Pope again decries rupture between faith and reason

Published: 2007-01-29

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Returning to one of his favorite themes, Pope Benedict XVI said the rupture between faith and reason has produced a type of "schizophrenia" in modern culture. The pope made the remarks at a noon blessing Jan. 28, the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas, the philosopher and theologian known for articulating a harmonious vision of faith and reason more than 700 years ago. Today, the pope said, the faith-reason relationship looms as a serious challenge for the dominant Western culture. While the achievements of the modern sciences are undeniable, he said, this progress has been accompanied by a tendency to consider as true only that which can be experimentally proven. This represents a limit on human reason and "produces a terrible schizophrenia, now clearly recognized, in which rationalism and materialism live together, as do hyper-technology and unbridled instinct," he said. The pope said humanity urgently needs to rediscover the Christian vision of a rationality that is open to the divine, and in particular to the "perfect revelation" that is Jesus Christ.

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