Meeting with University Teachers and Men of Culture (15 May 1982)
ShareOn Saturday,15 May 1982, the Holy Father met in Coimbra with University Teachers and Men of Culture, to whom he spoke about the growth of culture through the development of one's talents with the aim of perfecting oneself; “in cultivating the sciences and arts, he works for the elevation of the human family and to arrive at the contemplation of God.”
Excellent Magnificent Rector,
Professors and Students of this University,
Ladies and Gentlemen.
1. It is a moment of great joy for me to find myself in this University, one of the oldest in Europe, and intimately linked to the facts of the Church. Since its inception, placed under the protection of God and the Blessed Virgin, it has also assumed, throughout its history, a formal commitment to defend the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. For this reason, I feel a long tradition of Marian devotion pulsating here, elevated to the highest level of national culture.
I particularly greet the Magnificent Rector who welcomed me, I greet the teaching staff, the Professors, the Extraordinary and Assistant Professors and the student body, the dear students, and all those who complete the community of intellectual work in this famous University. I greet, with intensity of feeling, all the men of culture of this noble Nation, present here or represented here.
Recognizing the value of your work on behalf of man, I come to this meeting with respectful esteem, remembering the long years in which I worked in the same university environment, and the happy moments that this coexistence offered me. We are all convinced that it is first and foremost with intelligence and, only afterwards, with work that a new civilization can be shaped, in tune with the aspirations and needs of our era. It is up to you, men of culture, the primordial task of projecting it for the days to come, basing yourselves on the priceless values of your cultural tradition and the immense riches of the Portuguese soul. I find myself here as a friend who opens his heart with trust in an attitude of encouragement and communion for the same problems.
2. You know well how grateful the Church is to culture and how much it respects its promotion. She is very interested in culture, because she knows well what this means for man. The human person, in fact, will not be able to develop completely, both on an individual and social level, if not through culture.
This seems evident, if we consider that culture, in its deepest reality, is nothing other than the particular way that a people has of cultivating their relationships with nature, among its members, and with God, in order to reach a truly human standard of living; it is the “common lifestyle” that characterizes a particular people ( Gaudium et Spes , 53).
Among the various cultures, Portuguese culture occupies a place of honor. A centuries-old, rich culture, with very specific characteristics that clearly distinguish it from other peoples. It expresses the Portuguese's personal way of "being in the world", their own conception of life and their religious sense of existence. It is a culture forged over eight centuries as a nation, and enriched by the multiple and prolonged contacts that Portugal had during its history, with the most diverse peoples of the various continents.
I am grateful, at this moment, to remember the admirable work of civilization that the Portuguese, together with evangelization, achieved over the centuries in all those parts of the world where they arrived. In this environment of contacts with new worlds, and in this level of culture, how can we fail to remember Luis de Camões and his “Lusiadas”, rightly considered as one of the main works of world literature. I also want to recall the notable contribution that your country has made to the development of science with its discoveries. Among the many names we could mention, I limit myself to evoking Pedro Nuñes, the inventor “Nónio”, and the doctor and naturalist Garcia de Horta. Even in the field of the arts, this meeting of civilizations materialized in your unmistakable Manueline style.
3. Culture belongs to man, starting from man and for man.
Culture belongs to man. In the past, when we wanted to define man, we almost always referred to intelligence, freedom or language. Recent progress in cultural and philosophical anthropology shows that a no less precise definition of human reality can be obtained by referring to culture. This characterizes man and distinguishes him from other beings no less clearly than intelligence, freedom and language. In fact, such beings have no culture, they are not creators of culture; at most they are passive receptors of cultural initiatives created by man. To grow and survive, they are endowed by nature with certain instincts and certain aids for both survival and defense; on the contrary, man, instead of these things, possesses reason and hands, which are the organ of organs, since with their help man can equip himself with tools to achieve his ends (cf. S. Thomas, Summa Theologiae , I, 76, 5 ad 4).
Culture comes from man. This person receives freely from nature a set of abilities, talents, as the Gospel calls them, and with his intelligence, his will and his work he must develop them and make them bear fruit. The development of one's talents both by the individual and by a social group, with the aim of perfecting oneself and dominating nature, builds culture. Thus in cultivating the land, man implements God's creative plan; in cultivating the sciences and arts, he works for the elevation of the human family and to arrive at the contemplation of God.
Culture is “ for ” man. This is not only the creator of culture, but also its main recipient. In the two fundamental meanings, the formation of the individual and the spiritual form of society, culture has as its goal the realization of the person in all his dimensions, with all his abilities. The primary objective of culture is to develop man as man, man as person, that is, every man as a unique and unrepeatable example of the human family.
Understood in this way, culture embraces the totality of the life of a people: a set of values that animates it and which, being shared by all citizens, brings them together in the same "personal and collective conscience" (Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi , 18); culture also embraces the forms through which values are expressed and configured, that is, customs, language, art, literature, institutions and structures of social coexistence.
4. Thus, man, as a cultural being - you know it, Ladies and Gentlemen - is not pre-fabricated. He must build himself with his own hands. But according to what plan? What model, if any, should he have before his eyes? There has been no shortage of proposals for this model throughout history. And here, as is well known, the importance of philosophical anthropology appears.
To be valid, a cultural project cannot fail to give primacy to the spiritual dimension, to that dimension which concerns the growth of being, rather than the growth of having. In this regard, allow me to recall what I said to the UNESCO representatives: "Culture is that thing through which man, as man, becomes more man, and furthermore, has more access to "being" . It is also here that the capital distinction is based between what man is and what man has, between being and having (. . .). Man's “having” is not the most important for culture; it is not at least a creative factor of culture, except to the extent that it serves man to "be" more fully man, in all the dimensions of his existence, in everything that characterizes his humanity (John Paul II, Allocutio ad eos qui conventui Consilii ab exsecutione internationalis organisms compendiariis litteris UNESCO nuncupati affuere , 7, die 2 June 1980 : Teachings of John Paul II , III, 1 [1980] 1640). The objective of true culture, therefore, is to make a man a person, a fully developed spirit, capable of achieving the perfect realization of all his faculties.
Historically, every society, every nation, every people has tried to develop a human project, an ideal of humanity, generally attributing primacy to the values of the spirit.
And the Church, as is known, also holds a project of humanity, revived and proposed by the Second Vatican Council. In full agreement with the results of philosophical and cultural anthropology research, the Council affirmed that nature is an essential constitutive element of the person, therefore it must be stimulated by all means.
These are words of the Council itself: culture must aim at the perfection of man, who "by dedicating himself to the various disciplines of history, philosophy, mathematical and natural sciences, and cultivating the arts, can greatly help the human family to rise to more sublime conceptions of truth, goodness and beauty and to form judgments of universal value” ( Gaudium et Spes , 57).
5. In proposing its ideal of humanity, the Church does not intend to deny the autonomy of culture. Indeed, on the contrary, you have the greatest respect for it, just as you have the greatest respect for man; for both she openly defends free initiative and autonomous development. In fact, given that culture derives immediately from the rational and social nature of man, it has a constant need for fair freedom and legitimate autonomy, to act according to its own principles in order to develop. With reason, since always protecting, as is evident, the rights of the individual and of the particular and universal community, culture needs a space of inviolability, demands to be respected and to be able to maintain exemption in relation to political or economic forces ( cf. Ibid . 59).
History, however, teaches us that man, as well as the culture he builds, can abuse the autonomy to which they are entitled. Culture, like its creator, can fall into the temptation to claim for themselves absolute independence before God. They can even go so far as to turn against him. This verification, for us who have the happiness of faith in God, is not done without pain.
The Church is aware of this reality. This is part - you well know, Ladies and Gentlemen - of a perennial struggle between good and evil. And the Church is called, by nature, to point out the good and to cure and eradicate the evil. It received from Christ the mission of saving man from evil, concrete man, historical man, man with his whole being: external and internal, personal and social, spiritual, moral and cultural. And part of the ways to fulfill this mission of the Church is the incentive to culture, both as a spiritual foundation and as social information.
Therefore, in the Church's vision, culture is not something that remains extraneous to faith, but can receive profound and beneficial influences from it. However, it is necessary not to consider the relationship of culture with faith as purely passive. Culture is not only a subject of redemption and elevation; but it can also be an advocate of mediation and collaboration. In fact, God, revealing himself to the chosen people, made use of a particular culture; Jesus Christ, Son of God, did the same: his human incarnation was also a cultural incarnation.
“In the same way, the Church, living over the course of time in different conditions, used the resources of different cultures to make the message of Christ reach all peoples, to explain it, understand it and penetrate it more deeply and to give it a better expression. ; this appears in a particular way in the Liturgy” ( Gaudium et Spes , 58).
Nowadays, without abdicating its tradition, but aware of its universal mission, the Church seeks to dialogue with different forms of culture. She is concerned with discovering what unites the magnificent heritage of the human spirit: despite the fact that the harmony of culture with faith is not always achieved without difficulty, the Church does not give up on the search for rapprochement with all cultures, with all ideological conceptions and with all men of good will.
6. It is well known by all of you, Ladies and Gentlemen, that the living conditions of man today have suffered profound transformations in the social and cultural field, more or less in all parts; to such an extent that it seems legitimate to speak of "a new era of human history" ( Ibid . 54). The development and progress of civilization, marked by the predominance of technology, open new paths to the diffusion of culture, preparatory to the immense advance of the natural, human and social sciences and for the stupendous improvement and coordination of the means of communication.
Therefore I believe that all of us are full of joy, with well-founded reasons and we feel deeply grateful to the world of science and its protagonists.
But this marvelous progress, in which it is difficult not to see the sign of man's authentic greatness, does not fail to raise some concerns. And, not infrequently the question arises in minds: does this progress of which man is the author and supporter, leave a human life on earth, in all its aspects, "more human"? Does man, as man, favored by all this progress, become better? I mean: he presents himself and behaves more spiritually mature, more aware of his dignity, more responsible, more open with others - in particular with the weakest and most needy - and, finally, more available to help everyone (cf. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis , 15)?
There seems to be no doubt today that modern culture, the soul of Western society for centuries and, through this, to a large extent also of other societies, is going through a crisis: it already does not present itself as an animating and unifying principle of society , which, in turn, appears disintegrated and in difficulty in assuming its mission, of making man grow internally in the entire line of his being. This loss of vigor and influence of culture seems to have a real crisis at its core. The sense of truth has suffered a serious impact on all sides. If we look carefully, it is, ultimately, a metaphysical crisis. What follows is the loss of value of the word, the contempt of which has its origins in a certain perplexity and distrust among people.
The man asks himself in anguish: "finally, who am I?". The objective vision of the truth is often replaced by a more or less spontaneous subjective position. Objective morality gives way to an individual ethic, in which everyone seems to propose himself as a norm of action, and wants to be expected to be faithful only to this norm. And the crisis deepens when effectiveness takes on the function of value. As a consequence, manipulations of all kinds arise and man feels more and more insecure, with the impression of living in a society that seems lacking in certainties and ideals and confused in terms of values.
7. In the exercise of the mission which by mysterious design of Providence has been entrusted to me, in the apostolic pilgrimages that I undertake around the world, I am always animated by the desire to be the bearer of a message and to collaborate, with the humble part, but for myself indeclinable, as long as it is within my possibilities, so that an authentic sense of man prevails in minds and hearts, as a meeting point of all good will, with a view to building a world increasingly worthy of man.
In the process of this convergence of good will, centers and men of culture occupy important positions. It is actually a matter of mentally operating people and spiritually animating society; and in this, not only institutions such as the Church, which I represent here, can have a predominant role, but also the centers and structures intended for the creation and promotion of culture. This is how the Universities come into play. And you know my feelings, of great esteem and respect, for the responsibilities that I recognize to universities in the contemporary world.
They are - for me - one of those places, perhaps the main workplace in which man's vocation to knowledge, as well as to man's constitutive bond with truth as the aim of knowledge, becomes a daily reality, becomes in a in a certain way, the daily bread for those who frequent it and for many others eager to know the reality of the world around them and the knowledge of the mysteries of its humanity (cf. John Paul II, Allocutio ad eos qui conventui Consilii ab exsecutione internationalis organisms compendiariis litteris UNESCO nuncupati affuere , 19, die 2 June 1980: Teachings of John Paul II , III, 1 [1980] 1650s).
Ladies and gentlemen,
Portuguese intellectuals and men of culture:
The situation may seem desperate, a harbinger of a “New Apocalypse”. But, in reality, this is not the case. For humanity in the Year 2000 there is certainly a solution and many reasons for hope. It is enough that all men of good will, especially those who profess faith in Christ, seriously commit themselves to a profound renewal of culture in the light of a healthy anthropology and the principles of the Gospel.
I believe that you are already animated - and these are also the wishes I express to you - by a desire to improve the appearance of man and you have an authentic sense of the human person in your noble work. You have in your traditions many clues, many elements of universality, of openness to other peoples, of esteem and sensitivity for noble feelings. It even seems that over the centuries more importance has been given to the heart than to intellectual constructions. The civilization that Portugal spread throughout the world can be said to have given special consideration to the human person. Having explored this in depth, I would like to repeat here an appeal that I believe is known to everyone:
“Open to the saving power of Christ. . . the vast fields of culture, civilization, progress. Do not be afraid. Allow Christ to speak to man (John Paul II, Homilia ob initium ministerii Summi catholicae Ecclesiae Pastoris habita , 5, die 22 Oct. 1978: Teachings of John Paul II , I [1978] 38s), also in Portugal, for the which one and for you I wish the best happiness.
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