“Guest Column,” by Pope Benedict XVI
“The Christian faith is not a pastime, and the Church is not one club among others of a similar or even of a different sort. Rather, faith responds to the primordial question of man regarding his origin and goal. It bears on those basic problems which Kant characterized as the essential core of philosophy:
What can I know?
What may I hope for?
What is man?
In other words, faith has to do with truth, and only if man is capable of truth can it also be said that he is called to freedom. The first item in the alphabet of faith is the statement: In the beginning was the Word. Faith reveals to us that eternal reason is the ground of all things, or put in other terms, that things are reasonable from the ground up.
Faith does not aim to offer man some sort of psychotherapy; its psychotherapy is the truth. This is what makes it universal and by nature missionary. It is also the reason why faith is intrinsically “quærens intellectum,” as the Fathers say, that is, in search of understanding. Understanding, hence, rational engagement with the priorly given Word, is a constitutive principle of the Christian faith, which of necessity spawns theology. This trait, moreover, distinguishes the Christian faith from all other religions, even from a purely historical point of view. Theology is a specifically Christian phenomenon which follows from the structure of this faith.”
“In what does man’s wretchedness actually consist? Above all, in his insecurity; in the uncertainties with which he is burdened; in the limitations that oppress him; in the lack of freedom that binds him; in the pain that makes his life hateful to him.
Ultimately there is, behind all this, the meaningless of his existence that offers satisfaction neither to himself nor to anyone else for whom it might have been necessary, irreplaceable, consequential.
We can say, then, that the root of man’s wretchedness is loneliness, is the absence of love – is the fact that my existence is not embraced by a love that makes it necessary, that is strong enough to justify it despite all the pain and limitations it imposes…
What man needs is a communion that goes beyond that of the collective; a unity that reaches deep into the heart of man and endures even in death.
The human unity that man requires by nature must know how to answer the problem of death in which it must find its truest confirmation….
Man cannot identify himself with God, but God has identified himself with man – that is the content of the communion that is offered us in the Eucharist.
A communio that offers less offers too little.”
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Benedictus, Day by Day with Pope Benedict XVI, pp 78, 80, edited by Rev Peter John Cameron, O.P., Magnificat, Ignatius Press, 2006, Yonkers: New York, copyright all rights reserved. https://www.ignatius.com/Search.aspx?k=Benedictus+Day+Day
Principles of Catholic Theology, pp 52-53 by Pope Benedict, XVI, Sr. Mary Frances McCarthy, S.N.D., Tr copyright 1997, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, CA. All rights reserved. https://www.ewtnreligiouscatalogue.com/principles-of-catholic-theology/p/BKPBN02151
The Nature and Mission of Theology, p 103, by Pope Benedict XVI, Adrian Walker, Tr. Copyright 1995, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, CA. All rights reserved. https://www.ignatius.com/The-Nature-and-Mission-of-Theology-P1818.aspx
Carol The Catholic, evangelized by Orthodox Jews, nicknamed by Baptists 
[…] It’s what Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard describes in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, of 1846: the decision to choose the reality of faith, not fear, because faith IS the greater reality. […]
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