“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart the desire to know the truth — in a word, to know himself — so that by knowing and loving God, men and women can come to the fullness of the truth about themselves” (n. 1).

With these words Pope John Paul II begins the encyclical, Fides et Ratio. Some 12 years in the making, it is the first encyclical on the relationship between faith and reason since Pope Leo XIII issued Aeterni Patris in 1879.

Shortly after the encyclical was published, John Paul provided his own summary of some of its key elements in an address to a group of U.S. bishops who were visiting Rome. He said that he “wished to defend the capacity of human reason to know the truth. This confidence in reason is an integral part of the Catholic intellectual tradition, but it needs reaffirming today in the face of widespread and doctrinaire doubt about our ability to answer the fundamental questions: Who am I? Where have I come from and where am I going? Why is there evil? What is there after this life?” (Ad Limina Address of October 24, 1998, n. 5).