“Is it possible to create a new and fruitful synthesis between faith and contemporary culture?”. That’s the question that guided the work of the international Congress “Towards a new Christian culture” held in recent days. Organized by the Catholic University of Murcia (Spain) in collaboration with the Pontifical Council for Culture, the congress was attended by some 1,200 delegates, plus 120 experts, including philosophers, theologians and sociologists, who tried to examine the different implications of contemporary culture. Discussion passed from an analysis of “human nature as rational nature that seeks the truth of the world, of itself and of God”, to a review of the Church’s teachings on the relation between the “truth sought by philosophy and the Truth that comes from Revelation”. Nor were the problems of our own time ignored, including “economic development, the common good, interreligious dialogue, scientific and technological progress and nihilism”. All this led to the conclusion that “when culture betrays its thirst for truth, a schism inevitably opens between it and faith, which in turn betrays the very nature of man”. The need to avoid this risk must lead all Christians “to reflect more deeply on culture and update themselves in this field said Cardinal Paul Poupard, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, on opening the congress because “this is where the destiny of man and of humanity is being played out”.
