2023-04-30 18:26:22
The last public event of the pope’s pastoral visit to Hungary was a meeting with the country’s academics and scientists. The Pope urged them to remain humble at all times and to remember that knowledge is truth and truth is freedom.
(Vatican News Network)Pope Francis’ last event in Budapest, Hungary on April 30 was held at the Péter Pázmány University, where he had cordial conversations with Hungarian scholars and cultural figures. In his speech, the Pope focused on the acquisition of knowledge, emphasizing “the need to constantly sow seeds so that they can take root in the soil of reality and bear fruit.”
The Pope specifically cites what the great thinker and theologian Fr. Romano Guardini called “the two ways of ‘knowledge'”: a knowledge that is gentle and skilled and involves relationships, Guardi said. Nee described it as “obtaining through service, creating according to the natural situation, not exceeding the established boundaries”; and another way, he said that it is not inspection, but analysis.
In the second form of knowledge, the Pope pointed out, “matter and energy are directed towards a single purpose”, functioning like a “mechanism”, thus developing “a technique of controlling living things”. “Guardini did not demonize technology,” the pope explained. Technology “has improved life and communication and brought many benefits, but he warns that technology may eventually control and even dominate our lives. He foresees the threat and leaves us with the question: Does life in this system Is it still alive?”
The pope then pointed out that many things that Guardini foresaw seem obvious to us today. “What we need to consider is the ecological crisis, the lack of ethical boundaries, our tendency to look only at our own needs, our greed for profit and power, and the ensuing erosion of our common bonds, resulting in loneliness and anxiety,” said the Pope. It’s just an existential crisis, it’s a social problem.”
The Pope then spoke regarding Robert Hugh Benson’s description of technology in his novel “The Lord of the World,” which he has mentioned many times. It “in a way heralds a future dominated by technology, where in the name of progress everything becomes banal and the same, and declares a new ‘humanism’ that does away with diversity , suppressing the uniqueness of people and abolishing religion”.
Therefore, the Pope emphasized that true intellectuals are genuinely modest. The humble intellectual “feels a duty to be open and communicative, never stubborn and combative. In fact, true culture lovers are never fully satisfied; they always feel a healthy restlessness in their hearts”. The Pope used the words of Jesus: “The truth will set you free.” (John 8:32)
“Hungary has seen a succession of ideologies that profess the truth but fail to give people freedom,” the pope said, a risk that still exists today. For example, the “transition from communism to consumerism”: how easy it is to go from “enforcing limits on thought” to “belief in no limits”!
The Pope reminded: “Jesus offers a way forward; he tells us that the truth frees us from stubbornness and narrowness. The key to this truth is that form of knowledge that is never divorced from love.” The first form of knowledge that Aldini refers to: it involves a relationship with God, it is humble and open, it is down-to-earth and community-minded, it is courageous and constructive.
The pope concluded that universities should foster this form of knowledge. The pope wished that all universities “will always be inclusive beacons of freedom, fruitful humanist workshops, laboratories of hope”.
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