Faith & Reason Institute celebrates silver anniversary

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Feb 27, 2025 / 08:00 am (CNA).

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Faith & Reason Institute, the first Washington, D.C.-based think tank devoted to encouraging both of these essential elements of human existence. 

The institute, which got its name from St. John Paul II’s 1998 encyclical Fides et Ratio, addresses issues of economics, politics, public policy, science, and technology, among others, from the perspective of both faith and reason. 

“I thought there needed to be a more explicit emphasis on both faith and reason here in Washington and elsewhere,” the institute’s president, Robert Royal, told CNA in an interview ahead of the organization’s recent gala celebrating its milestone anniversary.

Reflecting on the institute’s beginnings, Royal recalled his father telling him: “‘Are you sure this is going to work?’ And I [told him], ‘Well, there isn’t an overabundance of faith or reason in Washington, so it’s a growth industry, I think I’ll do OK.’ And 25 years later, we’re still here.”

Range of activities

Among the institute’s projects are its Fides et Ratio Seminars, in which Catholic academics are invited to gather to read and discuss Catholic books. The recurring seminars, according to Royal, help to fill a gap that was missing among Catholic academics.

“A lot of times when I go to donors about that, they would say, ‘Well, don’t these guys already get that in their departments?’” Royal said. “And the truth is no, because a lot of professors, they just come in to get their mail [and] teach their courses. Maybe there’s a departmental meeting, but to sit down with like-minded Catholic academics and to talk about Catholic stuff was something that we found was really quite something.”

Another seminar provided by the institute is the Free Society Seminar, geared toward students and young professionals. These seminars, hosted in Slovakia, attract American and European Catholics to learn about Catholic moral theology and its intersection with political theory.

These seminars, according to Royal, teach students about the threats to free society, such as communism and humanism. He said there is “no longer any living memory” of communism among young students, “so we’ve had to revise the curriculum there and talk a bit more about these kinds of things.” 

In 2008, the Faith & Reason Institute also launched The Catholic Thing, which offers a steady stream of thought pieces on various contemporary issues. The blog features dozens of engaging Catholic writers, and each piece is edited by Royal. 

The Catholic Thing also provides online courses on theology that can be purchased. The subjects of the courses include Christology, the doctrines of the Trinity, and lessons on important works of Catholic literature such as St. Augustine’s “City of God” and Dante Alighieri’s “Inferno.”

Spotlighting the Catholic intellectual tradition

The Faith & Reason Institute seeks to reflect the core of St. John Paul II’s 1998 encyclical Fides et Ratio, which emphasizes the need for both faith and reason within theology, both of which he stated “stand in harmony” with each other.

“Deprived of what revelation offers, reason has taken side-tracks which expose it to the danger of losing sight of its final goal,” the pontiff wrote. “Deprived of reason, faith has stressed feeling and experience and so run the risk of no longer being a universal proposition.”

“It is an illusion to think that faith, tied to weak reasoning, might be more penetrating; on the contrary, faith then runs the grave risk of withering into myth or superstition,” John Paul II wrote. “By the same token, reason which is unrelated to an adult faith is not prompted to turn its gaze to the newness and radicality of being.”

The late sainted pontiff, who held doctorates in both philosophy and sacred theology, was building on a long Catholic intellectual tradition that embraces both faith and reason as two ways of knowing that work best, as the institute sees it, “when they mutually challenge one another to look farther, to probe more deeply, in quest of truth.”

“The faith — as we can demonstrate from Catholic history — the faith really needs reason [and] it really needs philosophy,” Royal said.

Royal pointed to second-century Christianity in which St. Justin Martyr, one of the patron saints of philosophers, wrote open letters to the Roman Senate that defended the faith and argued against the persecution of Christians. Justin, who was educated in Platonist philosophy, was a convert to Christianity.

According to Royal, Justin “was a philosopher and tried to argue the truth of Christianity with [the Roman government].” Because of his philosophical background, “Platonism [came] very strongly into the Church” with his writings and others after him, such as Augustine.

Aristotlean thought, which focuses on “the real tools of logical analysis and rational consistency,” Royal said, developed in the middle ages. St. Thomas Aquinas, in the 1200s, “balances both the Platonic and the Aristotelian lines in the Church,” which set the foundations for a lot of Catholic philosophical thought today.

As it marks its anniversary, Royal told CNA that the Faith & Reason Institute continues to seek new ways to engage citizens and institutions alike, and introduce better ideas of faith and reason to the culture as a whole.

Source: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/262459/faith-and-reason-institute-celebrates-silver-anniversary