The relationship between the Church and the University...?

You may have heard that Pope Benedict decided not to offer an invited lecture at Sapienza Universita in Rome (student population: 138,000!) due to some student unrest at that school (the majority of students wanted him to come, and apparently he will be "reinvited"). The text of the lecture was released anyway, and it's an interesting reflection on the Catholic notion of faith and reason working together toward a common goal: Truth. It ends like this:

And so let me go back to the initial point. What does the Pope have to do or say in a university? He certainly should not try to impose in an authoritarian manner his faith on others, which can only be freely offered. Beyond his ministry as Pastor of the Church and on the basis of the intrinsic nature of this pastoral ministry, it is his task to keep alive man’s responsiveness to the truth. Similarly he must again and always invite reason to seek out truth, goodness and God, and on this path urge it to see the useful lights that emerged during the history of the Christian faith and perceive Jesus Christ as the light that illuminates history and helps find the way towards the future.

...and an amusing (yet true) line, especially for your philosophy majors/minors...

Theology and philosophy are an odd couple; neither can be totally separated from the other and yet each must keep its own purpose and identity.

The whole lecture can be found here. Comments welcome.

p.s. We're going to have a major lecture on this general topic in April 2008, with a national speaker. More coming later....