Pope urges Professors to Find Solutions to "Crisis of Modernity"

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This is from our diocesan newsletter.

Pope Benedict XVI urged university professors to create solutions for the "crisis of modernity" as well as investigate Christianity's contribution to the study of human nature.
"Europe is presently experiencing a certain social instability and diffidence in the face of traditional values", but its history and universalities "have much to contribute to shaping a future of hope", he told participants in the first European meeting of university professors. The participants came to the Vatican to meet the pope June 23.
Representatives from around the world came to Rome for the June 21-24 meeting. "A New Humanism for Europe: The Role of Universities", sponsored by the Council of European Bishops Conferences.
The current cultural shift "is often seen as a challence to the culture of the university and Christianity itself rather than a horizon against which creative solutions can and must be found", Pope Benedict said.
"A false dichotomy between theism and authentic humanism, taken to the extreme of positing an irreconcilable conflict between divine law and human freedom, had led to a situation in which humanity, for all its economic and technical advances, feels deeply threatened", said the pope.
The question of people and modernity "challenged the church to devise effective ways of proclaiming to contemporary culture" the realism of Christianity in the work of Jesus, said the pope.
"Christianity must not be relegated to the world of myth and emotion, but respected for its claim to shed light on the truth about man, to be able to transform men and women spiritually, and thus to enable them to carry out their vocation in history" Pope Benedict said.
The pope said that "knowledge can never be limited to the purely iintellectual realm; it also includes a renewed ability to look at things in a way free of prejudices and preconceptions and to allow ourselves to be amazed at reality, whose truth can be discoverd by uniting understanding with love"
Only God " can prevent us from truncating realtiy at the very moment when it demands ever new and more complex levels of understandinig", he said.
Society needs "the practical aspects of directing research and activity to the promotion of human dignity and to the daunting task of building the civililzation of love", he said. "University professors in particular are called to embody the virtue of intellectual charity recovering their primordial vocation to train future generations not only by imparting knowledge but by the prophetic witness of their own lives".
Pope Benedict also called for a "unity of knowledge" to counter "the tendency of fragmentation and llack of communicability that isi all too often the case in our schools". He said unity of knowledge "can encourage the growth of European unity".
"Only a Europe conscious of its own cultural identity can make a specific contribution to other cultures, while remaining open to the contribution of other peoples", the pope said.
 
I think that the Catholic Church has a record that speaks for itself and sheds light on how it's claims for understanding should be treated.

As far as removing God truncates an understanding or appreciation of reality please refer to sig.
 
I think this is pretty cool. Essentially, without the Christianity context, it is what people in my field of work have been researching/saying for years. We have a holistic approach to learning, and we believe in educating the "whole" student. Much of that involves allowing them to do some inner-reflection and learn more about them selves, and most especially to look at the world around them with their eyes wide open.

And even now there are studies showing the significance of spiritual development in student development.
 
I think that it means that students embracing superstition doesn't represent progression as much as it does regression and that becoming more ethical is not dependent on any sort of spiritual development.
 
right. ethical development is cognitive development. spiritual development has more to do with the influences of spiritual and religious communities on one's personal growth. these too, can alter how students see themselves and look at the world, within a spiritual context.
 
So significance is neutral, it doesn't imply that spiritual development is a positive or negative force upon any student.
 
I think spiritual development can mean growing closer to God. It can also mean moving away from a "religious" life and belief in God.

College is a time when young people are truly on their own for the first time in their lives and they have to decide what role God will/will not play in their lives.
 
The intro *does* remind me of the infamous Syllabus of Errors, which pissed off President Lincoln. It denounced "liberalism", in the sense of freedom of speech, as an error.
 
Society needs "the practical aspects of directing research and activity to the promotion of human dignity and to the daunting task of building the civililzation of love", he said. "University professors in particular are called to embody the virtue of intellectual charity recovering their primordial vocation to train future generations not only by imparting knowledge but by the prophetic witness of their own lives".

Pope Benedict also called for a "unity of knowledge" to counter "the tendency of fragmentation and llack of communicability that isi all too often the case in our schools".
Uh huh. Well, ending 'publish or perish' and the system of scholars' careers rising or falling on the strength of their research rather than their teaching might be a good place to start; the intense specialization demanded by that is where most of said "fragmentation" comes from. It's not caused by professors coming from different religious backgrounds.
 
A_Wanderer said:
So significance is neutral, it doesn't imply that spiritual development is a positive or negative force upon any student.

actually no. engagement in spiritual or religious communities and activities has shown to have significant positive influence on a student's psychosocial behavior. check out any journal article by Astin. he's done loads about this topic.
 
But is the same not true for any community and network of caring friends and family, just because spirituality provides an obvious link to social structures that are beneficial doesn't mean that it is the thought process (or lack thereof) that makes one psychologically healthy.

I read the 2004 article on the projects page and it came across as promoting a role for broad spirituality to help build community, to tie students education into their lives and enrich their worldview. It wasn't promoting religion per se and it was done in a country with pretty high rates of religious observance. But at the same time it seems to highlight spirituality as somehow enriching peoples lives overall. I guess theres a fine place for studies like that and for adapting education services to meet the demands of students but as an individual (lone worthless data point) I just dont see it.

I mean I think that I have a profound absence of spirituality, I see such pursuits as effectively meaningless tricks produced by the mind to fill in gaps in knowledge and comprehension. I don't see the point in it, and you quite rightly distinguished between spirituality and ethics.

Even if a lie of faith had benefits I still wouldn't or quite possibly couldn't accept it and I don't think that in any way stunts my intellectual development.
 
But what the Pope's talking about here seems to be something professors specifically (Catholic university professors, one assumes) should be held accountable for. Actually, I'm pretty sure this is an extension of earlier directives from the Pope, because I know from talking to friends who teach at Notre Dame that a new initiative to preserve the Catholic character of the university is very much an 'issue' there at the moment. They don't seem to have worked it out too well yet though; so far the proposals have mostly had to do with religion-based hiring preferences, and competing vague proposals as to how individual departments should go about defining what 'Catholic character' looks like with regard to their own particular discipline's curricular framework. I don't see how you could implement anything beyond the broadest sorts of overtures at...what exactly? cultivation of 'civic virtues' or some similar?...in a typical public college setting.
 
A_Wanderer said:
But is the same not true for any community and network of caring friends and family, just because spirituality provides an obvious link to social structures that are beneficial doesn't mean that it is the thought process (or lack thereof) that makes one psychologically healthy.

I read the 2004 article on the projects page and it came across as promoting a role for broad spirituality to help build community, to tie students education into their lives and enrich their worldview. It wasn't promoting religion per se and it was done in a country with pretty high rates of religious observance. But at the same time it seems to highlight spirituality as somehow enriching peoples lives overall. I guess theres a fine place for studies like that and for adapting education services to meet the demands of students but as an individual (lone worthless data point) I just dont see it.

I mean I think that I have a profound absence of spirituality, I see such pursuits as effectively meaningless tricks produced by the mind to fill in gaps in knowledge and comprehension. I don't see the point in it, and you quite rightly distinguished between spirituality and ethics.

Even if a lie of faith had benefits I still wouldn't or quite possibly couldn't accept it and I don't think that in any way stunts my intellectual development.

wow loads of points here. lets see...

yes, you are right. that same can be true for any community of like minded individuals. the idea here is to get students to engage in activities and experiences that can widen their perceptions of the world around them. this in turn helps them develop a better sense of self, and socializes them to diverse populations, and helps them feel like they have an impact, or a role in the community. it is all about empowering the individual and teaching how to respect others.

spirituality or nonspirituality has no effect on intellectual development. like i said, it promotes psychosocial growth, which in essence, is how one perceive's oneself and others/the world around him/herself. this isn't intellect by any means. i mean damn, sometimes i can't even respond to your posts, or i have to reread them many times because you're clearly a genius and it takes me a bit longer to process those big words you say. you have a very eloquent command of the english language to!

so yes, you are right, ANY community that brings the student out into the world promotes psychosocial development. and psychosocial development is not at all related to intellect.
 
Big words does not an intelligent person make, I think that philosopher Rumsfeld discussed the nature of knowns, unknowns and known unknowns :wink: I know a little about stuff on FYM, I know a bit more about stuff on palaeontology, biology and geology and I know that I don't know a lot of stuff on everything. Anyhow the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance (see im not that much against the humanities ;) pegs that being a genius isn't purely a function of potential but of how hard they work at it (im hoping that an above average intellect with enough hard work can end up getting far).

Perhaps a lot of it is to do with the type of education, I studied pure science and the units I took just didn't relate anything to how we live our lives or interact with community. I see them as independent, now this sort of eduction is a step apart from the social sciences and the teaching methods may also differ (of course I have little point of reference for tertiary level humanities courses other than they demand more essays and less practical work than science).

But I really do think that an unhealthy degree of skepticism is demanded on matters of any religious institution (one hardly needs to touch matters of doctrine and faith to have problems with the Catholic Church).
 
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Well, perhaps a fool could say big words, but it certainly takes somebody of high intelligence to know how to properly use them.

In my field of work, we believe that learning happens both outside and inside the classrooms. For example, an engineering student who has spent some time volunteering and building water systems in a country in Latin America is going to have a very different perspective on her/his studies than an engineering who has spent his/her entire college career doing nothing but studying. That's why so many higher education institutions also encourage cooperative studies, internships, volunteering, co-curricular activities, studying abroad, etc. All of that takes the student outside of a classroom, places them in a particular community, and enriches their learning experience.

That's why we also encourage students in whatever field of study to participate in co-curricular activities. They meet more people, are introduced to different cultures, have to face a whole new sort of conflicts and challenges, and so on. It is all about building character.

I'm not saying yours or anybody's education is any less valid. A degree is a degree is a degree. However, I've just learn that it is important for students to hav
 
I was told that your a :censored: idiot if you get a job without your honours, luckily i'm gunning a bit higher than that.
 
When Vatican passed the law of protecting the right of same sex marriage and abortion, I'd believe what this big-hat-man said.
 
The problem with this and any other Vatican pronouncement is that it is filled with "code phrases." "Modernity" is an interesting choice of word, because the word of choice for centuries was "modernism"--which was declared a heresy by Pope Pius X in 1907, mainly because it challenged church authority and its insistence on unchanging "absolute truth." This defiant stance was rescinded in 1967, mainly because the term had been abused and was considered to be overly ambiguous. The fact that Benedict XVI is digging up this pre-Vatican II corpse is quite telling.

Other than that, there's some interesting choice of words in here. Combining "traditional values" (i.e., whatever the Vatican says) with a "future of hope" is probably a reference to what they view as the "culture of death," a phrase tinted with anti-abortion polemics and homophobia. "Authentic humanism" is a swipe against self-described humanists, who are often agnostic or atheist.

Basically, this is nothing all that special in the larger history of Vatican appeals. In my view, if the Vatican wishes to revive its relevance in the "modern" world, they need to sit down and evaluate their own conscience, rather than stubbornly accusing the outside world of being entirely wrong. This requires sitting down and deciding which doctrines and ideas are the core of Christianity and which ones are just the fallible philosophical concepts of medieval theologians.

That's not to say that they have to or even need to toss out everything from medieval traditions; they just need to sit down and ask why they still exist, beyond a stubborn insistence on tradition. It has to be remembered that there were female priests for the first few centuries of Christianity and married priests for the first millennium. Both of these changes were the result of medieval theologians.

I also believe that if they want to be more relevant on modern family life, they need to moderate on their absolute opposition to contraception and their medieval view of sex. I'm not expecting them to ever approve of abortion. The fight between those for and against it is, for the most part, philosophical, rather than scientific. If you don't believe that life begins at conception, there's no hard-and-fast rule to claim when life begins. If you believe that life begins at birth, it ignores that, in a hypothetical scenario, the fetus could be ripped out of the womb early and survive independently. However, things like condom use, masturbation, and oral sex, even if it is not all that elegant or romantic to talk about, are things that even married couples engage in. And I won't even start on their haphazard views on homosexuality, which include a theoretical acceptance of the scientific views, rhetorical tirades against it based on medieval theology, and a private admission that the Bible makes no mention of modern homosexuality (since their Biblical scholarship is generally quite admirable, even from a secular POV).

If they are to oppose abortion, then they should, at least, advocate for a society that is conducive to having a family. Scapegoating homosexuals, which has been their traditional cop out highlighting the Vatican's out-of-touch irrelevance, ignores that many people are not having children, because they flat-out can't afford them and have the luxury to prevent pregnancy. I'll tell you right now that after going through six years of college and $50,000 in debt, the last thing I can handle right now is children. Children aren't going to pay my student loans, and not being able to work a flexible schedule that often requires long days would be a career liability. I also don't think it's fair to a child to have them raised by day care centers, in my personal opinion. Note that I'm not judging anyone here who might fit that bill; my sole point is that this personal conviction is a reason for me to hold off from having children indefinitely.

Instead, the modern Catholic Church is corrupted by politics. For all their polemics and threats against "liberals," conservative Catholics are just as schismatic. They often support the death penalty and war, in defiance of the Vatican's opposition to both. There are many that flat out reject the Second Vatican Council. And when conservative politicians (ab)use moral positions merely as vote getters to advance their corruption, the Vatican not only doesn't call them on it--they often encourage it. This is a church that has often supported any government that pays lip service to it, no matter how authoritarian or cruel it is--most infamously Francoist Spain. And they wonder why the Spanish public flat out ignores them today? You reap what you sow.
 
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