The criteria then for thinking about the faith and about the relation of faith to culture are the criteria that come from the classical view of theological inquiry which is to see the intelligibility of what is intrinsically intelligible, naturally using all of the capacities and rigor that human reason supplies. It’s not a question of being unreasonable. Intelligibility is not the opposite of reasonability, but it’s the tool of reason that is applied to the reflection on a mystery that itself draws the human mind and challenges it at every point.
Not everyone coming out of our institutions have to be theologians. But it is the case, and you’ve all experienced this, that the people with highly sophisticated knowledge of economics, politics, physics, astronomy, law are traveling with an almost infantile level of knowledge of their faith. I’ve encountered them. They are traveling on the knowledge of their faith that they might remember from a 3rd grade class, or perhaps at 5th grade with their confirmation. After that they haven’t learned a single thing. This makes them incapable of withstanding not only incorrect versions of Catholicism, but also versions of any kind of spirituality that are mad. The danger of irreligion is not skepticism, but credulity. People are prepared to believe anything in the name of religion, as you know.
This is why Ex Corde Ecclesia is so central, so important, so absolutely essential. Our institutions of higher learning must turn out people who know something about their faith and who are capable of articulating the ways in which it relates to whatever area of professional life, politics, science, philosophy, they are in, because God knows the clergy can’t and are unlikely to do so.
Augustine DiNoia Divine Wisdom and Christian Humanism
Ex Corde Ecclesia is John Paul II’s Apostolic Constitution on Catholic universities. It begins ‘Born from the heart of the Church, a Catholic University is located in that course of tradition which may be traced back to the very origin of the University as an institution…’ . My respect for Ex Corde Ecclesia and Fides et Ratio has grown and grown. When I explained to a ‘Catholic’ educational institution last year why I thought that Ex Corde Ecclesia was binding on it and that this was good news, my relationship with that institution was terminated. These Papal documents have real evangelical power, and our administrators certainly feel the challenge, or threat, these documents represent to the secular agenda.
