The Reception of the Encyclical Fides et Ratio by Croats

Abstract

This article highlights the presence in Croatia of John Paul II’s encyclical Fides et
Ratio on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of its publication. Hence, the
article gives a chronological list of reviews on the encyclical in Croatian scientific periodicals,
which are generally associated with philosophical–theological institutions
in Croatia. Articles were published in the journals Crkva u svijetu (The Church in the
World), Obnovljeni život (Renewed Life) and Bogoslovska smotra (The Seminarian
Review) and in other places also, though the latter are almost negligible. Writings
were occasional in nature, i.e., they were issued at the time of the publication of the
encyclical and on the marking of its anniversaries. The aforesaid are very good presentations
of the entire document or of individual sections on whatever problem the
authors deal with in their scholarly endeavours. Following the encyclical, they wrote
about the meaningful relationship between reason and faith throughout history, or
rather philosophy and theology as the sciences of faith, of the openness, in principle,
of the human spirit to the truth which is of a transcendent nature, of the necessity
of philosophy for theology, of the natural sciences and the encyclical, of the abomination
of nihilism which is a true negation of humanity, and of the offer of Jesus
Christ’s message which John Paul II proposed to philosophy. It must be mentioned
also that certain authors tended to make critical references to some sections of the
encyclical.