Beware of reason

Reactions were varied and often amusing to Pope Benedict's supposed faux pas of quoting an old Byzantine emperor's offensive view about Islam recently.

One said that the Pope's language, in the first place, is abstract and high-falutin. It somehow provokes bewilderment, even unease, among his listeners and readers. In other words, his language alone courts controversy.

Forgotten is the fact that the Pope can choose to speak in simple words and in simple ideas, as he did when he successfully engaged little children who recently received first communion in some informal conversation about the sacrament.

Pope Benedict is a very gifted and holy man. Aside from a peak intelligence, he has the gift of tongue that enables him to adapt his language to his audience. Thanks to God, he knows how to simplify very complicated ideas.

And complicated issues are what he likes to grapple with head-on. He is not the type who just wants to say the final word, a common defect among leaders. He obviously wants to get there, but always through a process of a highly analytic reasoning.

We have to be warned that the thoughts and words of the Pope can at first spring in drips from different fields of human interest, then gather and gain strength and momentum like a river formed from different tributaries, until they end in an ocean of knowledge, both perceptible and hidden, both verifiable and mysterious.

In that address in question, the Pope was talking to tough German theologians and philosophers. Being a theologian and philosopher himself, he talked in their language. He should not be faulted for that, should he? He certainly was not in an anti-Islam campaign.

Intellectual talk has its purpose. It may not be for everyone, but it serves to emit a very nuanced view of things, giving a wealth of texture and distinctions, especially needed by modern man now to have some substantive considerations.

This does not mean that the Pope cannot commit some error of judgment by citing in a speech a passage that can offend the sensibilities of some people. This happily is not included in the definition of papal infallibility.

In fact, some opinion-makers made a big issue out of that apparent slip of papal discretion. They offered reasons, and good, valid reasons they all had.

Thing is, we always have reason to support what we want to claim. But we would have a very poor grasp of the situation if we choose to get stuck with this minor and debatable papal lapse in judgment. And miss the bigger concerns.

This point was what the Pope also tried to articulate in that lecture in question. He wanted to warn us about reason, that is, reason alone, without any support from a higher authority and source of wisdom.

He lamented over what appears as a deep cultural defect in the Western mind today. This cultural defect is the Western mind's tendency to limit the scope of reason to what is simply empirical, practical, mathematical.

He said that if "only the kind of certainty resulting from the interplay of mathematical and empirical elements can be considered scientific" in the West today, then we understand where that "hardness of hearing" where God is concerned comes from.

It's in this way, he said, that Western positivistic reason drastically curtails the range of our relationship with reality and is incapable of opening itself to the rationality of faith, which requires a metaphysical drive.

Simply put, our human reason, while it should always be used and not be suspended in any moment as much as possible, should allow itself to be open to and lifted up by a higher source than what it by itself can manage.

It's in this refusal of reason to be lifted up by a higher source-by a supernatural faith-that it gets stuck with silly problems and petty conflicts and controversies.

This can explain why we get entangled with little things and miss out the more important things in our life. We can strain out the gnats, but swallow a whole camel.

Yes, in a way, we have to be careful with how we use our reason.

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