San Antonio, Texas, May 19, 2008 / 18:14 pm
Archbishop of San Antonio Jose Gomez delivered the commencement address at the Oblate School of Theology on Friday, telling the graduates to unite reason with faith to overcome the self-limitations of modern thinking. He also exhorted the students to help promote a dialogue with the American culture by seeking and defending the truth.
Archbishop Gomez spoke in place of Cardinal Avery Dulles, SJ, a prominent American theologian who cancelled his appearance because of health concerns. Archbishop Gomez spoke to the graduates about the life of Cardinal Dulles, who converted to Catholicism in 1936 while he was a student at Harvard. Though not a religious believer when he entered college, he remained a “seeker after truth” who “discovered and came to fall in love with the great figure of Jesus Christ.”
“Dear graduates,” Archbishop Gomez said, “the world Cardinal Dulles found at Harvard is a world very much like the world you are ‘commencing’ into today.” Like Cardinal Dulles, he said, graduates face the task of remaining open to the truth and proclaiming God in a world indifferent to Him.
The archbishop said he hoped that the students and their teachers will “help the Church enable the world to know God again.”