Basics: Faith and Reason by Ralph McInerny

“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.”  Thus began John Paul II’s great encyclical on faith and reason, Fides et Ratio. 

Sadly, what John Paul II joined together in marriage, too many in the modern world have attempted to put asunder, seeing faith and reason as not only incompatible, but in opposition to one another.  The Catholic Church, by contrast, has always taught that the truths of faith and the truths of reason will ultimately not contradict one another because both have God as their Author. 

In these two thirty-minute lectures, Ralph McInerny introduces listeners to that great encyclical and to the Church’s perennial teaching on the relationship between faith and reason.”