can never be contrary to reason – the tenets of faith must always be reasonable. It is the task of theology to demonstrate the reasonableness and faith and disover more meaning in what we believe. For believers, mere blind faith is not enough – indeed blind faith is dangerous and simply leads to fundamentalism – condemned by the Church in the early 19th century. As believers, we need to understand what we believe and use our faculty of reason accordingly. The context of the First Vatican Council’s teaching was the scientific discoveries of the Enlightenment and the nineteenth century especially Darwin’s account of evolution. (Later the Second Vatican Council would extend the discussion of faith and reason to discuss the relationship between the Chruch and the world as sell as faith itself the decrees on Revelation and

5 Scripture.) The First Vatican Council tried to steer a middle course between rationalism and religious fundamentalism. So, for example, we believe in God’s creation of the universe and of human beings, and therefore we need to explain what that means in the context of biology and physics. The dialogue between faith and reason also includes a necessary dialogue between theology and science and theologians must grasp the ideas of quantum physics, the Big Bang and the multiverse to construct a reasonable theology of creation. At the same time, scientists also need to listen to theologians and religious thinkers. This does not always happen. It is quite obvious to a religiously literate person that Stephen Hawking has not grasped what believers understand by God when he talks about the “mind of God”. (Maybe he is ferring to a kind of projection of his own mind.) Nor does Professor Dawkins show any signs of listening to what religious believers understand by the word ‘faith’. Actually what we can call “religious illiteracy” is now evident in public life and the media. I might add that the conection between faith and reason means also that Scripture scholars must also use science and literary criticism to explain Scripture. This is one area where it has proved so dangerous to adopt a fundamentalist approach. All this is made even clearer by a recent document of Pope Benedict on Scripture, Verbum Domini, which is the most important thing the Church had produced on Scripture since the Second Vatican Council. At the same time, there is also an essential separation between faith and reason. We do not need Scripture and the data of faith to work out that it is wrong to murder people. The Church would also say that that we do not need the data of faith to show us that there is a God. It is this very separation between faith and reason that enables us to dialogue with those who do not believe. If only our modern secular society would grasp that point! Indeed secularism itself, properly understood, comes right out of the Christian tradition and the distinction between faith and reason. If we have a secular society, it is thanks to Christianity and the development of the Church. Because of the distinction between faith and reason, the Church does not advocate a theocracy – there is a healthy separation between Church and State which has been worked out over centuries after a number of failed experiments with theocracy (the medieval Papacy, the English Commonwealth in the mid 17th century) and maybe was finally resolved for Catholic Christians by the loss of the Papal States in 1870. Secularism does not mean absence of religion but a distinction between what belongs to faith and what belongs to reason and civil society is governed by reason. This is the kind of secularism we need and especially now in the countries of the Middle East where there is an unmistakeable drift towards Islamic theocracies that are hostile to Christian faith. That ssecularism that helps Christians and Muslims to live together is still there in Syria (the best country in the Middle East for Christians) but has been unfortunately lost in Iraq as a result of the recent invasion by Western forces. 6 The historical context of the balance between faith and reason goes back to the earliest days of the Church and begins when Christianity encountered the culture of the Greek and Roman world in the Mediterranan basin. The predominant philosophy in that world was that of the ancient Greeks – Plato and Aristotle, but mainly Plato and the later refinements of the Stoics, Epicureans and Neoplatonists. When Christian believers wanted to expound the Christian faith to the ancient world, they used Greek philosophy. St Justin, for example, a pagan philosopher of thd early 2nd century who became a Christian, believed that God was being revealed in the philosophy of Plato as well as in Scripture. It helped that Plato believed in God and eternal truths and values which accorded well with Christian faith. Subsequent Christian thinkers were also heavily influenced by the ideas of Palto and the Platonists. St Augustne, for example, in the late 4th century, became a Christian “after reading the works of the Platonists” – mostly like the ideas of the pagan philosopher, Plotinus in a Latin translation by Gaius Marius Victorinus. The Bishop of Milan who baptized Augustine was St Ambrose and in St Ambrose’s sermon on the death of a friend we see the clear influence of the pagan philospher, Epicurus. The early Church Fathers were always aware of a distinction between philosophy and theology, though when they wrote philosophy or theology the two were all mixed in together. As late as the 11th century, St Anselm wrote one of the most famous philosphical treatises in the fom of a prayer. Until about the 12th century, the predominant philosphical influence on Christian theology was Platonism. But there was a difficulty with it. Though Platonist ideas seemed friendly to Christian faith, there was no room for the idea of Resurrection. The Platonists taught that the body was the tomb of the soul and the destiny of the soul was to escape the shackles of the body to eternal light. That is not the message of the Gospel which is all about the Resurrection of the body. We still have relics of these Platonist ideas floating about in our religious consciousness. Of course, as Wittgenstein would point out, this is not an idea but a picture or an attempt to visualise that which cannot be seen. In the 13th century, the Dominican, St Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest philosophers of all time, disovered the thought of Aristotle as a result of the work of Arab Muslim philosophers. St Thomas worked from translations made from Greek to Arabic to Latin. It was always throught that Aristotle was a bit of an atheist and too much concerned with this world. St Thomas nevertheless integrated Aristotelian philosophy into his theology and has been a profound influence in Catholic theology ever since. In working out this synthesis, St Thomas also worked out the synthesis between faith and reason that we have today and also established the clear distinction between faith and reason – so that, for example, one could study philosophy as a separate subject rather than as a branch of theology. Whatever Aristotle thought about religion, his ideas could be used by the theologian: for example, the unity of soul and body taught 7 by Aristotle accomodated much better the Christian doctrine of the Resurrection. These days the Church is global and Christian thinkers can use other phiosophies apart from those of Plato and Atistotle. In Fides et Ratio, Pope John Paul II draws attention to thisd point. He says: “In India particularly, it is the duty of Christians now to draw from this rich heritage the elements compatible with their faith, in order to enrich Christian thought.” The Pope stresses that the new inculturation must be consistent with the inclultration that has already happened with Graeco-Roman thought. He goes on: “hat has been said of India is no less true for the heritage of the great cultures of China, Japan and the other countries of Asia, as also for the riches of the traditional cultures of Africa, which are for the most part orally transmitted.” We live in exciting times!

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