Only faith and reason together will save man, says Cardinal Re

Paris, France, Oct 5, 2009 / (CNA).-

During his remarks at the opening of the Plenary Assembly of the Council of Episcopal Conferences of Europe, the prefect for the Congregation for Bishops, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, referred to Pope Benedict XVI’s recent encyclical “Caritas en veritate” and said, “Only faith and reason together will save man.”

In his speech the cardinal said, “Reason always needs to be purified by the faith and at the same time religion always needs to be purified by reason in order to show its authentic human face.”

He also stressed the importance of promoting an appropriate relationship between Church and State, “a healthy secularism that allows co-existence and collaboration between faith and reason, so that they mutually help one another.”

The current crisis affecting Europe, Cardinal Re said, “constitutes a challenge” for believers, who must not yield in their efforts to save “non-negotiable values such as life, the family, the centrality of the human person, freedom of education and of religion.”

For this reason, he stressed, “the European Union must not be merely a market for economic exchange or a place of free circulation, but rather it must become an authentic community of nations that desire to unite their destinies and live in justice and solidarity, promoting what Paul VI called the civilization of love.”