Vatican City, Mar 7, 2005 / 22:00 pm
Yesterday, Cardinal Paul Poupard, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, presented a talk showing that “faith and reason cannot contradict each other since both seek to understand the truth about nature, human nature, and God, the author of all created reality."
The address, entitled, "Hope and Anguish: the Church's Involvement with Science," was presented during a one-day conference on "Science, Faith and Culture," jointly organized by the pontifical council and by Blackfriars Hall of Oxford University in England.
Cardinal Poupard said in his talk that, "Today, cultural trends marked by relativism, indifference, irrationalism and ignorance continue to impede the human search for truth.”
He continued, saying that, “The Church's teaching that reason is at the heart of every human act has come to the aid of science, and science provides insights to further understand Revelation."
The cardinal concluded by affirming that "a part of the Church's hope is in science, and a part of science's current anguish finds resolution in the Church's humanistic teaching."