2024-05-10 11:39:34
Theological knowledge is essential in view of the “challenges of technological and scientific progress” and is valuable in the current era of change. The Pope emphasized this on Friday to members of the International Network of Societies for Catholic Theology.
Mario Galgano – Vatican City
Creative fidelity to tradition, transdisciplinarity, collegiality – these are the three “directions of development” of theology, called to be “a companion to the sciences and to all critical knowledge,” the Pope said in his speech. In this way, theology helps to ensure that the different cultures do not “collide” but instead “become a symphony in dialogue”.
Francis received members of the International Network of Societies for Catholic Theology in an audience at the Vatican on Friday. It is a network that aims to promote academic theology and theological research in the various majors through communication between member societies, through research projects and conferences, and to support ecumenism and dialogue between religions.
Valuable service
“Theology is a valuable ecclesial service that we need,” Francis emphasized. In fact, it is “valuable in the changing times in which we live, in multi-ethnic societies in constant mobility, in which different people, languages and cultures are connected to each other to engage in a critical consciousness with the construction of coexistence “to be focused on peace, solidarity and universal brotherhood and the care of our common town”.
Theology is also needed in relation to new technical developments, because “the challenges of technical and scientific progress – just think of artificial intelligence – compel us today to come together to understand what the person, what is worth to the person, what is human in it. irreducible because it is divine, namely the image and likeness of God in Christ,” the Pope continued. He then focused on tradition, transdisciplinarity and collegiality as the three essential “ingredients” of the vocation of the Catholic theologian at the heart of the Church.
The audience in the Vatican
“Tradition is alive,” the Pope emphasized, because it includes the Gospel, which is “the wisdom of life for all”; Therefore the transdisciplinarity of knowledge is not a “fad” but a “necessity of theological science” which “listens to the discoveries of other sciences to deepen the teaching of faith, and at the same time offer Christian wisdom for human development.” the sciences”. Francis continued with the responsibility for such a “hard” task, “it is also known as the collegiality and synodality of the research path.”
Teachings of Benedict XVI
This is a service that cannot be achieved without rediscovering the “scientific character of theology”, said Francis, quoting Benedict XVI, “who rightly asked all the sciences to expand the limits of scientific rationality according to the meaning of reason”. This expansion must also take place in theology, “so that it is vital knowledge for the life of each person and God’s people, which combines science and virtue, critical reason and love”. “The Catholic faith is a faith that works through charity, or it is a dead faith,” the Pope said. “So the theology of wisdom is the theology of love,” he said.
(Vatican news)
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