In his keynote address at the symposium, the Prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, Giuseppe Cardinal Versaldi, D.D. (“Leading and Serving through Theology: 50 Years After Vatican II”) calls attention to the process of renewal ushered in by the Second Vatican Council which aimed to overcome the separation between the Church and modern sciences (culture):

“[O]ne of the reasons for this separation and, at times, conflict that cannot be grasped is the fact that, on the part of theology, there was a certain immobilism (rigidity) in the process of formulating the Christian message in order to adapt this formulation to the understanding of peoples in places and times of always changing human history…. This rigidity can be explained also by what a great theologian and epistemologist, the Jesuit Bernard Lonergan, calls ‘the neglected subject,’ that is, an approach to the truth which forgets that any judgment (also on God) is always a relationship between the knowing subject and the object known. ‘Veritas formaliter est in solo iudicio’ (p. 12).”

This immobilism spawned the separation of culture’s evolution from religious thought. The secular culture became indifferent or even antagonistic to religious truth, and the Church, for a time, was unable to move on from a defensive position. – from the Editor’s Preface