Acta Benedicti Pp. XVI 871

ensues provides a dense camouflage behind which new threats to the autonomy

of academic institutions can lurk. While the period of interference from political

totalitarianism has passed, is it not the case that frequently, across the globe,

the exercise of reason and academic research are - subtly and not so subtly -

constrained to bow to the pressures of ideological interest groups and the lure of

short-term utilitarian or pragmatic goals? What will happen if our culture

builds itself only on fashionable arguments, with little reference to a genuine

historical intellectual tradition, or on the viewpoints that are most vociferously

promoted and most heavily funded? What will happen if in its anxiety to

preserve a radical secularism, it detaches itself from its life-giving roots? Our

societies will not become more reasonable or tolerant or adaptable but rather

more brittle and less inclusive, and they will increasingly struggle to recognize

what is true, noble and good.

Dear friends, I wish to encourage you in all that you do to meet the

idealism and generosity of young people today not only with programmes

of study which assist them to excel, but also by an experience of shared ideals

and mutual support in the great enterprise of learning. The skills of analysis

and those required to generate a hypothesis, combined with the prudent art

of discernment, offer an effective antidote to the attitudes of self-absorption,

disengagement and even alienation which are sometimes found in our pros-

perous societies, and which can particularly affect the young. In this context

of an eminently humanistic vision of the mission of the university, I would

like briefly to mention the mending of the breach between science and reli-

gion which was a central concern of my predecessor, Pope John Paul II. He,

as you know, promoted a fuller understanding of the relationship between

faith and reason as the two wings by which the human spirit is lifted to the

contemplation of truth.1 Each supports the other and each has its own scope

of action,2 yet still there are those who would detach one from the other. Not

only do the proponents of this positivistic exclusion of the divine from the

universality of reason negate what is one of the most profound convictions of

religious believers, they also thwart the very dialogue of cultures which they

themselves propose. An understanding of reason that is deaf to the divine

and which relegates religions into the realm of subcultures, is incapable of

entering into the dialogue of cultures that our world so urgently needs. In

the end, "fidelity to man requires fidelity to the truth, which alone is the

1 Cfr. Fides et Ratio, Prooemium. 2 Cfr. ibid., 17.