This was one of the messages that the priest left in his homily during the Eucharist he presided over at the Cathedral of Braga, celebrated as part of the celebrations of Portuguese Catholic University Day (UCP).
He emphasised that ‘Christian wisdom is not just a set of concepts’ but ‘a way of life’, and, as far as a university is concerned, this means that ‘it is not what we know that counts, but what we do with what we know’. For the director of the Faculty of Theology of the UCP in Braga, this is where the idea of a ‘diaconia of culture’ comes in, that is, ‘the Christian presence in the cultural space does not exist to defend or to command, nor to dominate,’ but rather to ‘serve what, in a fragmented and fast-paced society, sustains common humanity,’ that is, ‘language, meaning, coexistence, the future’. ‘A university, therefore, is not a “territory” to be conquered; it is a living ecosystem to be cared for,’ he added, emphasising that, looking at UCP, ‘this takes shape’.
Being ‘Catholic’ is not a label. It is a way of embracing knowledge in its entirety: reason and faith, science and wisdom, competence and conscience. And perhaps here lies a fitting image: UCP is called to be more of a common table than a podium," he pointed out. For Canon Luís Miguel Rodrigues, it is at this table that ‘society is heard in its plurality, where difficult questions are welcomed without reducing them to slogans, where one learns to argue without attacking, and where the pursuit of excellence is never separated from the common good.’ According to the priest, this plays out in the areas of teaching, research and public presence.
In his homily, the director of the Faculty of Theology of the Portuguese Catholic University in Braga also stressed that today there is a very specific responsibility, referring to digital technology and artificial intelligence. He argued that ‘a Catholic university serves culture when it helps to distinguish innovation from human progress, when it protects people from being reduced to data, when it denounces new algorithmic exclusions, and when it reminds us that effectiveness is not a sufficient criterion for guiding common life.’
‘And this diaconia is incomplete if it does not give preferential attention to those who are left out: because serving culture, in the Christian horizon, is to ensure that access to knowledge is not a privilege, that the peripheries have a place in dialogue, and that the university also learns from the concrete experience of the fragile,’ the priest stressed.
