Student Debate at Georgetown Over the Pope's CUA Speech

Debate continues over the Pope's CUA speech, even though it hasn't yet been delivered. Georgetown University senior Stephen Kenny opines that criticism of Pope Benedict's anticipated speech at Catholic University of America, specifically by fellow senior D. Pierce Nixon, has come too soon. Kenny is responding to an opinion piece written by Nixon published on The Hoya's website.

Nixon says, "If Pope Benedict’s speech at Catholic University does, indeed, denounce schools like ours, his message will hopefully fall on deaf ears."

Writes Kenny:

"Nixon, based on the concerns he articulates in the article, seems to accept the media’s portrayal of Benedict as a hardliner obsessed with hot-button social issues. In reality, he is an incredibly thoughtful and intelligent individual who, before taking a post in the Vatican, was a college professor. His first three encyclicals are entitled Deus Caritas Est (God is Love), Spe Salvi (Saved by Hope), and Caritas in Veritate (Love in Truth — confronting the needs of the developing world). Sure, he has brought up issues many consider “divisive,” but who can deny that there is an appropriate time for the Holy Father to promote the Church’s teachings, even the unpopular ones?

The most puzzling part of the article, however, is Nixon’s assertion that the Pope expects “blind faith” among students at a Catholic university. This is quite a statement to make about the man who gave one of the greatest lectures on the relationship between faith and reason, the Regensburg Address delivered in September of 2006. While this speech is mostly remembered for the violent reaction it prompted in the Muslim world, it is an amazing defense of the reasonableness of faith and the rational nature of God. The Pope quoted Byzantine Emperor Manuel II: “Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats.”

Nixon's language reminds me of the language we've seen in so many stories, which really demonstrates more than anything the writers' lack of understanding of Pope Benedict. Words like "denounce," "stern," "rebuke," and "repudiate," aren't in the style or the vocabulary of the Church's pastoral leader.

They're a fiction, much like the terms "Panzer Pope," "God's Rottweiler," and the other labels that were placed on the Holy Father just after his election. It's a desire to see the man in a certain way rather than listening to what he has to say. That is ironic given that so many people who know the Pope describe him as a "listener."

Those who have spent time reading the Pope's work and listening to his speeches will discover that he's never "denounced" or "repudiated" anything in particular, aside from sin. Those who wonder what the Pope will say have only to read his speeches at the University of Regensburg and La Sapienza to see the pattern. Note to reporters: you'll find the links to those speeches below.

Just as the Pope will not address the upcoming U.S. election or specific candidates during his visit to the U.S., it's also very unlikely that he's going to address a specific Catholic institution. Rather, he will address the mission of the Catholic university. In another speech (La Sapienza), that wasn't delivered because of protests over what the Pope might say (so much for academic freedom and freedom of speech), Pope Benedict concentrated on faith, reason, and the search for truth, much as he did in his Regensburg address.

This is from the La Sapienza lecture:

"In modern times, new dimensions of knowledge have opened up, and in the university, they are appreciated most of all in two spheres: above all, in the natural sciences, which have developed on the basis of the link between experimentation and the presumed rationality of matter; and in the second place, in the historical and humanistic sciences, in whuich man - scrutinizing the mirror of history, and clarifying the dimensions of his nature, seeks to understand himself better," wrote the Pope. "This development has opened to mankind not only an immense meassure of knowledge and power, but it has also developed the knowledge and acknowledgment of human rights and human dignity, for which we can only be grateful. But man's journey can never be said to be complete, and the danger of falling into inhumanity can never be simply abjured - as we see in the panorama of current affaris. The danger for the Western world - to speak of this alone - is that man today, especially considering the greatness of his knowledge and power, surrenders when faced with the question of truth.

This would mean that reason ultimately folds up from the pressure of interests and the attractiveness of utility, being forced to recognize it as the ultimate criterion. Stated from the point of view of the structure of the university, there is a danger that philosophy, no longer feeling capable of its true mission, degenerates into positivism; that theology, with its message addressed to reason, becomes confined to the private sphere of a group or groups. If however, reason, solicitous of its presumed purity, becomes deaf to the great message that comes from the Christian faith and its wisdom, it would wither up like a tree whose roots no longer reach the waters that give it life. It would lose its courage for the truth and will stop being great - it would diminish."

When Pope Benedict speaks at Catholic University of America, I expect that his address will be much the same.