If there was one singular message from the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI, it was that civilisation needs religion if it is not to lose its way completely. His objective was to explore and enhance the role that Catholicism could play in that relationship. Nowhere did he set that forth more explicitly than in his address to church and civic leaders in Westminster Hall during his state visit to Britain in 2010. It is entirely appropriate, therefore, that St Mary’s University, Strawberry Hill, should embark on a project bearing his name, with his Westminster Hall address as its key text.
There are hazards ahead for any such project, but the closer the Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society can stick to his Westminster approach, the less likely it is to be derailed. The obvious danger is that it will become an apologist for a static and conservative version of the faith, in tacit opposition to the leadership of the present Pope.
12 May 2016, The Tablet
Called by faith, guided by reason
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User Comments (9)
One of the meanings of Jesus being the “Alpha and Omega” is that He was at the beginning of all things and will be at the close. It is equivalent to saying He always existed and always will exist. It was Christ, as second Person of the Trinity, who brought about the creation: “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made” (John 1:3), and His Second Coming will be the beginning of the end of creation as we know it (2 Peter 3:10). As God incarnate, He has no beginning, nor will He have any end with respect to time, being from everlasting to everlasting. Jesus is the Alpha and Omega, the first and last, the beginning and the end. Only God incarnate could make such a statement. Only Jesus Christ is God incarnate.
True faith and true science do/can not contradict each other
When Pilot asked Jesus: "Truth! What is that" He did not realise The Truth was standing there, right in front of him ('I am the way the truth and the life') and proved it by rising from the dead - 'The Resurrection' is an historical truth witnessed and attested to by many named credible witnesses. Is there no truth in history either?
THE PONTIFICAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, dealing with ‘Scientific insights into the Evolution of the universe and life – Oct/ Nov 2008.
“But the big problem is that were God not to exist and were he not also the Creator of my life, life would actually be a mere cog in evolution. Nothing more: it would have no meaning in itself. Instead, I must seek to give meaning to this component of being. Currently, I see in Germany, but also in the United States, a somewhat fierce debate raging between so-called “creationism” and evolutionism, presented as though they were mutually exclusive alternatives: those who believe in the Creator would not be able to conceive of evolution, and those who instead support evolution would have to exclude God.
This antithesis is absurd because, on one hand, there are so many scientific proofs in favour of evolution which appears to be a reality we can see and which enriches our knowledge of life and being as such. But on the other, the doctrine of evolution does not answer every query, especially the great philosophical questions: where does everything come from? And how did everything start which ultimately led to man? I believe this is of utmost importance.”
The Pope agreed with Bishop Fulton Sheen (1956) who said that, within evolution, Jesus was/is the greatest mutation, ‘the essential missing link’ reconnecting humanity and all of creation with divinity’.
Evolution causes more anxiety than other scientific theories. Priests and laity are confused. Scientists use knowledge to wrongly argue for atheism. Others try to prove the existence of God, by wrongly using scientific arguments. Anxiety arises, as evolution, over billions of years, seems to make nonsense of the Genesis story of Creation and the Fall.
Scientific knowledge, of finite space-time realities, can never prove, nor disprove, the existence of God, who is above space-time. Truth cannot contradict truth. Pope Francis says: “Whenever the sciences – rigorously focused on their specific field of enquiry – arrive at a conclusion which reason cannot refute, faith does not contradict it.” Popes and scientists now conclude that evolution is fact.
The Church teaches that God created the universe, all life in it, and that immortal human souls are directly created by God at the moment of conception. Also that Adam and Eve, our first parents, committed Original Sin. The Catechism teaches that Adam and Eve were an historical couple, in the Garden of Eden, in space-time, on Earth. However, the latter is interpretation, not infallible truth.
Atheists argue that evolution was flawed by natural evil and death, long before humans emerged. So God must be a sadist. Otherwise, why punish the dinosaurs? This problem of theodicy, or justifying God, is a major issue. The logical answer is that a transcendental Original Sin, embracing the whole universe and all humanity, occurred
Faith is belief in the fictitious and reason uses cognitive clarity to eliminate the fictitious. Faith is unreasonable as it considers the fictitious as facts. Reason on the other hand makes facts, not the fictitious imagined as facts, as the basis of knowledge. Faith is deceptive having all the pretensions to be what it is not, while reason is honest, plain and lets each person judge the true from the false. How can the two which are mutually exclusive ever dialogue with each other? If one is called by faith, one cannot be guided by reason.