The pope's Q & A session with young people the other day is its own potpourri all by itself. The translation is unofficial, but you owe it to yourself to RTWT (you have to scroll down to it --April 6). In addition to the question about his vocation I pointed out here, the Pope fields questions from teenagers about How to Read the Bible, what's wrong with pre-marital sex, what it is he as Pope expects of Christians, and the relation between Science & Faith. Any single answer to a single question is worth meditating on -- and again, this was all unscripted --these were his spontaneous answers. I'll just highlight a few things.
In addition to the wisdom of his answers, it's impossible to miss his charity. For example, in his response to the question of how to read the Bible, in making the point that the Bible must be read in a personal way, but at the same time in concert with fellow Christians, he says
at the same time, it is important to read it in the company of those we walk with. To let ourselves be aided by the great masters of lectio divina. For instance, we have so many beautiful books by Cardinal Martini, a true master of lectio divina, which helps us to enter fully within Scriptures. He who knows well all the historical circumstances, all the characteristic elements of the past, also seeks all the time to open the door in order to show that words from the past are also words for the present. Such masters help us understand better and even to learn the way to read Scriptures properly and well.
Cardinal Martini has for years been upheld by the gossipisti as the leader of the "liberal" wing of the Church, and was supposedly their candidate for Pope contra Ratzinger. So we see here either the exaggerated nature of the gossip about curial factions or the Pope's lovely ability to appreciate and engage ideas without letting debates get personal.
Speaking of which, in his answer about the relation between science and faith, he takes his answer from Galileo :
The great Galileo said that God wrote the book of nature in the language of mathematics. He was convinced that God had given us two books: that of Sacred Scripture and that of nature. And that the language of nature - he was convinced of this – was mathematics which is thefore a language of God, of the Creator.
And then he takes us from Math to reality (man, this is the first time I've regretted dropping Calculus). Math, he says, does not exist as pure essence, but is an abstract construct of the mind:
The surprising thing is that this invention of our mind is truly the key to understanding nature, that nature is really structured mathematically, and that our mathematics, invented by the human spirit, is really the instrument with which we can work with nature, place it at our service, make it an instrument through technology. It seems to me almost incredible that an invention of the human intellect and the structure of the universe should coincide, that the mathematics invented by us truly gives us access to the nature of the universe and makes this nature useful to us. And so the intellectual structure of the human subject and the objective structure of reality coincide: subjective reason and reason objectified in nature are identical.
I'll skip a further elaboration of this to bring you the Pope who knows chaos theory:
Which is not to say that God can be "proven" in the scientific sense:In this sense, it seems to me that mathematics – in which God cannot appear as such – shows us the intelligent structure of the universe. Now, we even have theories of chaos, but they are limited, because if chaos had the upper hand, then all technology would be impossible. Technology is reliable only because our mathematics is reliable. Our science, which finally makes it possible for us to work with the energies of nature, assumes that matter has a reliable and intelligent structure. So we see that there is a subjective rationality as well as a rationality objectified in matter which coincide.
Of course, no one can now prove – as one does through experiment or technical readings – that both systems of reason really originated from one single “intelligence”, but it seems to me that this single intelligence behind the two systems of reason we have is truly manifest in our world. And that the more we are able to instrumentalize the world with our intelligence, the more the design of creation becomes apparent.
And at that point you have a choice to make.
to come to the definitive question, I would say: Either there is a God, or there is none. Only two options exist. One either recognizes the priority of reason, of the creative Reason that is at the origin of everything and is the principle of everything – the priority of reason is also the priority of freedom; or one advocates the priority of the irrational, in which everything that works on earth and in our lives would simply be occasional, marginal, an irrational product, in which case reason would be the product of irrationality!
Ultimately one cannot “prove” one or the other, but the great option of Christianity is to choose rationality and the priority of reason. This seems to me the optimal option which shows us how behind everything there is a great Intelligence, to whom we can entrust ourselves.
The great challenge to Reason, of course, is the problem of evil, but I can't do everything for you, now can I? Go read what he has to say about that. And incidentally, if you take this question about reason with what he says about how to read the scriptures, you'll see why Islam is ultimately the enemy of freedom.
