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AGAINST REASON FALEN ILL AND RELIGION ABUSED -LOGOS 4.2 SPRING 2005
In Search of Freedom; Against Reason Fallen Ill and Religion Abused by Pope Benedict XVI*

n the 6th of June, 1944, when the landing of the allied troops in German-occupied France O commenced, a signal of hope was given to people throughout the world, and also to many in Germany itself , of imminent peace and f reedom in Europe. What had happened? A criminal and his party f aithf ul had succeeded in usurping the power of the German state. In consequence of such party rule, law and injustice became intertwined, and of ten indistinguishable. T he legal system itself , which continued, in some respects, still to f unction in an everyday context, had, at the same time, become a f orce destructive of law and right. T his rule of lies served a system of f ear, in which no one could trust another, since each person had somehow to shield himself behind a mask of lies, which, on the one hand, f unctioned as self def ense, while, in equal measure, it served to consolidate the power of evil. And so it was that the whole world had to intervene to f orce open this ring of crime, so that f reedom, law and justice might be restored. We give thanks at this hour that this deliverance, in f act, took place. And not just those nations that suf f ered occupation by German troops, and were thus delivered over to Nazi terror, give thanks. We Germans, too, give thanks that by this action, f reedom, law and justice would be restored to us. If nowhere else in history, here clearly is a case where, in the f orm of the Allied invasion, a justum bellum worked, ultimately, f or the benef it of the very country against which it was waged. To Europe was given, af ter 1945, a period of peace of such duration as our continent had never seen in its entire history. To no small degree, this was the accomplishment of the f irst generation of post-war politicians -- Churchill, Adenauer, Schuman, De Gasperi - whom we have to thank at this hour: We are to give thanks that it was not punishment that was f ixed upon, nor again revenge and the humiliation of the def eated, but rather that all should be accorded their rights. Let us say it openly: T hese politicians took their moral ideas of state and right, peace and responsibility, f rom their Christian f aith, a f aith that had undergone the tests of the Enlightenment, and in opposing the perversion of justice and morality of the party-states, had emerged re-purif ied. T hey did not want to f ound a state upon religious f aith, but rather a state inf ormed by moral reason, yet it was their f aith that helped them to raise up again a reason once distorted by, and held in thrall to ideological tyranny. Across Europe ran a f rontier, and not just across our continent, but dividing the entire world. A great part of Central Europe and Eastern Europe came under the domination of an ideology that subjected state to party, in the end, ef f acing the dif f erence. Here, again, the result was the rule of lies. Visible af ter the collapse of these dictatorships, was the enormous destruction economic, ideological, and psychological - which f ollowed f rom this rule. In the Balkans, there were the entanglements of belligerency, bringing, along with the admittedly ancient burdens of history, new explosions of violence. If Europe, since 1945 was permitted to experience a period of peace (the complications in the Balkans to one side), the state of the world taken as a whole was surely f ar f rom peacef ul. From Korea, through Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Algeria, the Congo, Biaf ra-Nigeria, to the conf licts in Sudan, in Rwanda-Burundi, Ethiopia, Somalia, Mozambique, Angola, Liberia, and on to Af ghanistan and Chechnya, stretches a bloody arc of armed conf lict, to which may be added the

struggles in and concerning the Holy Land, and in Iraq. T his is not the place to undertake a typology of theses wars. But two, in some ways new phenomena, I would like to examine more closely. In the f irst, the cohesiveness of the law, and the capacity of diverse communities to live together, seem suddenly to break apart. Somalia, it seems to me, presents a typical example of the breakdown of the sustaining power of law, and with it, the collapse into chaos and anarchy. T he reasons f or this dissolution of law and the capacity f or reconciliation are many f old. We can list a f ew. In all these realms, the cynicism of ideology has benighted conscience. Side by side with the cynicism of ideology, and of ten closely bound together with it, is the cynicism of the interests and of big business, the ruthless exploitation of the earths reserves. Here also is the good shoved aside by the expedient, and might setup in the place of right. T he other new phenomenon is terror. T he threat that terrors network, (and/or that of commongarden organized crime) growing ever stronger and widespread, might gain access to atomic weapons and to biological weapons, constitutes an increasingly f rightening danger. For as long as these destructive capabilities remained exclusively in the hands of the great powers, one could always hope that reason, and knowledge of the danger that their use would pose to their own people and state, would preclude their employment of these weapons systems. Terror cannot be overcome by f orce alone. Granted that the def ense of right and law against a violence that would destroy them, may and must, f or its own part, according to circumstances, have recourse to caref ully calibrated f orce, f or the protection of law and right. But in order that f orce in the def ense of law and right shall not be itself do wrong, it must subject itself to stringent measures. It must pay heed to the causes of terror, which so of ten has its source in standing injustice, not addressed by ef f ective measures. It must thus, by every means, address the elimination of that antecedent injustice. Above all is it important to vouchsaf e f orgiveness in advance, in order that the circle of violence may be broken. Where a merciless eye-f or-an-eye obtains, there is no way to break f ree of violence. Acts of humanity, which have the power to break the circle of violence, which seek the human in the other and call out to his humanity, are essential, though they seem, at f irst glance, a waste of ef f ort. In all these cases it is important that no one particular power act as the champion of justice. All too easily can interest interf ere with action, and contaminate ones view of what is just. Most urgent is a genuine jus genitum , f ree f rom hegemonic predominance and action which f ollows f rom it: only thus can it remain clear that what is at stake is the def ense of collective law and right, and those also of them who stand, so to speak, on the other side. But in the contemporary clash between the great democracies and an Islamic-motivated terror, deeper questions come into play. Two great cultural systems with very dif f erent f orms of power and moral orientation appear to be I conf lict - the West and Islam. But what is it, the West? And what is Islam? Both are multi-layered worlds with great internal dif f erences - worlds that, in many ways, also intersect. In this respect, the crude antithesis West-Islam, does not apply. Some incline toward a greater deepening of opposition: Enlightened reason is set up against a f undamentalist-f anatical f orm of religion. Truly, the relationship between reason and religion is of the f irst importance in this situation, and the struggle f or the right relationship belongs at the heart of our concern f or the cause of peace. T here are pathologies of religion - we see this; and there are pathologies of reason - we see this, too, and both pathologies are lif e threatening f or peace - indeed, in an age of global power structures, f or humanity as a whole. God or the divine can make f or the absolutizing of ones own power, ones own interests. But there are pathologies of reason totally disconnected f rom God. One would probably denominate Hitler as irrational. But the great explicators and executors of Marxism understood themselves very much as construction engineers, redesigning the world in accordance with reason. Perhaps the most dramatic expression of this pathology of reason is Pol Pot, where the barbarity of such a reconstruction of the world makes its most direct appearance. But the evolution of intellect in the West, also, inclines ever more toward the destructive pathologies of reason. Was not the atom bomb already an overstepping of the f rontier, where reason instead of being a constructive power, sought its potency in its capacity to destroy? When reason, now with the investigation into the genetic code, snatches at the roots of lif e, ever more does it tend to see human being, not any longer as the gif t of God (or of Nature), but as a product to be made. Man is made, and what man can make, he can also destroy. In all this is the

concept of reason made ever f latter. Only what is verif iable, or to be more exact, f alsif iable, counts as rational; reason reduces itself to what can be conf irmed by an experiment. T he entire domain of the moral and the religious, belongs then to the realm of the subjective - it f alls outside of common reason altogether. One no longer sees that as tragic f or religion - each one f inds his own - which means that religion is seen as a kind of subjective ornament, providing a possibly usef ul kind of motivation. But in the domain of the moral, one seeks to be better. Reason f allen ill and religion abused, meet in the same result. To a reason f allen ill, all recognition of def initively valid values, all that stands on the truth capacity of reason, appears f inally as f undamentalism. All that remains is reasons dissolution, its deconstruction, as, f or example, Jacques Derrida has set it out f or us. He has deconstructed hospitality, democracy, the state and f inally, the concept of terrorism, only to stand in horror in the f ace of the events of September 11th. A f orm of reason that can acknowledge only itself and the empirical conscience paralyzes and dismembers itself . A f orm of reason that wholly detaches itself f rom God, and wants simply to resettle Him in the zone of subjectivity, has lost its compass, and has opened the door to the powers of destruction. It is the duty, in these times, of us Christians to direct our concept of God to the struggle f or humanity. God himself is Logos, the rational f irst cause of all reality, the creative reason out of which the world came to be, and which is ref lected in the world. God is Logos Meaning, Reason, Word, and so it is through the way of reason that man encounters God, through the espousal of a reason that is not blind to the moral dimension of Being. T here is a second point. It belongs, as well, to a Christian belief in God, that God - eternal reason - is Love. It f ollows, too, that He does not represent a relationless, self -orbiting Being. Precisely because He is sovereign, because he is the Creator, because He embraces everything, He is Relation and He is Love. Belief in the God who became human in Jesus Christ, and in his suf f ering and death f or humanity, is the highest expression of this conviction: that the heart and hinge of all morality, the heart and hinge of Being itself , and its inmost source is Love. T his declaration represents the strongest repudiation of any ideology of violence whatsoever; it is the true apologia of humankind and of God. But let us not f orget that the God of Reason and Love, is also the Judge of the world - the guarantor of justice - bef ore whom all men must make account. T here is a justice love will not annul. T here is yet a third element of Christian tradition that I wish to mention, that, in the af f lictions of our time, is of f undamental importance. Christian belief - f ollowing in the way of Jesus - has negated the idea of political theocracy. It has - to express it in modern terms - produced the worldliness of states, wherein Christians along with the adherents of other convictions live together in peace. T hus is distinguished the Christian belief that the Kingdom of God does not exist as a political reality, and cannot so exist, but rather, through f aith, hope and love is it attained, and the world transf ormed f rom within. But under the conditions of temporality, the Kingdom of God is no worldly empire, but rather, a call f or the f reedom of humanity and a support f or reason that it may f ulf ill its own mission. T he temptations of Jesus were ultimately about this distinction, about the rejection of political theocracy, about the relativity of states and reasons own law, as well as about the f reedom to choose, which is meant f or every person. In this sense, the secular state f ollows f rom of a f undamental Christian decision, even if it required a long struggle to understand this in all its consequences. T his worldly, secular state incorporates, in its essence, the balance between reason and religion, which I have tried here to present. However, it stands against secularism as an ideology, which would, as it were, construct the state f rom pure reason, released f rom all historical roots, and which can thus recognize no moral f oundations that are not discernable to reason. All that is lef t it, in the end, is the positivism of the greatest number, and with it the abasement of right; ultimately, it is to be governed by a statistic. If the countries of the West were to commit wholly to this path, they could not indef initely withstand the press of the ideologues and political theocrats. Even a secular state may - indeed, must - f ind its support in the f ormative roots f rom which it grew, it may and must acknowledge the f oundational values without which, it would not have come to be, and without which, it cannot survive. Upon an abstract, an a-historical reason, a state cannot endure. *Written as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on the 60th anniversary of the Allied landing in Normandy. It was initially published in the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and was translated f rom the German by Jef f rey Craig Miller.