Dominican says to fight suspicion with 'spirituality of truth-telling'

Published: 2004-11-03

TORONTO (CNS) -- On the eve of the U.S. election, Dominican Father Timothy Radcliffe said the world must fight a "crisis of suspicion" with "a spirituality of truth-telling." "People suspect that politicians, business leaders and most of all the media don't tell the truth," said Father Radcliffe, an Englishman who headed the Dominicans worldwide from 1992 to 2001. Father Radcliffe told a lecture hall packed with graduate theology students and professors Nov. 1 that over the last three centuries Western civilization has narrowed its definition of truth to the parameters of the scientific method. Based on doubt and suspicion, this Enlightenment version of truth amounts merely to what can be proven, he said. "We need an alternative understanding of what it means to tell the truth," he said, "a spirituality of truth-telling." In an interview after the talk, Father Radcliffe said this was needed not only in politics and media, but in the Catholic Church, too.

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