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Church and Academy: A Common Concern for T ruth Truth An address by Denis J Hart, Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne to the October Luncheon Meeting Let me begin by saying how grateful I am for your kind invitation. Bishops and academics rarely meet to exchange ideas in today’s world and I appreciate this opportunity and the warmth of your welcome. Saint Anselm wrote in the eleventh century “I believe in order that I might understand”. Christian belief is not opposed to clear, rational thinking but rather welcomes it. The nineteenthcentury notion that churches and universities are threats to each other is, I think, long gone. Today, the threats to Church and university are external to both and should unite each. So my topic this afternoon is that Church and Academy have a common concern – a concern for truth. In the Church we share with the universities this vision of truth. As the Pope writes in Fides et Ratio: the Church is “a partner in humanity’s shared struggle to arrive at truth”. The Church well knows the importance of the Academy: Without disciplined thought and learning, faith can tend towards dangerous extremes of fundamentalism. But this works both ways for without faith and the contribution of religion the academy will tend towards mundane materialism and the lack of the proper, spiritual context necessary to appreciate so much of the arts and the sciences. We allow the worlds of reason and faith to separate at our peril: after all, there is not one set of religious truths and another set of secular truths – two sets
three: the first is spiritual, the second ethical and the third intellectual.
which might contradict each other but still be true. Truth is one. Anything true according to human reason will turn out to be fully compatible with religious faith. There is no incompatibility between good philosophy and theology. The contemporary project of separating the two, relegating religion to a purely “private” matter, harms both religion and the secular world and is surely doomed. Those who try to live with their religion and everyday lives held apart and in tension will suffer: their faith will remain immature, shut off from the rest of their thinking and experience – while their professional lives miss out on the spiritual and moral enrichment faith can provide. Such fragmentation is both dangerous and unnecessary. If there is only one truth, faith and reason must collaborate, influencing and guiding each other. If the Church and the university share a concern for truth, what is it that the Church specifically contributes to this picture? There are many answers here. I will focus on just
First there are many indications that people today seek a more spiritual life. Fewer people go to church than formerly but this does not mean they have stopped caring about spiritual questions. Spirituality is as much part of us as our intelligence, our creativity, our sociability and our physicality. Some of the ways in which people seek alternative spiritual nourishment are clearly unsatisfactory. Other sources of spirituality evolve around us but few of them last. Second is the domain of ethics. The Church’s expertise in this area is built on more than two thousand years of reflection and writing. As well as this ancient wisdom, the Church has a universal mandate and a world-wide territory and thus is able to speak for those anywhere in the world who cannot speak for themselves. The Church is asked for its ethical opinion on matters ranging from advances in biotechnology and medical research to the ethics of commerce and globalisation, the role and duties of the media, gambling, migration and in many other areas. Third in the area of intellectual life. The Catholic Church is, after all, the oldest and largest education provider in the world! We operate many schools throughout this country. We have here in Melbourne a campus of the Australian