Zadok says:
It seems that as part of the protests, the Rector’s offices were occupied by students today.
One has to imagine that security concerns and the dignity of the Holy Father were the primary concern here. One can imagine that many at the Sapienza University are ashamed what the actions of their colleagues have brought about.
The Pope will, however, be sending the text of his proposed address to the Sapienza.
For lots of coverage, check out Papa Ratzinger Forum:
From the Italian news agency AGR:
ROMA – Clamorous applause greeted the news that the Pope cancelled his visit to La Sapienza during a meeting of protesting students at the department of political sciences.
The students then started to chant “Fuori il Papa dall’Universita” (Keep the Pope out of the university).
Here is Corriere’s round-up of immediate reactions:
“Profound regret” was Prime Minister Romano Prodi’s first comment. “I condemn the actions, the statements and the attitudes which provoked an unacceptable tension and a climate that does no honor to the civilized traditions and tolerance of the Italian people. I therefore express my profound regret for the decision of Pope Benedict XVI, and express my strong and convinced solidarity with him, renewing the invitation to him. No voice should be silenced in his country, least of all, that of the Pope.”
Silvio Berlusconi, president of Forza Italia and former Prime Minister: “This is a wound that is humiliating for the university and for Italy. The cancellation which the Pope was led to in the name of a presumed secularity of knowledge is the sign of intolerance and a certain fanaticism which have nothing to do authentic secularity – that the Italian university and the State have not shown themselves capable of guaranteeing freedom of expression to the highest religious authority.
“On e again, the left should make an examination of conscience: the alliance with intolerant fringe groups and the campaign of ideological anti-clericalism fomented by some parties, have created the climate in which this shameful episode could mature.”
Senate President Franco Marini: “I express my profound regret in my name and in that of the Senate for the way in which this episode has developed and ended.”
House leader Pier Ferdinando Casini: “Congratulations to the signatories of the letter protesting the Pope’s visit. Their intolerance has demonstrated the state of desolation in Italian universities and the cultural weakness of the holdovers from the counterculture of 1968. If these are our children’s teachers, then we must fear for our future.”
Walter Veltroni, Mayor of Rome and secretary of the new Partido Democrata: “This is a blow to liberal culture and the fundamental principle of the free exchange of ideas and respect for institutions. Every criticism is legitimate and the confrontation of views is the oxygen for our coexistence, but every instance of intolerance, such as those that have been demonstrated these oast few days against the Pope, do harm to democracy and freedom.”
Fabio Mussi, Minister for Universities and Research: “This was a very serious mistake for the university and its mission. The university is a place that should welcome not resist (thought). It is not necessary to agree with what the Pope says, but is not right not to let him talk.”
Unbelievable. Sometimes I think that people exagerate the illiberality of secular intellectuals but then something like this happens. La Sapienza should be embarrassed.
My first career was in science,
with employment beginning in 1975.
I’m planning to retire from that career this year
and pursue a second career in humanities.
Science has, I think, lost a lot of ground
over the last 30 years.
There are no more “role model” scientists
in Western society.
More likely, you hear about scientists disgraced
due to fraudulent results, or crazy racist statements
to the media.
Physical sciences are dying as an area of research.
Almost all funding is now directed to
(1) defense (weapons of various sorts) or
(2) bio-medical (desire for eternal life).
All the science disciplines must be servants of the
pursuits of defense from enemies, the last being death.
Not that this shift of emphasis from understanding the world
to controlling death and life is bad, per se, but it comes
with an entire world view and philosophy which is
antithetical to religion in a way that “science as inquiry”
did not.
No more is science a inquiry into the wonders of creation.
More an more it is a very consciously a desire
to become God and control life and death, at any cost,.
-OZ
It’s one more victory for the barbarians.
I’m a little confused. I tried to find the text of the speech that the protesters are angry about. I found part of it when I Googled “Ratzinger” and “Galileo”.
I am not super intelligent, so sometimes Cardinal Ratzinger’s speeches and writings – especially those that are for an academic audience – are not easy to understand.
But, I didn’t see that this speech was necessarily dismissing Galileo. I didn’t see that it was saying that the Church was correct in it’s stance and action against Galileo. He quoted someone who said that the Church’s “verdict against Galileo was rational and just…” but I am not entirely sure that he agreed with that.
But, then again, I might be misinterpreting it.
Can someone help me understand why some of those students and professors are protesting against Pope Benedict?
So now the scientists, the left and advocates for same sex union join the Jihadists in rioting over the Pope’s words. The Holy Father needs our prayers more than ever (hopefully I am not being overly dramatic when I say this: the forces aligned against him are tremendous. One has to wonder why Satan is so active.)
It does seem like he is losing a chance at using the attention this generated to his own advantage. I know it is hard to do while maintaining the dignity of his office but it is possible. Especially when the evidence is so overwhelmingly in his favor. I mean anyone who ever reads him knows he is not the simplton these professors seem to think he is.
How sad. From university (!) students presumably interested in the “pursuit of knowledge”. Yea, right.
)
Cheers from Canada (no student protests here
Tony
Lets not overreact here folks. It is more Italian politics playing themselves out than some kind of secularist Manichean plot. Amy, I also think your title is a bit reactionary.
Rose #5: “One has to wonder why Satan is so active.” Simple. He’s threatened.
Meggan, John Allen at National Catholic Reporter has the full text. Cardinal Ratzinger was making the point that even secular agnostic/not-religous intellectuals were criticizing the Enlightenment’s scientism and were even using the Galileo affair to do so (one pointing out that relativity undercut Galileo’s absolutist claim that the earth is not the center of the solar system and another arguing that Galileo put the West on a path that led to the atomic bomb).
(I think it is Cardinal Ratzinger but it might have been someone else who led me to see that scientism swallows not only religion but also philosophy.)
Randy, I think the Pope did exactly the right thing. To not have cancelled would have been to perpetuate an ugly, anti-intellecual confrontation that would have been the exact opposite of what a university is supposed to be about. When the Pope was a professor in Germany in the 1960s he ran into this same kind of thing. He knows that you cannot deal with these people on their (irrational) terms.
May the Good Lord take a just revenge on the cowards at La Sapienza and their mindless students. Their cowardly act speaks volumes about the ” objectivity ” of scientists. It also proves that we can never expect science to be reasonable as it attempts to make practical the results of its theoretical achievements. What we see is that science is quite willing to trample upon any value that is contrary to its own ” faith.”
Linus
I’d be curious how the university came to have it’s name: “La Sapienza” translates, clunkily, “the Wisdom” which seemed odd, until I thought of Scripture.
Hahaha…..these mere humans of 67 Professors, students plus the entire physics faculty vs one old man are so proud of themselves they’re toasting and celebrating their victory.
In reality it must be awful to feel like Herod who trembled at the news that John the Baptist was coming.
Heck, I too would protested if I knew the Holy Father was coming to my town and was living like king Herod.
#5. Yes Herod, Pharoa and the great Serpent all trembled at the news of a Great coming. These poor souls must really love their Pride and Arrogance.
Further;
A good write up by Prof. Giorgio Israel
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=11454
Apologies to those don’t have the time to dive into more details,
… but if we are to give Galileo his due credit as a brilliant astronomer, we must also credit him for his role in derailing the relationship between faith and reason that now results in train wrecks like those we see at La Sapienza…
Here’s an article (in pdf) from a little over a year ago (from an issue of the Communio/ journal devoted to “Art and Image”) (emphases in bold mine)
David Schindler (a prof at Villanova) “TRUTH AND THE CHRISTIAN IMAGINATION: THE REFORMATION OF CAUSALITY AND THE ICONOCLASM OF THE SPIRIT”
Here’s his closing paragraphs:
But it is worth reflecting on the fact that the reformation of science in Galileo and the reformation of philosophy in Descartes—not to mention the reformation of political
philosophy previously in Machiavelli or the subsequent reformation of logic and education in Peter Ramus,38 and arguably even the ecclesial reformation in Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli—all seem to share different versions of the same characteristics: they deny the substantial causal significance of goodness and beauty, i.e., the metaphysical reality of the transcendentals; they excise the whole of the mediating tradition which they subsequently affirm piecemeal on
the basis of a new criterion applied immediately by the individual; they develop a technique or method that is meant to produce practical results rather than engender insight and understanding . . . and they all eliminate the significance of the imagination.
In sum, the root of what Claudel called the crisis of the late
modern world, namely, the starvation of the imagination, is the eclipse of goodness and beauty from the order of cause. If this is true, it follows that the recovery of Christian art, Christian literature, and indeed Christian culture more generally, is not sufficient on its own to address this crisis. Or perhaps more adequately the recovery of a genuine Christian culture—the world and Christian imagination—requires a recovery of beauty in its theological, metaphysical, and ultimately even its physical significance. Anything less will no doubt unwittingly trivialize precisely what it seeks to restore. It is not just the Word, but the Word made flesh , who was sent by the
Father to dwell among us, the Word made flesh who enjoined us to carry the Good News to the ends of the earth—i.e., to the very extremities of being. It is Christ who said, “Behold, I make all things new,” and who thus revealed himself to be, as the scholastics put it, the “perfect image,” of the Father, or as we might say, the Truth of
the Father’s Imagination.
As a scientist myself, the key thought I took away from his analysis was “What a a crying shame!” Our modern fact-based education has been perverted from pursuing a better understanding of He who caused our material world to come into being into rather, how can we ’cause’ things to happen by our will alone in our own image…
Hallo …
duh ..
… is it any wonder we’re so afraid of Frankenfoods, nuclear holocaust, and being outmanned by the barbarians (who thanked us for our technological prowess and began aborting their girls… so they’re already a couple of million men ahead in China, and India’s androgynous power is surely close behind? Makes all our talk about a “Surge” ring rather hollow doesn’t it)