Intelligence of faith and late modernity

Current times present relevant questions for thinking about the relationship between the intelligence of the Christian faith, the progress of science, pastoral action in the context of urbanisation and how all this can be experienced in the context of late modernity. Reconciling the intelligence of faith with scientific rationality means shifting the perspective from the metaphysics of the past to the eschatological future, from materialistic pessimism to transformative hope, from limited understanding to openness to full intelligibility, broadening the possibilities of the desire to know. In this sense, we also need to think about pastoral action with a new sensitivity, which seeks to touch and analyse religious cultures with their specific languages, in order to understand people’s search for meaning. The current moment, referred to by some authors as late modernity, has among its most characteristic traits the tendency to speed up the rhythms of life and the way in which time is experienced, to the point of swallowing up the individual in their daily responsibilities and subjecting them to the rhythm of superficiality and discarding. We need to return to the deep meaning of the Christian faith.