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NYU-PANEL Jan-23-2008 (860 words) xxxn
New York symposium examines whether faith can broaden reason
By Angelo Stagnaro
Catholic News Service
NEW YORK (CNS) -- In the flurry of excitement anticipating Pope Benedict XVI's visit to New York City, some Catholics might have overlooked an important meeting of the minds.
Though science and religion look at the world in different ways, science can learn a great deal from religion, concluded panelists at a Jan. 20 symposium titled "Can Faith Broaden Reason?" at New York University's Skirball Center.
The panel was comprised of two Jewish scholars and two Catholic priests, both of whom are leaders of the ecclesial group Communion and Liberation.
Mgsr. Lorenzo Albacete, a theologian, physicist, author and columnist, opened the symposium by quoting Pope Benedict's March 24, 2007, address on the 25th anniversary of Communion and Liberation's pontifical recognition: "The great contribution of Communion and Liberation derives from being a movement that carries a great human culture, theological but also general."
In addition to Msgr. Albacete, the other panelists were Robert Pollack, professor of biology at Columbia University in New York; Father Julian Carron, president of Communion and Liberation in Milan, Italy; and Joseph Weiler, a New York University professor of law.
The symposium drew an overflow crowd of 960 people. Nearly a hundred others were turned away at the door.
It was co-sponsored by the Crossroads Cultural Center, a local project of Communion and Liberation, and the university's Catholic Graduate and Law Student Association.
Communion and Liberation was founded in Milan in 1954 by Msgr. Luigi Giussani. He envisioned it as an informal group motivated to help re-establish a Christian culture and presence in the world in which authentic spiritual liberation can occur and flourish, and one dedicated to the spiritual development of its members.
Though the symposium wasn't originally meant to be an interfaith dialogue, it became one in which both Jewish and Catholic panelists shared their thoughts on spirituality, morality, faith, reason, human rights, science and scientism, encroaching secularization and what they said is an increasing hostility toward Christianity in the Western world.
Instead of a debate, there was a free and open exchange of the speakers' subtly different viewpoints.
Pollack compared religion and science, saying both made irrational and rational choices. Like religion, "science can also experience awe, joy, fear and wonder," he said.
The professor then asked a thought-provoking question of the assembled crowd: "If everything science does is rational, where does scientific inspiration, unbidden and unplanned by the rational mind, come from?"
"Revelation takes the form of ... being overwhelmed by sheer feeling, arising without reason or cause," he continued. "Both religious revelation and scientific insight are inexplicable and untestable by empirical means and neither is reproducible or provable. Further, both science and religion are completely dependent upon them."
Weiler then spoke of the danger of the secularization of Western society and the resultant threat to human rights and the subsequent loss of the need for personal sanctity and morality.
Father Carron described the general current European view of religion as "a sign of abandonment of ideals of reason and rationality."
"In Europe," Father Carron said, "religion is treated as the equivalent of believing in ghosts."
He continued his presentation describing the nature of faith in our lives. "Faith is an act of the intellect. ... It's an act of knowledge that grasps the presence of something that reason would not know how to grasp, but that reason has to affirm nonetheless, otherwise something that is within our experience would be eluded."
Due to time restrictions, Msgr. Albacete, a U.S. leader of Communion and Liberation, couldn't present his entire speech.
With the time available to him, he commented on the threat to rational discourse and faith in what he said was a prejudicial and imprudent decision of some faculty members and students at Rome's Sapienza University to protest a planned appearance there by Pope Benedict. Msgr. Albacete noted the irony in the fact the university's name means "wisdom" in Italian.
The pope canceled the visit after 67 professors objected to it, saying the pope was "hostile to science," and after a group of students threatened to demonstrate while he was speaking.
Msgr. Albacete explained that there is an anti-intellectual and presumptuous arrogance behind scientism that insists the only thing worth knowing is science.
Scientism teaches that "anything we cannot know through science just becomes a matter of opinion, belief and faith and shouldn't be a subject of methodologically rigorous reflection," he said.
"A real danger in accommodating scientism," Msgr. Albacete added, "is that Christians might feel increasingly pressured to reduce Christianity to a mere esoteric spirituality and a collection of moral maxims."
Among those in attendance was Vlad Kuzman, 21, leader of Communion and Liberation's 130-member youth group and a junior majoring in comparative literature at Jesuit-run Fordham University.
"This conference addressed important issues of the state of the Western world and the place of faith and reason in our daily lives," Kuzman, a convert to Catholicism, said afterward.
Communion and Liberation "advocates for values-centered education which speaks to a transcendental, transformative truth and the path to real happiness in life which, I believe, is found in Christ," he added.
END
Copyright (c) 2008 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
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