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Benedict XVI (CC0 via pixabay)
By Daniel B. Gallagher, National Catholic Register, September 17, 2025
Daniel B. Gallagher is a lecturer in philosophy and literature at Ralston College. He worked for a decade at the Vatican’s Secretariat of State under Popes Benedict XVI and Francis.
COMMENTARY: Exactly 15 years ago (September 17), Benedict XVI’s Westminster Hall address in London flipped the classic question — not whether faith is reasonable, but whether reason itself makes sense without Christianity.
The question is as old as Christianity itself.
Is it reasonable to believe that a man named Jesus is the Son of God who, fully divine himself and without forsaking his divinity, was born of a Virgin, died, rose and ascended into heaven? Is it reasonable to believe that the one God, undivided, is three persons — Father, Son and Holy Spirit?
Or are these truths an affront to reason? Must we set aside our rational faculty to embrace them?
Attempts to address this question abound through the centuries. Some attempts do not receive the attention they should. So, I was pleased to see Stephen P. White revisit Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United Kingdom in September 2010, where, in Westminster Hall, the Holy Father not only offered one of the freshest and finely articulated responses to the question, but actually turned it on its head. …
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