The Pope and the Scientists

UPDATE #2: Father Raymond De Souza, in a column about the incident, writes: "Benedict played the situation masterfully. Had he gone, the story would have been about the rude protesters. In declining to appear before such ill-behaved supposed scholars, he focused attention on their closedmindedness. Yesterday, the entire Italian cultural and political establishment rose as one and denounced the professors and the students. Italian President Giorgio Napolitano sent Benedict a letter of support denouncing the “manifestations of intolerance” as “inadmissible” in a university dedicated to free inquiry." Read the entire column.

UPDATE #1: The entire translated text of Pope Benedict's speech meant to be given at "La Sapienza" University is available from Asia News.

Vatican Information Services has excerpts from a letter sent by "Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone S.D.B., yesterday ... to the rector of Rome's "La Sapienza" University, explaining the reasons for which the Pope will not participate in today's ceremony for the inauguration of that institution's academic year." It also contains parts of Benedict XVI's undelivered speech:

Benedict XVI asks himself: "What is the university? What is its task?" Then he goes on: "The true, intimate, origin of the university lies in the longing for knowledge which is inherent to mankind. Humans want to know what it is that surrounds them. They want truth".

"Truth is never just theoretical. ... Truth means more than knowing. Knowledge of truth has as its goal knowledge of good. ... What is the good that makes us true? The truth makes us good, and goodness is truth. This is the optimism that lives in Christian faith, because [that faith] has been granted the vision of the 'Logos', creative Reason which in the incarnation of God was revealed as Good, as Goodness itself".

In this context, the Holy Father presents the example of medieval universities in which, he notes, faculties of philosophy and theology "were entrusted with searching for the truth about man in its entirety and, alongside that, with the task of ensuring that awareness of truth remained high". Then, quoting a formula used at the Council of Chalcedon to describe Christology, Benedict XVI affirms that theology and philosophy must co-exist "without confusion and without separation.

As many have noted, including The Wall Street Journal, "La Sapienza" University was founded in 1303 by Pope Boniface VIII.

One blogger argues that "this does not have anything to do with science. It’s politics, pure and simple, because unlike many of the empty headed 'religious right' leaders who spout cliches, Pope Benedict is a deep thinker (George Weigel, a biographer of John Paul II, says he 'speaks in paragraphs') whose articulate and intricate writings don’t make easy sound bites, but don’t lend themselves to easy dismissal either." That sounds about right. One of the organizers of the protest, physicist Marcello Cini, a professor emeritus of La Sapienza, comes off as the typical leftist ranter (as reported by AFP):

"The Church can no longer use pyres or corporal punishment," Cini said in the communist daily Il Manifesto. "Today it uses the Enlightenment's God of Reason as a Trojan horse to enter the citadel of scientific knowledge."

The scientists' revolt, initially discreet, snowballed after radical students took up the cause.
On Tuesday they briefly occupied the rector's offices seeking the right to demonstrate on Thursday.

Benedict's predecessor John Paul II, who visited the school only once, in April 1991, also faced strident heckling and whistles by small groups of protesters.

Cini said of Benedict on Thursday: "By cancelling, he is playing the victim, which is very intelligent. It will be a pretext for accusing us of refusing dialogue."

And, of course, if Benedict had gone through with the speech, he would have been accused of displaying an arrogant disrespect towards the oh-so-open-minded and tolerant professors and students at the school.

The protesters made much hay out of a speech given by Cardinal Ratzinger in 1990 that discussed science, religion, and, yes, Galileo. Catholic News Service reports:

The protesting Sapienza professors also objected to remarks that then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger made about the church's 17th-century condemnation of Galileo Galilei. They quoted him quoting another author defending the church's condemnation, although they did not point out that the future pope said he found the author's remarks "drastic."

John Allen, Jr. has reproduced the actual remarks by Ratzinger in a talk titled "The Crisis of Faith in Science" (March 15, 1990). Ratzinger, in fact, was offering a nuanced inquiry into the Galileo affair/myth, and in doing so quoted Paul Feyerabend—who was, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Science, one of "most famous philosophers of science" of the 20th century:

Curiously, it was precisely Bloch, with his Romantic Marxism, who was among the first to openly oppose the [Galileo] myth, offering a new interpretation of what happened: The advantage of the heliocentric system over the geocentric, he suggested, does not consist in a greater correspondence to objective truth, but solely in the fact that it offers us greater ease of calculation. To this point, Bloch follows solely a modern conception of natural science. What is surprising, however, is the conclusion he draws: “Once the relativity of movement is taken for granted, an ancient human and Christian system of reference has no right to interference in astronomic calculations and their heliocentric simplification; however, it has the right to remain faithful to its method of preserving the earth in relation to human dignity, and to order the world with regard to what will happen and what has happened in the world.”

If both the spheres of conscience are once again clearly distinguished among themselves under their respective methodological profiles, recognizing both their limits and their respective rights, then the synthetic judgment of the agnostic-skeptic philosopher P. Feyerabend appears much more drastic. He writes: “The church at the time of Galileo was much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself, and also took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo’s doctrine. Its verdict against Gaileo was rational and just, and revisionism can be legitimized solely for motives of political opportunism.”

From the point of view of the concrete consequences of the turning point Galileo represents, however, C.F. Von Weizsacker takes another step forward, when he identifies a “very direct path” that leads from Galileo to the atomic bomb.

To my great surprise, in a recent interview on the Galileo case, I was not asked a question like, ‘Why did the Church try to get in the way of the development of modern science?’, but rather exactly the opposite, that is: ‘Why didn’t the church take a more clear position against the disasters that would inevitably follow, once Galileo had opened Pandora’s box?’

So, Cardinal Ratzinger quoted a famous philosopher of science—who was apparently an agnostic—and is, nearly twenty years later, castigated for said quote. And if this Wikipedia article accurately conveys Feyerabend's thought, the level of irony increases even further:

Feyerabend described science as being essentially anarchistic, obsessed with its own mythology, and as making claims to truth well beyond its actual capacity. He was especially indignant about the condescending attitudes of many scientists towards alternative traditions. For example, he thought that negative opinions about astrology and the effectivity of rain dances were not justified by scientific research, and dismissed the predominantly negative attitudes of scientists towards such phenomena as elitist or racist. In his opinion, science has become a repressing ideology, even though it arguably started as a liberating movement. Feyerabend thought that a pluralistic society should be protected from being influenced too much by science, just as it is protected from other ideologies.

And, in related news:

The archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn said this week that the “intellectual crisis of Europe” is the result of an “incapability of recognizing the truth.”

• "No Weighing, No Disputing, No Such Thing": Ratzinger and Europe | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. | August 11, 2007

Comments

[Ed Peters]

Okay, I think this whole discussion misses a fundamental point, namely, whether what B16 did in canceling his talk was correct. The question is not whether B16 knows more about truth and philosophy and reasoned discourse and univeristy life than do all the yahoos at Sappy U put together. The question is whether he broke his word to the university. I don't know, and would like to know. Here's what I see.

The lawful authority of Sapienza U invited B16 to give a talk there. B16 accepted the invitation. Both sides took subsequent steps in furtherance of that agreement.

A raucous minority of the u. community threatened to protest the pope's talk. The pope canceled his appearance, and failed to give the agreed upon talk. He was not disinvited by the lawful rep of S.U., he chose not to go, and instead mailed his paper to them. Did U authorities or for that matter Roman police tell B16 they could not "guarantee" (whatever that means) his safety, or that grave threats to innocent persons had suddenly arisen? Not that we have been told, and I frankly doubt such claims could be plausibly made. Instead, it seems to me that B16 allowed a bunch of low level morons to overrule his promise to S.U. leaders, and moreover deprived many people who respect and support him of the chance to be strengthened by his appearance.

Might the talk have been disrupted? Maybe. We'll never know. If it had been disrupted, might some good have come from showing the insane left for what it is, as a bunch of bullies shouting down an elderly man. But, the point is, the man himslef would have spoken to the best of his ability, and not called off his effort for fear of, well, fear of what exactly.

Now, anytime one debates an action of sitting pope, one has to recall that popes are not nearly as in charge as we Americans like to think, and frankly, this uncarateristic failure byu B16 to proclaim the truth as promised smacks of "papal handlers" to me, them and their dreaded fear of anything "that doesn't look good."

On the other hand, only the pope, in the final analysis, made the decision not to show. It's a "buck stops here" moment, imho.

[Ed Peters]

ps: sorry for the typos above. if you need any evidence, i'd say proof, that "bella figura" was the main concern here, one need only read Cdl. Bertone's regrets letter. exactly as i feared.

[Rick]

Ahmadinejad can travel to the US and speak at a universaity but the pope can't go one in Italy and speak? What???? Now I know why European culture is dying! Today, I am ashamed to call myself an Italian!

[Brian Schuettler]

I enjoyed reading this positive note at LifeSite:

"Students of La Sapienza opposed to the protests, however, responded by flocking to Benedict's Wednesday general audience at Paul VI Hall on January 16 as a show of solidarity to the Pontiff. They displayed banners that read "If Benedict doesn't come to La Sapienza, La Sapienza goes to Benedict," and "Students with the Pope.""

[Nick Milne]

Typical! I guess he should just stop quoting people, and redact his previous works to remove any instances of this happening.

And, in reading the speech that these unspeakable imbeciles were unwilling to let him deliver, I can't even find the words to describe my revulsion.

[Mark Brumley]

Carl: Sorry the IP edition of TURNING POINT FOR EUROPE? hasn't made its way back into print yet. It's a better translation than the one Allen uses.

[Ed Peters]

I won't harp on this theme if no one is interested. I could be the only one who thinks it was a mistake for B16 to cancel his lecture, but, fwiw, Fr. De Souza's remarks seem thin to me:

"Benedict played the situation masterfully." Did he? Or was it that, for variety reasons having little to do with skill, he managed to land on his political feet, to our delight of course. Is the answer to that question obvious?

"Had he gone, the story would have been about the rude protesters." Well, maybe. But isn't mostly the whole story about the protesters anyway, according to the very next couple of sentences in Fr's article? Isn't all of Italy (?) rising up to denounce protesters? Personally, my guess is that either way, the protesters would have lost the war, but with B16's cancellation, they at least won the battle.

"In declining to appear before such ill-behaved supposed scholars, he focused attention on their closedmindedness." Well, so would he have done by showing up, and perhaps even more starkly. Moreover, he didn't just decline to appear befroe protesters, he also declined to appear before the friends and supporters who had invited him, and whose invitation he had accepted.

As for the student who said there are "three places the pope can't go, Moscow, Beijing, and the university of Rome,” let's be clear: Moscow and Bejing refuse to have the pope; but the pope declined to go the Roman univeristy. Not exactly equivalents, imo. (Permit me to wonder, btw, whether the bella figura crowd in Rome are cringing at the possibility that the Orthodox in Moscow or the Communists in China could construe those remarks as being agreed to by the Vatican.)

Well, possumus disputare, sed cui bono. I'll conclude this way: it's one thing to be prevented from keeping one's word, it's another thing to decide not to keep it. The burden, I think, is the one who changes the agreement to justify it. It's quite possible that they way things worked out was, in fact, the best way they could have gone, and that had the pope kept his date, there would have been disaster. Only God has certain knowledge of contigencies. But this is one I for one will ask about some day. I just don't know what kind of example it set for others who are being asked to face hostile audiences all over the world.

Hollow though it might sound, I sincerely hope I'm wrong this time.

[Dan]

Ed you state your case well but in response I would note that the Pope and his colleagues in the Vatican are much closer to this situation than we are; the Pope had experience with this sort of situation while a professor in Germany in the 1960s; and, I'm guessing, the Pope made a reasonable judgment that he did not want to participate in an ugly, anti-intellectual confrontation that is the exact opposite of what a university is supposed to be about. I think he did exactly the right thing.

[Carl Olson]

Is the answer to that question obvious?

No, it isn't, and I think you make several excellent points. I'm of two minds on this, so won't expose my double-mindedness. But, again, I agree: it's not obvious.

[Mark Brumley]

One important element: the papal lecture has technically been postponed, not cancelled.

What's more, it seems sensible to think that a speaker can reasonably decline to speak, notwithstanding a previous commitment, if his expectation in agreeing to speak in the first place was a respectful hearing and subsequent circumstances make it clear to him that no such respectful hearing will be forthcoming.

[padraighh]

pearls before swine...pearls before swine

[Michael Kremer]

On John Allen's reproducing the Pope's 1990 remarks: actually the entire much longer address in which those remarks are contained is published in a much better English translation in the Ignatius Press book, "A Turning Point for Europe?" pp. 81-111. Flog your own wares, please!

[Carl Olson]

Flog your own wares, please!

I would, except the book is out of print and I don't have a copy. Alas, it is the only Benedict XVI book published by Ignatius Press that I don't own. And since I don't own a copy, I didn't know it was in that particular book. :-)

[Mark Brumley]

As I say, the IP edition hasn't made it back into print yet.

[Spirit of Vatican II]

For information about the witch hunt against a distinguished signatory of the letter of the 67 scientists, see: http://dorigo.wordpress.com/2008/01/17/ratzinger-divides-maiani-unites/

Ratzinger, a Pope of dialogue? Of course not!