Church in the World

Pope criticises godless philosophy

Rome

POPE BENEDICT has underlined the necessity of Catholic universities at a time when ?important currents of modern philosophy? refuse to consider the element of transcendence, or God, as a serious criterion in the search for knowledge. At a ceremony to inaugurate the new academic year of Italy?s Catholic University of the Sacred Heart last Sunday the Pope said such faith-inspired institutions kept alive the ?enthusiastic adventure? of combining ?quality research and instruction? with ?fidelity to the Gospel and the Magisterium of the Church?.

The Pope, who spent 25 years as a theology professor in Germany, said the rejection of transcendental elements in scientific research reduced knowledge to a single criterion that which is ?demonstrable by experiment?. ?Fundamental human questions such as how to live and how to die therefore appear to be excluded from the realm of reason and are left in the subjective sphere,? he said. ?Consequently, the original question that gave rise to universities ? the question of the true and the good ? disappears, only to be substituted by the question of what is provable.?

The speech was carefully followed by Italy?s intellectual elite and was judged one of the more characteristic speeches of the seven-month pontificate. One veteran Vatican writer compared it to then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger?s homily at the Mass to open April?s Conclave in which he excoriated the so-called ?dictatorship of relativism?.

The venue of Italy?s Catholic University was also noted. With more than 42,000 students enrolled at its campuses throughout the country (in Rome, Milan, Brescia, Piacenza-Cremona, and Campobasso), the ?Cattolica?, as it is commonly known, is considered the largest Catholic university in Europe. It is increasingly seen as one of the Italian Church?s major vehicles in its effort to maintain a strong Catholic influence on the country?s increasingly secular cultural, social and political life.

Pope Benedict recalled his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, twice during his address. ?He always demonstrated that the fact of being ?Catholic? did not mortify anything in the university, but actually gave it greater value,? Pope Benedict recalled. He then highlighted his predecessor?s 1990 apostolic constitution on Catholic universities, Ex corde ecclesiae, as the culmination of Papa Wojtyla?s ?very rich? teaching on the matter. Pope Benedict then thanked the staff at the Gemelli Hospital, housed at the Rome campus of the ?Cattolica?, for the ?care offered to the Holy Father? in the final weeks of his life. ?We cannot but think back on those moments so full of trepidation and commotion that we lived through in the last hospitalisation of John Paul II,? he said. ?From his hospital rooms the Pope offered everyone an incomparable teaching on the Christian sense of life and suffering, himself witnessing the truth of the Christian message.?