Via Insight Scoop, Fr. Schall takes on the accusation that Catholicism is too complicated. I call it to your attention because it really fits in the category of the relationship between faith and reason --and between faith and freedom.
Catholicism is a religion that does not despise or denigrate what the mind can and should know. It is, and professes to be, a religion that seeks intelligence, seeks the truth. It cannot be Catholicism and fail to know what can be known about anything, even though not everyone needs to know everything about anything. On the other hand, it does not claim that everything that is worthy of being known is found in religious sources. It is perfectly comfortable with natural knowledge known by its own experience or method. It does not see the human soul as radically split because it is able to focus attention now on reason, now on the teachings of revelation.
Simplicity for simplicity's sake is the short road to fideism --believing because you will something to be true rather than because it is true. The Catholic insistence on truth --and courage to examine the truths of faith-- is precisely why the Church finds itself in the strange position of being the surest defender of freedom and reason on the scene today.
While it recognizes a place for grace in knowledge, Catholicism does not think this revealed knowledge violates the integrity of our minds. Quite the opposite. It thinks that we become more mind by what is offered to us by the divine Mind. But this increase in intelligence only happens when we actually wrestle – intellectually wrestle – with what is presented.
RTWT (linked above).
