Pope John Paul II is a philosopher and a theologian: a true intellectual. But, for us Catholics at least, before this he is and no doubt should be, a priest, a bishop, the bishop of bishops, the man of the Gospels, in charge of the system of Curia, Cardinals, bishops and priests and faithful who make up one of the most unique systems of governance in the world--certainly in the religious world.  As the bishop of bishops he has for twenty years showed both amazing zeal and vigor, helping bring down the savagely anti-religious Communist structure in his own country and in the world. He has visited countries around the world, preaching peace, justice, the brother-sisterhood of all humans.
        But in the midst of this almost incredible Odyssey, as well as in his writings, his appointments mainly of yes-men bishops and of the officials within his curial cabinet, he has preached above all else the almost absolute obedience of all Catholics to his own narrow view of what Catholic faith, doctrine and morals should be. He has done this more than any of his predecessors of this century, and in doing so has, in the opinion of many of the best theologians, violated the spirit if not the
letter of the Second Vatican Council's ideal of synodal governance together with his bishops and in close communion with the People of God: the sensus fidelium.
        He has derogated from the traditional freedom of bishops to govern their own dioceses and has gone so far as to arbitrarily decide what may and may not even be discussed, let alone decided, in the synods of bishops. These synods the Second Vatican Council clearly envisioned to be open and collegial conferences of brother bishops with the pope at their head, openly discussing what in each part of the world should be the best mode of answering pastoral, moral and doctrinal problems as they arise.
        He and his Curia have deprived major theologians of their right to teach in Catholic seminaries and universities and have constantly harrassed many others, often in a cruelly authoritarian manner--as my doctoral father and peritus at the Council, the late and lamented Fr. Bernard Haring often and vehemently gave testimony to.   It is for these things--his pastoral visits around the world and his authoritarian manner for which he is most widely known, at least among theologians and highly educated laypeople in the Catholic church. His personal endowments as a philosopher, theologian, intellectual, and his  genuine sense of brotherhood with other religious traditions are far less commonly known, but are nonetheless impressive, especially in this encyclical. 
        With the appearance of "Fides et Ratio", however, the almost astounding breadth of his competence in these areas has, in my opinion, become unquestionable. Of course no pope is ever solely responsible for the content of his encyclicals. And certainly John Paul consulted with many of
his advisors in the writing of this one. Yet it is reported that John Paul has been working on this particular encyclical for more than ten years, and that the general outlines of the thought contained therein are indeed his own.
        Although I am not an expert on this pope's philosophical formation and competence it has been widely known almost from the beginning of his reign that he holds advanced degrees in these subjects and taught them before entering into the church's hierarchy. Zizola and others report that
from his studies in Max Scheler and Husserl he has long sought to combine phenomenological methods to synthesize a christian personalist philosophy. In the end, fortunately, he clearly saw and clearly teaches that no subordination of philosophy and modern scientific knowledge to theology is
either possible or desirable. Our religious faith and our reason remain two independant, but by no means unrelated, facets of the believer's worldview as a whole. And he without question includes the whole body of the solidly established principles of both the natural and social sciences within the
scope of this realm of "reason." Such is a truly wonderful advance, confident and unwavering, after the wafflings of his predecessors over the last century.
        But both Scheler (who in the end despaired of finding an intellectual modus vivendi with the anathematizing Church of his day, and abandoned it) and Husserl were essentially men of the last century. Neither remain today in the front ranks of philosophic inquiry. It has been their students, such as Max Weber (and his student Alfred Schutz in the social sciences) and Heidegger in the phenomenological tradition who have left important and permanent contributions in their fields. None of these (or their students in the field of religious studies who now hold the attention
of scholars in these fields--men such as philosophical anthropologists and sociologists Clifford Geertz, Robert Bellah, and Peter Berger (and two out of the three are religious believers, at least at my last accounting) are willing to confirm the pope's optimism that any sort of synthesis supporting the unique truth of Christianity is either possible or desirable.
        On the contrary, religious believers like Bellah and Berger and non believers like Clifford Geertz agree that human religious traditions in every age and society possess a common symbolic dynamic, and a common kind of human validity or truth which plays a crucial role within the wider
cultural systems of their societies. Religions, according to Robert Bellah, do indeed create valid and extremely important meaning, morality, and a supra-rational type of truth. "Religion," he says, "is true."
        I would add that this religious truth is one, however, which is not supernatural but symbolic, and so transcending the realm of the rational and the empirical. Yet it is a body of truth which, though totally beyond the power of purely rational and empirical sciences, is one without which
no society can healthily survive.
        Geertz, in his famous definition of religion as a cultural system, argues that every religious in every society fulfills a similar role and follows a similar dynamic. It uses symbolic stories and rites to arouse powerful feelings which make credible a given religious worldview, and to so link this worldview to the ethical in such a manner that it recreates the favored and successful attitudes and ways of thinking and acting of that people.
        I would go a big step beyond Geertz and argue, along with thinkers as diverse as Peter Berger, his mentor Alfred Schutz, Mikhail Bakhtin, Emmanuel Levinas, Colin Falck and others that, mainstream post modernism to the contrary notwithstanding, religious truth is both valid and--as the
pope says--a necessary complement to rational varieties. But the history of religions clearly indicates that, although each tradition claims that it alone has the one and only real truth straight from the Ultimate's mouth, in fact none of them has this kind of unique Revelation but form their worldviews, rites, ethos and doctrines in amazingly similar manners. Instead of reserving her ultimate truth to one tribe or church alone, this Ultimate in the billions of galaxies continually rains down religious revelation on us all, full of hope and joy, but far beyond the reach of reason alone.
        This truth--day inevitably follows night, spring follows winter and birth surer than death-- is sedimented unconsciously in every people's collective unconscious and revealed via symbols and symbolic stories and rites which reverberate in the people's minds and so are received as
supernatural revelation demanding and receiving our religious faith. So every religious tradition which has survived, say a millennium or more (not all prophets turn out to be authentic, only time and experience separates wheat from chaff) has enclosed within its sacred mythic stories and rites
saving truths worth of our closest scrutiny and respect.
        These religious systems of meaning and morality pervade every other social sub-system in every society, from finance to family to government and philosophy. They are the crucial glue which, with their meaning, their morals, and their super-empirical and super-rational understanding of the
whole of their universe, holds the whole society together in relative peace, harmony and hope.
        So in a strange manner, the synthesis between science, philosophy and technology on the one hand and systems of religious transcendence on the other have, just as John Paul so urgently teaches, been slowly falling once again into place for some decades now.  It is, as he says, time to
bring our religious and our rational worlds back into harmony, time to reject, as he repeatedly urges us, the nihilism, meaninglessness, amorality and both the relativism and the fundamentalism which have until recently held center stage in philosophy, art and literature.
        "Faith and Reason" has, then, in a manner which is typical of the way in which all vibrant religions, made an important step towards doctrinal development of the most crucial religious areas: a call for validation and harmonization of both the truths of reason and of faith and a moving call for dialogue and enculturation of other religions' wisdom and truth. So we must, if we are optimistic believers in the power of the Spirit, take the long view. A door has been unlocked again. We must be patient and let it open slowly.
        Rome was not built in a day, nor did it every stay built. Both Rome as the City of Man and Rome as the City of God has stayed alive by growing and developing--both in spite of crying abuses and defeats. Let us look at a few examples of this doctrinal development on the part of the Heavenly City. What Jesus taught in the Gospels about the imminent arrival of the Kingdom of God, and what the primitive church had already developed in the last portions written in the New Testament, are vastly different. What the early Councils taught, and then what Augustine preached in his entrancing vision of the City of God, both incorporating vast portions of Greek and Roman philosophy, history and law, were both different from each other and vastly different from what had gone before them. But they were both vital growth on the same religious tree. And, as John Paul so rightly says, Thomas brought a new and especially advanced systematization of human and revealed truth. But he himself admits that it is not in any way the final system, and requires that we stay open to a great variety of approaches.
        I will conclude by declaring, and with as much conviction as Martin Luther King, that "I have a dream." I have a dream that, after a few decades or generations of diminishing condemnations the Church will develop into a realization of her truth according to still a newer synthesis, as yet undreamed of except by the majority. It will be one which encompasses and warmly embraces all of the great religious traditions of the world. I see a new revolution, one which accomplishes the downfall of the pseudo-celibate hedgemony of the Vatican, its Curia and its hierarchy and
priests, and an opening of the priesthood and papacy itself to both married and virgins, both men and women.
        I dream that just as the ninth century popes embraced the imperial ideal of its day in its sincere hope of accomplishing Augustine's dream, so will the popes of the third millenium embrace the democracy of the modern world. I dream not only of democracy among Catholic bishops and among Christian churches but a United Nations of the many kingdoms of God, Allah, Buddha and Brahman.  I see the religious peoples of the world not just dialoging and encountering one another but accepting one another in love and harmony as equals, each with its own uniquely divine gift capable of enriching the others.
        I have a dream of a Constitution of the Catholic Church built squarely on the Gospel of Christ's peace and brotherhood. I dream of a Constitution which, among its many articles, will enshrine and retain deep respect for the charism of celibacy, and honor those genuinely possessed of this charism, a charism which Jesus himself best exemplified. But this charism will be in the form of a negative vow: a vow that as soon as the individual violates his or her celibate charism, or as soon as he or she realizes that the celibate state has become a hindrance rather than a help in the Way towards the Kingdom of God tvow, he or she will voluntarily leave this state, or be expelled from it. In this manner the Ways of Benedict and Francis, of Dominic and Ignatius, will once again inspire the best minds and hearts of the new day.
        This is a dream is inspired by Pope John Paul's encyclical. It is this document, more than any the Church or any other religion has produced, which can inspire us with hope for a new age of authentic religious committment and renewal.

Prof. Morris J. Augustine, Ph.D.
School of Letters, Department of Foreign Languages
Kansai University, Osaka, Japan
Tel. or Fax: (075) 781-4858