Mr President,
Distinguished Rectors and Professors,
Dear Students and Friends,
Our meeting this evening gives me a welcome opportunity to
express my esteem for the indispensable role in society of
universities and institutions of higher learning. I thank the
student who has kindly greeted me in your name, the members of
the university choir for their fine performance, and the
distinguished Rector of Charles University, Professor Václav
Hampl, for his thoughtful presentation. The service of academia,
upholding and contributing to the cultural and spiritual values
of society, enriches the nation's intellectual patrimony and
strengthens the foundations of its future development. The great
changes which swept Czech society twenty years ago were
precipitated not least by movements of reform which originated
in university and student circles. That quest for freedom has
continued to guide the work of scholars whose diakonia of truth
is indispensable to any nation's well-being.
I address you as one who has been a professor, solicitous of the
right to academic freedom and the responsibility for the
authentic use of reason, and is now the Pope who, in his role as
Shepherd, is recognized as a voice for the ethical reasoning of
humanity. While some argue that the questions raised by
religion, faith and ethics have no place within the purview of
collective reason, that view is by no means axiomatic. The
freedom that underlies the exercise of reason - be it in a
university or in the Church - has a purpose: it is directed to
the pursuit of truth, and as such gives expression to a tenet of
Christianity which in fact gave rise to the university. Indeed,
man's thirst for knowledge prompts every generation to broaden
the concept of reason and to drink at the wellsprings of faith.
It was precisely the rich heritage of classical wisdom,
assimilated and placed at the service of the Gospel, which the
first Christian missionaries brought to these lands and
established as the basis of a spiritual and cultural unity which
endures to this day. The same spirit led my predecessor Pope
Clement VI to establish the famed Charles University in 1347,
which continues to make an important contribution to wider
European academic, religious and cultural circles.
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
Europe, 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 humanity. 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 engaged, 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 knowledge or skills, butpaideia, 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 indiscriminately give equal value to practically
everything. The relativism that 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 prosperous 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
religion 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
(cf. Fides et Ratio, Proemium). Each supports the other and each
has its own scope of action (cf.ibid., 17), 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 guarantee of freedom" (Caritas
in Veritate, 9). This confidence in the human ability to seek
truth, to find truth and to live by the truth led to the
foundation of the great European universities. Surely we must
reaffirm this today in order to bring courage to the
intellectual forces necessary for the development of a future of
authentic human flourishing, a future truly worthy of man.
With these reflections, dear friends, I offer you my prayerful
good wishes for your demanding work. I pray that it will always
be inspired and directed by a human wisdom which genuinely seeks
the truth which sets us free (cf. Jn 8:28). Upon you and your
families I invoke God's blessings of joy and peace.
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Look at the One they
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