Theology. How To Defend Against Counterfeits

One of these, Benedict XVI has said, is the use of public opinion against the magisterium of the Church. Another is the prejudice that faith in God generates violence. The lecture of the pope theologian to theologians 

by Sandro Magister

ROME, December 14, 2012 – Last week, at its annual plenary session, the international theological commission made an unusual gesture.

On December 6, the thirty theologians who compose it, with their president Gerhard L. Müller, cardinal prefect of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, went in pilgrimage to the papal basilica of St. Mary Major.

The commission had announced and explained the meaning of this gesture in a previous message released in mid-October:

"To entrust its own work, and that of all Catholic theologians, to the faithful Virgin, proclaimed 'blessed because she believed' (Lk 1:45), model of believers and bulwark of the true faith.”

But the central theme of the message – “theology does not exist except in relation to the gift of faith” – was also unusual:

Unusual because the current fashion – external to the Church but also present within it – attributes to theology and to the qualification of theologian a meaning detached from faith, of mere “scientific” knowledge of religion.

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