More Faith vs. Reason...

   Returning to a discussion on science (reason) vs. faith, here is a thought from Archbishop Rino Fisichella, President of the Pontifical Coucil for the Promotion of the New Evangelization in his book, The New Evangelization: Responding to the Challenge of Indifference (2012) p. 96.

   The important point he makes is that Christian faith is not a subservient, weak, compromised, humiliated form of human reason.  Rather Christian faith, and the Catholic traditon in particular, must strive for communicating the truth of faith by way of a strong, dynamic, and free engagement of human reason, if it is to reach out to humanity and effectively evangelize the world.

   ... it is necessary to recall that the defense of reason finds in us allies who are loyal and faithful; we could never think of a faith which was strong before reason which was weak.  We are supporters of a reason which is strong, capable of sustaining faith which is free, precisely because it is the fruit of a reasoned choice in the face of the truth. The foundation of a correct approach to the relationship between reason and faith is to be ascribed to our thinking which has never wished to humiliate reason, but which has made of it an indispensable companion on the road.  It is hard, in the context of a phenomenology of world religion to discover a relationship as well-balanced between these two components as in Christianity.

   For our tradition the fides quarens intellectum is the condition necessary for us to reach every man and woman, in every part of the world.  For us rationality is a common criterion which sustains the fundamental equality between persons.  It si on the basis of the positive relationship with reason that conflicts can be avoidedand that every form of fundamentalism from which the world suffers can be excluded.  The latter is the expression of a fragment of truth which is then rendered absolute without taking into consideration the contribution of others, who are excluded on the pretext of the supremacy of one's own truth.  For us, this is not so.  For us, truth is given by way of revelation, but has entered into historywith the incarnation of the Son of God and this makes it inevitably subject ot the law of its constant and dynamic path of interpreation and activation until the end of time.