On Listening and Truth

Listening is the first element in dialogue.

"What takes place here is an event of opening, of becoming open to the reality of other things and people. We need to realize what an art it is to be able to listen attentively. Listening is not a skill, like working a machine, but a capacity simply to be that puts in requisition the whole person.

"To listen means to know and to acknowledge another and to allow him to step into the realm of one's own 'I'. It is readiness to assimilate his word, and therein his being, into one's own reality as well as to assimilate oneself to him in corresponding fashion. Thus, after the act of listening, I am another man, my own being is enriched and deepened because it is united with the being of the other and, through it. with the being of the world... 182

"Men are capable of reciprocal comprehension because, far from being wholly separate islands of being, they communicate the same truth. ...[F]riends [are] capable of mutual listening and understanding because all of them together [heed] the interior master, the truth... The greater their inner contact with the one reality that unites them, namely, the truth, the greater their capacity to meet on common ground. Dialogue without this interior obedient listening to the truth would be nothing more that a discussion among the deaf.

"The capacity to reach a consensus presupposes the existence of a truth common to all. Consensus, however, must not try to pass itself off as a substitute for the truth... 183

"Truth is a becoming one of the 'I' and the world, it is consonance, it is being gifted and purified. To the extent that men allow themselves to be guided and cleansed by the truth, they find the way not only to their true selves but also to the human 'thou'. Truth, in fact, is the medium in which men make contact, whereas it is the absence of truth that closes them off from one another. Accordingly, movement toward the truth implies temperance. If the truth purifies man from egotism and from the illusion of absolute autonomy, if it makes him obedient and gives him the courage to be humble, it thereby also teaches him to see through producibility as a parody of freedom and to unmask undisciplined chatter as a parody of dialogue. It is victorious over the tendency to mistake the absence of all ties for freedom. Thus, the truth is fruitful precisely by being loved for its own sake... 188-189

"[T]he truth...subsists in itself and has more being than everything else;...[it] is the ground upon which I stand. To think through the essence of truth is to arrive at the notion of God. In the long run, it is impossible to maintain the unique identity of the truth, in other words, its dignity (which in turn is the basis of the dignity both of man and of the world), without learning to perceive in it the unique identity and dignity of the living God. Ultimately, therefore, reverence for the truth is inseparable from the disposition of veneration which we call adoration. Truth and worship stand in an indissociable relationship to each other; one cannot really flourish without the other, however often they have gone their separate ways in the course of history." 189-190

"...[A]narchic pseudo-freedom is at work behind every denial of the foundations of adoration, behind every refusal of the bond to the truth and of the demands it makes. These counterfeit freedoms, which predominate today, are the real menace to true freedom. To clarify the concept of freedom is one of the crucial tasks of the present day--if we care about the preservation of man and of the world." 191

June 27, 1982 Munich Lecture by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, "Interpretation--Contemplation--Action: Reflections on the Mission of a Catholic Academy" in Joseph Ratzinger, Fundamental Speeches from Five Decades, San Francisco: Ignatius, 2012.