Acta Apostolicae Sedis - Commentarium Officiale870

The proper autonomy of a university, or indeed any educational institution,

finds meaning in its accountability to the authority of truth. Nevertheless, that

autonomy can be thwarted in a variety of ways. The great formative tradition,

open to the transcendent, which stands at the base of universities across Eur-

ope, was in this land, and others, systematically subverted by the reductive

ideology of materialism, the repression of religion and the suppression of the

human spirit. In 1989, however, the world witnessed in dramatic ways the

overthrow of a failed totalitarian ideology and the triumph of the human spirit.

The yearning for freedom and truth is inalienably part of our common human-

ity. It can never be eliminated; and, as history has shown, it is denied at

humanity's own peril. It is to this yearning that religious faith, the various

arts, philosophy, theology and other scientific disciplines, each with its own

method, seek to respond, both on the level of disciplined reflection and on the

level of a sound praxis.

Distinguished Rectors and Professors, together with your research there is a

further essential aspect of the mission of the university in which you are en-

gaged, namely the responsibility for enlightening the minds and hearts of the

young men and women of today. This grave duty is of course not new. From

the time of Plato, education has been not merely the accumulation of knowl-

edge or skills, but paideia, human formation in the treasures of an intellectual

tradition directed to a virtuous life. While the great universities springing up

throughout Europe during the middle ages aimed with confidence at the ideal

of a synthesis of all knowledge, it was always in the service of an authentic

humanitas, the perfection of the individual within the unity of a well-ordered

society. And likewise today: once young people's understanding of the fullness

and unity of truth has been awakened, they relish the discovery that the

question of what they can know opens up the vast adventure of how they

ought to be and what they ought to do. The idea of an integrated education,

based on the unity of knowledge grounded in truth, must be regained. It serves

to counteract the tendency, so evident in contemporary society, towards a

fragmentation of knowledge. With the massive growth in information and

technology there comes the temptation to detach reason from the pursuit of

truth. Sundered from the fundamental human orientation towards truth,

however, reason begins to lose direction: it withers, either under the guise of

modesty, resting content with the merely partial or provisional, or under the

guise of certainty, insisting on capitulation to the demands of those who indis-

criminately give equal value to practically everything. The relativism that