Harmony between faith, reason shows God is near, says pope

Published: 2008-01-30

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Catholic insistence on a close connection between faith and reason is based on the belief that God created human beings and is always close to them, Pope Benedict XVI said. "The harmony between faith and reason means, above all, that God is not far off, he is not far from our reason and from our lives. He is close to every human being, near to our hearts and near to our intelligence," the pope said Jan. 30 at his weekly general audience. Continuing a series of audience talks about St. Augustine, the pope said, "As a child, St. Augustine learned the Catholic faith from his mother, Monica. But in his adolescence, he abandoned the faith because he could no longer see its reasonableness." For St. Augustine, the pope said, religions and philosophies that did not make sense of life and did not help people arrive at a truth valid for everyone were not worth pursuing. St. Augustine was not looking for a God who was "simply the ultimate cosmological hypothesis, but was the true God, the God who gives life and enters into our lives," Pope Benedict said.

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