A Reason Open to God

Preface

Preface The idea for this book was born out of a challenge laid before me by the president of the Catholic University of America in January 2011—namely, he asked me to respond publicly, together with five of my colleagues, to the question “What does faith have to do with the intellectual life?” For me this question was not a dry, abstract one, but a vital and existential one. I have taught engineering at the Catholic University of America since 1998, and President John Garvey’s question touched the heart of the dramatic dialogue between faith and reason lived by me and by anyone engaged in university teaching and scholarship. Perhaps it will seem obvious to the reader that the question of relationship between faith and reason can and should be asked in a Catholic university. But is not the same question in play at all universities, and can it be asked at all universities—religiously affiliated or not? I believe that it can and must be. It is a crucial and dramatic one, and its challenge is urgent. In the words of Pope Benedict XVI, “A purely positivistic culture that tried to drive the question concerning God into the subjective realm, as being unscientific, would be the capitulation of reason, the renunciation of its highest possibilities , and hence a disaster for humanity, with very grave consequences .” This book gathers various speeches, homilies, and letters that Pope Benedict XVI has addressed to university audiences responding to today’s situation. In addition to university addresses, I have included several key addresses on education and culture, vii viii Preface since these themes are at the heart of the mission of a university and possess a value for society as a whole. As the reader will see, the pope’s contribution presents two thousand years of lived tradition with a striking newness that is able to respond to our contemporary problems. It is my hope that, once these texts have been studied, the reader will see that the contribution made by Pope Benedict XVI to this crucial and dramatic question will have an enduring historical impact. The speeches, homilies, and letters contained herein are taken from the official English texts prepared by the Libreria Editrice Vaticana and have been slightly edited, with permission, to aid the reader. In particular, greetings and concluding blessings in the spoken texts have been omitted, American English spellings have been adopted, and citations, excluding biblical references, have been moved to footnotes. For each text I include a source note below the title of the address that states the audience to whom the address was given and its location if some place other than the Vatican. While Pope Benedict XVI never set out to produce a unified body of work as he addressed the various groups, certain key themes do emerge around which I have attempted to group the texts, although there is some overlap of several themes in many of the texts. The biblical citations are taken from The New American Bible (Washington, D.C.: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2002). J. Steven Brown ...