Our time is one in which the experimental sciences have transformed the vision of the world and even man’s understanding of himself. The many discoveries and the rapid succession of innovative technologies are a well founded reason for pride but they are frequently not without disturbing implications. Indeed, against the background of the widespread optimism in scientific knowledge is being overcast by the shadow of a crisis in thought. Rich in means but less so in their aims, the men and women of our time are often conditioned by reductionism and relativism, which leads to the loss of meaning of things; blinded, as it were, by technical efficiency, they forget the fundamental horizon of the need for meaning, thereby relegating the transcendent dimension to irrelevance. Against this background thought is weakened and an ethical impoverishment which blurs valuable norms of reference gains ground. What was the fertile root of European culture and progress seems to have been forgotten. In it the search for the Absolute — the quaerere Deum — included the need to deepen the knowledge of the profane sciences, the entire world of knowledge (cf. Address to the Collège des Bernardins in Paris, 12 September 2008). Scientific research and the question of meaning, even with their specific epistemological and methodological features, in fact flow from one source, the Logos, that presides over creative work and guides the sense of history. A fundamentally technological and practical mindset generates a perilous imbalance between what is technologically possible and what is morally sound, with unforeseeable consequences. Thus it is important for culture to rediscover the vigour of the meaning and dynamism of transcendence, in a word, to present the horizon of the quaerere Deum decisively. St Augustine’s famous sentence springs to mind: “you have made us for yourself [O Lord] and our heart is restless until it rests in you” (Confessions, I, 1). Benedict XVI, Address, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, 3 May 2012
Posted on: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 11:49:46 +0000
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