Volume > Issue > A Penny Catechism (for Philosophers)

A Penny Catechism (for Philosophers)

EDITORIAL

By James G. Hanink | January 1999

Fides et Ratio (FR) “Faith and Reason,” the Holy Father’s new encyclical, is an old philosopher’s gift to Mother Church, and it calls us to our lessons.

Warm-up question: What did The New York Times say in its news section?

The Times reported that the encyclical signals “paradoxes” — we have a papacy “marked by a return to rigid conformity in doctrinal matters,” and yet we have a Pope who “still meets regularly with scholars to debate ideas….”

Hmm. Was the Times’s dumbfounded woman on the beat, Alessandra Stanley, perhaps angling for an invitation? Are there scholarship funds (not that she’d really need them)?

Enjoyed reading this?

READ MORE! REGISTER TODAY

SUBSCRIBE

You May Also Enjoy

Needed: Warning Labels On Television Sets

Besides being a divisive medium, TV is also a destabilizing medium, a revolutionary medium, and thus a medium not very receptive to traditional values.

Letter to the Editor: November 1994

Horrifyingly Accurate... Oxford Slipping?... Christocentric or Anthropocentric?... Not At Any Price... Our Boys Fought for Gordon Zahn... Parades or Prayers?... What Would Be Worse?...

An Elegy for Bloom

Bloom understands that literary study, in contradistinction to cultural studies, is, and ever will be, an elitist endeavor in the service of aesthetics.