Cardinal Schonborn spoke at Benedictine College Jan. 31, 2010 and received the Cross of the Order of St. Benedict from the university. Video photos and more here.
Cardinal Christoph Schonborn came to Benedictine College yesterday and gave two masterful addresses (a homily which Jack Smith addresses here and a lecture). The Archbishop of Vienna and President of the Austrian Bishops’ conference is too deep a thinker to do justice to in a blog post. But he did say some startling things. So herewith, I attempt only to give you my personal top five revelations from his lecture.
1. The Student’s Oops. Ten days before his fateful Regensburg address on Sept. 12, 2006, a former student loaned Pope Benedict XVI an ancient dialogue about Islam ...
Remember that line that was taken out of context and used to fuel riots in the Muslim world? The one from 14th century Byzantine emperor Manuel II to an “educated Persian”? The one which asked what new Mohammed had brought but the “evil and inhuman” … a line Pope Benedict XVI ad-libbed was addressed with “a startling brusqueness, a brusqueness which leaves us astounded”? The one that thugs used as an excuse to riot, break stuff and burn effigies of the Pope?
Pope Benedict XVI only read the book that line was in within 10 days of his Regensburg address. Cardinal Schonborn told us that at one of Benedict’s famous summer colloquiums with his former students (a tradition he began as a cardinal), a student brought a copy of the dialogues and the Holy Father said he was eager to read them after the meeting, which ended in early September. At least the student knows he wasn’t just being polite. (Find a synopsis of the Regensburg address here.)
2. The Messy Austrian. Cardinal Schonborn’s desk, he said, “is chaos.”
Cardinal Schonborn was distinguishing between an ordered universe in which science is possible – a universe organized by a Creator – and randomness. He said clearly our own universe isn’t random, and he used his own desk as an example of what chaos would look like: A space where nothing has its proper place.
My wife immediately said, “I don’t believe it.” Her maiden name is Beingessner and she can’t imagine an Austrian with such a desk. But a quick check of Wikipedia reveals that Cardinal Schonborn is originally Bohemian, of all things. So I believe him, and I accept my own desk’s chaos as a sign of the existence of a God capable of ordering the universe outside it.
3. Fundamentalism and Scientism are Twins.
Cardinal Schonborn said that the agnostic scientist and the fundamentalist believer essentially have the same understanding of God. Both, victims of nominalism, see God as entirely other, as inscrutable and unintelligible. Such a God is so “foreign” to our experience that we either shrug our shoulders and say, “Who knows?” and look to reason without faith to explain the universe or we accept a religion that is irrational, that we follow out of “blind obedience.”
Cardinal Schonborn said that we don’t follow God out of “blind obedience,” and neither do we follow him only after figuring everything out. We follow him in faith, and deepen our faith with reason.
He quoted a principle of Aquinas which I had never heard before: “Do not defend your faith with stupid arguments, because you make faith ridiculous to the unfaithful.”
4. Darwin is dragged down by Darwinism, Creation by Creationism.
He advocated vigorously studying any and all scientific theories. But he vigorously opposed making ideologies of all or any scientific theories. “Have you ever heard of ‘Einsteinism’?” he asked. “Why should we have a Darwinism? Free Darwin from Darwinism!”
The problem he identifies is demonstrated by another phenomenon he pointed out: The media says you’re either an “evolutionist” or “creationist.” You can’t be something else. Cardinal Schonborn said he was neither … he believes in creation and accepts some evolutionary principles. The universe wasn’t created in six earth days, he knows. Neither was it the product of chance.
To think that life exists “by mere chance is stupid. It’s really an abdication of intelligence,” he said.
5. Learning From Agnostics. Speaking of those summer colloquiums, the Pope doesn’t limit them to Catholics ….
Cardinal Schonborn happened to mention another insight gained by the Holy Father at one of those meetings with former students. The group apparently invited an agnostic scientist to give a presentation. He alerted them to new scientific developments, and also pointed out that the character of life on earth is “astounding” and “improbable” and a possible “door” to belief.
It shows that our Holy Father has the opposite of that ideologizing tendency. As Cardinal Schonborn put it, Benedict XVI has “an immense conceptual clarity,” “deep piety,” and an “enormous capacity to link faith to daily life.”
Cardinal Schonborn’s attitude: “Let science do its work,” he said. “It doesn’t disturb my faith.” He’s never had his faith shaken by science, he said. “It only increases my wonder.”
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Dear Human Ape:
You and your website are God-haunted.
You could sing to God that old Willie Nelson song: “You are always on my mind….”
Don’t fear Cardinal Schonborn—he likes Darwin, he just doesn’t like “Darwinism,” the ideology.
Sounds like that’s a lesson you need to learn!
To think that life exists “by mere chance is stupid. It’s really an abdication of intelligence,” he said.
I agree but natural selection is NOT chance. Cardinal Schonborn should study evolutionary biology instead of disgracing his religion with his ignorance. darwin-killed-god dot blogspot dot com
I think he did implicitly attack sola scriptura - he was pretty clear in rejecting fundamentalism and literalisticism, which is the result of separating faith (or the words of Scripture) and its context. He didn’t say this explicitly, but I came away from the lecture with this understanding.
I also came away from the lecture with a strong sense of unity between his lecture and the homily at Mass beforehand. At Mass he lamented the loss of faith and boredom with religion in Europe; in the lecture he pointed to its cause - nominalism, which forced a false sense of transcendence to the exclusion of God’s immanence, resulting in an unbridgable separation between the life of God and life in the world, and between religious faith and scientific knowledge.
No, sir, it is YOU who must face the truth. This is NOT a poorly written column.
It’s a poorly written BLOG POST.
You can time me out, but you cannot run from the truth. This is a poorly written column!
He wasn’t really clear on it ... he mentioned only “fundamentalism.” My impression was that he wasn’t referring to a particular group but a strain of thought that considers all nuanced theological speculation fruitless. Not all sola scriptura Protestants fall into that category. And many Catholics do.
He was critiquing the attitude that says, “God’s ways are beyond us, so don’t bother trying.”
By saying “agnostic scientist and the fundamentalist believer essentially have the same understanding of God. Both, victims of nominalism, see God as entirely other, as inscrutable and unintelligible”, are you inferring that Cardinal Schonborn is criticizing evangelical/fundamentalist sola scriptura worshipers? I am a little confused on the point here.
For those who are interested ... I updated the post to include a link to Jack Smith’s post on the homily.
http://catholickey.blogspot.com/2010/02/we-are-nazareth-cardinal-schonborn.html
They’re still working on putting it together ... here is where it will be. THere are photos, etc., there now:
http://www.benedictine.edu/benedictine.aspx?pgID=1186&newsID=2039&exCompID=358
IF that doesn’t work, go to www.benedictine.edu and click the picture of the cardinal.
Where can we read the full text of the speech, please? (And thank you)
2Peter 3:8
“But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.”
Psalm 90:4
“For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.”
The article says:
“3. ... Cardinal Schonborn ... 4. ... he believes in creation and accepts some evolutionary principles. The universe wasn’t created in six earth days, he knows.”
If Cardinal Schonborn knows “The universe wasn’t created in six earth days”
it seems he is telling us we cannot believe the words SPOKEN by God, such as:
Exodus 20
The Ten Commandments
1 And God spoke all these words:
. . .
8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.
9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work,
10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates.
11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. ...”
See: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=2&chapter=20&version=31
Hmmmm ... it’s a fair point, but a quick check suggests that it’s not just opponents who talk of Darwinists and Darwinism.
Richard Dawkins uses Darwinism, and not as a pejorative:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4633079169415752395#
Stanford’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy includes it:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/darwinism/
The Darwinists at this site celebrate Darwinism:
http://www.universaldarwinism.com/
This article quotes Harvard sources using Darwinism and Darwinist:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/darwinism.html
Here, an early Darwinist wrote a book on what he believed and called it Darwinism:
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/14558
And here’s a Cambridge lecture that uses it:
http://web.archive.org/web/20060924065722/http://www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/gould85.pdf
Actually, biologists don’t call themselves ‘Darwinists’ any more than physicists call themselves ‘Einsteinists’. The term ‘Darwinist’ is a term used entirely by opponents of evolutionary theory.
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