The centrality of faith in the ecclesial experience and the relationship between science and faith are the two main issues dealt with by Benedict XVI in today’s meeting with the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith that he had chaired for over 20 years at the end of his plenary meeting. "I can’t help recalling with some emotion said the Pope such an intense and fruitful time". The Holy Father recalled that ecclesial life, "without the perception of the centrality of Christian faith", can lose "its original liveliness" and wear out, "reducing itself to sterile activism or to a political cunning inspired by wordly motives". And about the confrontation of faith and the progress of science, sometimes "so quick that it becomes very complicated to recognise how they are compatible with the truths revealed by God about man and the world", according to the Pope it’s "crucially important" to "gain an insight of the truths discovered by reason". "The Church he specified joyfully welcomes the real conquests of human knowledge and recognises that evangelisation also demands that it take upon itself the horizons and the challenges that modern knowledge discloses". And "the great progress made by scientific knowledge, as we have seen in the last century, has helped get a better understanding of the mystery of creation, thus leaving its mark on the conscience of all peoples". (to be continued)
