by Bishop James Conley
September 14, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, marked the 25th anniversary of St. John Paul II’s epic encyclical, Fides et ratio (Faith and Reason). It also marked the 11th anniversary of my appointment by Pope Benedict XVI, as the ninth Bishop of the Diocese of Lincoln, for which I am eternally grateful to God. These two anniversaries afforded me an opportunity for some reflections.
Although Pope Benedict XVI named me a bishop in 2008, with my appointment as Auxiliary Bishop of Denver under Archbishop Charles Chaput, and then transferred me to the Diocese of Lincoln in 2012, I am definitely a JPII guy. He was elected to the Chair of Peter in 1978, less than three years after I was received into the Catholic Church during my college years.
I first heard him speak in person Oct. 4, 1979, in Des Moines, Iowa, at Mass at the Living History Farms, during his first visit to the United States as the new pope. I can say that it was at that Mass that I first heard the call to the priesthood. He, through the Holy Spirit, inspired me to want to become a priest. I was ordained a priest in 1985, in the prime of his pontificate. He then called me to serve him in the Vatican as an official in the then Congregation for Bishops in 1996. I served him in that role until his death April 2, 2005.
Coming of age as a young Catholic convert in the post-conciliar years was a time of great confusion and change, both culturally and in the Church. St. John Paul II was always a bellwether of stability and security. He became the “true north” of the Catholic faith during those turbulent post-conciliar years. You could always look to him for clarity, direction and assurance that the Church was still a beacon of light and hope in the midst of an ever-growing secular culture.
But it was the decade of the 1990s where he left his greatest and most significant marks. Beginning with the promulgation of the universal Catechism of the Catholic Church in 1992, followed by his encyclical on fundamental moral theology, Veritatis splendor (The Splendor of Truth) in 1993, and his encyclical on human life, Evangelium vitae (The Gospel of Life) in 1995, he brought the Barque of Peter back into a safe harbor, in the midst of the storms of the last decade of the 20th century, a world fraught with confusion and doubt on these fundamental truths about the human person and human society.
But St. JPII was a philosopher at heart, and so his epic encyclical Fides et ratio was, perhaps, the brightest jewel in the crown of that decade in which he gave us so much. By far the most philosophical of his 16 encyclicals, Fides et ratio grounds us in a proper understanding of reality, and how we come to know the reality of things.
The unique gift of our Catholic intellectual tradition is an understanding of the unity of faith and reason. Our centuries-old heritage of Catholic education allows us to see the sacramental signs of the author of creation in the world around us, beckoning us in all that is true, and good, and beautiful. St. John Paul II reminds us that faith and reason can never contradict each other, and are like two wings of a bird that can help us to soar to the heights of reality. Our Lord is the Logos, the Word, in whom all things cohere. In fact, if we do separate faith from reason, everything falls apart. Faith can even rescue science and reason when it takes us too far afield and dismisses the author of creation, and thus the author of science and reason.
In the area of education, for example, if we focus on reason or science alone, as is seen in today’s hyper-utilitarian and industrialized schools of higher education, we do a disservice to our students. Reason alone can be devoid of conscience and the fullness of truth. Wisdom is what the human person strives to acquire, not simply knowledge and the accumulation of information. The world is a different place through the eyes of faith. To see the face of God in eternity, we must use our reason to know him, learn to love him, and have faith to serve Him. When we form our students in both faith and reason, we cultivate a Catholic imagination that is incarnational, sacramental, and ecclesial. We give them the ability to see themselves in the story of salvation history and see things in relation to Christ, who is both Logos and Love.
As believers, we understand by faith and reason that everything comes from God, the Creator. And so there is nothing that we can discover, or that science can bring to us, that would ever contradict the faith, because if it’s from God and part of His creation, then it’s part of the harmony and the order of things. There is nothing about faith that needs to ever fear reason or science. There can never be a contradiction between faith and reason.
There might be things in science we can’t explain, but that’s simply because it goes beyond the realm of being able to be proven. This is because reality is ultimately a mystery. We can never know everything about reality, no matter how scientifically advanced we become, and we never will, because we’re dealing with God, God’s creation, and God is infinite, and we’re never going to unravel all the mysteries of the universe.
Unfortunately, young people are taught in secular education that the things of religion, faith, those things that are of the spiritual realm, are not as important or significant as science. And therefore, a lot of young people have become atheists, because they believe that the truths that religion presents are somehow less important because they cannot be proved scientifically. That’s just a very shallow way to look at the world.
Fides et ratio teaches us that there is a certain “givenness” to things, a certain objective reality that we don’t create ourselves, but that we discover. We may be confused about it, but the fact is, it’s absolute, it’s objective, and can’t be changed. We can’t impose or create reality on our own through our own minds.
If we pursue an education which is devoid of any dimension of faith, or revelation, or philosophy, then we’ve truncated knowledge, and it limits our horizons. If we separate faith and reason, we are left in a murky haze. For a Christian, learning is an adventure of faith seeking understanding, as St. Anselm describes it.
Fides et ratio, along with the other two encyclicals mentioned above and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, form the heart of the intellectual legacy of St. John Paul II, and have become the pillars of the monumental pontificate of John Paul II. It is disturbing that in some circles in the Catholic world, some 25 and 30 years later, these teaching documents in the 1990s are being called into question. In the end, these teachings will endure the test of time. I have no fear of that. But in the meantime, some will be led astray and left in confusion.
In my own life, Fides et ratio has helped me understand that unity of faith and reason, and to see faith and reason—theology and philosophy, religion and science—as something that can mutually enrich each other.
So, with this anniversary of Fides et ratio, we need to revisit these fonts of wisdom given to us by this saintly pope. St. John Paul II has given us a wonderful body of teaching that still hasn’t been plumbed to its depths. People need to read these perennial teachings again, because they are more relevant today than ever.
Saint John Paul’s great body of work—including Fides et ratio—can show us how established doctrine can be an anchor for the future. It can keep us on course through these turbulent times we know, 25 years later, regarding truths about the human person, male and female, truths about life and death, and how we come to know reality.
Editor's note: Photos from Sept. 14, 2012, when Bishop Conley was announced as ninth Bishop of Lincoln.
