Public Reason and the Truth of Christianity

Public Reason and the Truth of Christianity
Bishop Crepaldi Examines the Teachings of Benedict XVI
VATICAN CITY, MARCH 10, 2007 (ZENIT.org).
http://www.zenit.org/english/

For Kant, reason has a public use that serves a critical purpose. To illustrate this public use, Kant especially dwells on the rational critique of religion, i.e. the complete freedom of citizens, indeed even the calling, "to impart to the public all of his carefully considered and well-intentioned thoughts concerning mistaken aspects of that symbol, as well as his suggestions for the better arrangement of religious and church matters."[3]
[3] Immanuel Kant, "An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?," translated by Ted Humphrey in "Immanuel Kant: Perpetual Peace and Other Essays," Hackett, Indianapolis, 1983, pp. 41-46.

Relativism is a philosophy and not a fact, and its foundation would require a different kind of reasoning which, however, is excluded by self-limited reason. This is why relativism can only either be "implicit" -- lived and not justified -- or dogmatically "assumed" -- accepted, for example, by an act of faith. In this sense then, the "dictatorship of relativism" is the necessary conclusion of the "self-limitation" of reason. However, with relativism, the public role of reason fails.

Actually, this self-limitation was already present in Kant's thought. In the above-mentioned 1784 short essay he "pretended" to assign to reason the public role of critiquing even religion, but it was an incautious claim as his vision of reason was already confined to mathematical-experimental knowledge.

For the Gospel of St. John, Jesus is the Logos [which] relates "to that divine presence which can be perceived by the rational analysis of reality … In Christianity, rationality became religion."[12] [12] Joseph Ratzinger, Conference "2000 Years After What?," University of Sorbonne, Paris, Nov. 27, 1999 in "Christianity. The Victory of Intelligence Over the World of Religions," English text in 30 Days, no. 1/2000, pp. 33-44

[11] Many times and in many places Benedict XVI wonders, rhetorically, whether it is more rational to think of a Spirit that creates matter or of matter that cre