Is The West Still In Denial?

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Ricochet: Is The West Still In Denial?

Scott Wilmot / April 6, 2016 / 8 COMMENTS

 

Yes it is, says Samuel Gregg in a Catholic World Report retrospective on the address given nearly ten years ago by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — now, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI — on faith and reason. I have had recourse many times to quote this address here at Ricochet, primarily in response to threads on Islam, and particularly with regards to the section Benedict devoted to the lack of reason as part of Islam’s understanding of God. Without reason, the God would be nothing but pure will, commanding his followers to make choices and take actions against reason. But Gregg focuses less on Islam than on the loss of reason in the West, which was the bulk of the Pope’s address. Following his explanation of this loss, he writes:

 

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Regensburg Revisited: Ten Years Later, A West Still in Denial

April 04, 2016

Irrationality not only manifests itself in violence but also in an inability to apply authentic reason to the many pressing challenges of our age.

 

Dr. Samuel Gregg

A decade ago, a 79 year-old soft-spoken, white-haired German theologian returned to visit a university at which he had spent much of his academic career. On such occasions, it’s not unusual for a distinguished professor-emeritus to offer some formal remarks. Such reflections rarely receive much attention, and are often seen as exercises in reminiscing by scholars whose most substantial achievements are behind them.

 

In this instance, however, the speech delivered at the University of Regensburg on 12 September 2006 by the theologian Joseph Ratzinger, better known as Pope Benedict XVI, had immediate global impact. For weeks, even months afterwards, newspapers, magazines, scholarly journals, and even entire books attacked, defended, and analyzed the almost 4,000 words which came to be known as the Regensburg Address. Copies of the text and effigies of its author, however, were also ripped up, trampled on, and publicly burnt throughout the Islamic world. Television screens were dominated by images of enraged Muslim mobs and passionate denunciations by Muslim leaders, most of whom had clearly not read the text.https://ricochet.com/regensburg-revisited-ten-years-later-a-west-still-in-denial/

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APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
TO MÜNCHEN, ALTÖTTING AND REGENSBURG
(SEPTEMBER 9-14, 2006)

MEETING WITH THE REPRESENTATIVES OF SCIENCE

LECTURE OF THE HOLY FATHER

Aula Magna of the University of Regensburg
Tuesday, 12 September 2006

Faith, Reason and the University
Memories and Reflections

 

Your Eminences, Your Magnificences, Your Excellencies,
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,

 

It is a moving experience for me to be back again in the university and to be able once again to give a lecture at this podium. I think back to those years when, after a pleasant period at the Freisinger Hochschule, I began teaching at the University of Bonn. That was in 1959, in the days of the old university made up of ordinary professors. The various chairs had neither assistants nor secretaries, but in recompense there was much direct contact with students and in particular among the professors themselves. We would meet before and after lessons in the rooms of the teaching staff. There was a lively exchange with historians, philosophers, philologists and, naturally, between the two theological faculties. Once a semester there was a dies academicus, when professors from every faculty appeared before the students of the entire university, making possible a genuine experience of universitas - something that you too, Magnificent Rector, just mentioned - the experience, in other words, of the fact that despite our specializations which at times make it difficult to communicate with each other, we made up a whole, working in everything on the basis of a single rationality with its various aspects and sharing responsibility for the right use of reason - this reality became a lived experience. The university was also very proud of its two theological faculties. It was clear that, by inquiring about the reasonableness of faith, they too carried out a work which is necessarily part of the https://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg.html