What is the crisis of modernity?
Pope Benedict XVI told a group of university professors what it’s not, and how to find out and address what it is.
The title of their symposium that just wrapped up in Rome is “Broadening the Horizons of Reason. Prospects for Philosophy.” I love that, reason and philosophy in one conference.
Benedict said:
“Indeed, the crisis of modernity is not a symptom of the decline of philosophy; on the contrary, philosophy must embark upon new lines of research in order to understand the true nature of that crisis”.
In fact…
“Modernity is not simply a historically-datable cultural phenomenon; in reality it requires a new focus, a more exact understanding of the nature of man”.
He wants to re-launch philosophy into the academic world, and that can only be a very good thing. Religion is in danger of being “surreptitiously manipulated” today, he said. To know that is to see the need for intellectual clarity in university studies.
“The new dialogue between faith and reason which is needed today cannot come about in the terms and the ways it did in the past”, said the Pope. “If it does not want to see itself reduced to the status of sterile intellectual exercise, it must start from the current real situation of mankind, and upon that build a reflection that embraces man’s ontological and metaphysical truth”.
In other words, his core as a spiritual being. It’s the “new humanism” Benedict talks about in some way in practically all his addresses.
In closing, Benedict XVI referred to the need to “promote high-profile academic centres in which philosophy can enter into dialogue with other disciplines, in particular with theology, to favour new cultural syntheses capable of guiding society”. In this context, he expressed the hope that “Catholic academic institutions may be ready to create true cultural laboratories” and he invited the professors to encourage young people “to commit themselves to philosophical studies by facilitating appropriate initiatives” to guide them in that direction.
This reminds me of his address to Catholic educators on his papal visit to America. Though many of them were reportedly relieved they weren’t taken to the woodshed for allowing some Catholic institutions of higher learning to veer off on an increasingly secular path, that’s not Benedict’s style. Instead of admonitions, he gives encouragement. But they’re nuanced with what one priest calls “gentle skewers”.
Like this gem that referred to the modern goals of diversity and tolerance. This is where he has just said that Catholic schools have a mission to ensure that reason “remains open to the consideration of ultimate truths.”
Far from undermining the tolerance of legitimate diversity, such a contribution illuminates the very truth which makes consensus attainable, and helps to keep public debate rational, honest and accountable. Similarly the Church never tires of upholding the essential moral categories of right and wrong, without which hope could only wither, giving way to cold pragmatic calculations of utility which render the person little more than a pawn on some ideological chess-board.
In the next line, Benedict says this is all the more important “in societies where secularist ideology drives a wedge between truth and faith.”
This division has led to a tendency to equate truth with knowledge and to adopt a positivistic mentality which, in rejecting metaphysics, denies the foundations of faith and rejects the need for a moral vision. Truth means more than knowledge: knowing the truth leads us to discover the good.
And…
Once their passion for the fullness and unity of truth has been awakened, young people will surely relish the discovery that the question of what they can know opens up the vast adventure of what they ought to do.
Crisis averted.