Its not really mutually exclusive. Religion is not always unreasonable, though on many cases it has beliefs that can be quite irrational. I’m sure everyone would agree that each one of us possess the gift of reasoning. But since everyone disagrees on which religion is true, then its safe to say that God didnt really give a religion to everyone. So God only gave us a talent for figuring things out, not a system of instructions that already figured things out. Religion is merely a personal point of view. Not a fact for everyone.
It does have beliefs that deal with mystical things. If God revealed all to us now, some of those things we could not understand using our human reasoning and intellect. These things will be revealed when we return home. So there are things that are mysteries. This is what St. Augustine meant when he said, “I believe so that I may understand”. He needed to advance in knowledge parallel to his maturing Faith (2Cor2). Only then would God reveal further knowledge has he merited.
All religions were fill-ins until scripture was fullfilled in Christ when he presented his true Church. All the churches became redundant at Pentecost when the true Apostolic Church was founded. That includes Jewry as well as the religions of the East and Muslim,Budist and the like. But that did not happen, and the result is what you see today, many lost people struggling with has many doctrines as there are human desires.
The Catholic religion isn’t as closed and inflexible has some would portray, nor is there a designated timetable where every person requires to have formed a final opinion. It is important that every Catholic must be in conformity with what the Church says is DeFide and this means eventually every person must accept it.
The last categories of De Fide teaching allows for knowledgable growth and absorption time. The Catholic Faith provides for a “hierarchy of truths”. Some doctrines have been formally defined by the Church (i.e. dogmas) and are essentially irrevocable and non-reformable. Other doctrines do not carry such a weight but are generally believed to be true by the majority of theologians.
From his book The Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, Ludwig Ott distinguishes between the level of certainty a Catholic may have towards any teaching of the Catholic Church (p.9-10). Here are the last 3 examples…:
Sententia Fidei Proxima - A teaching proximate to Faith is a doctrine, which is regarded by theologians generally as a truth of Revelation, but which has not yet been finally promulgated as such by the Church. (Example: Mary as Co-Mediaterix)
Sententia Communis - Common teaching is doctrine, which in itself belongs
to the field of free opinions, but which is accepted by theologians generally. (Example: Christ’s soul possessed infused knowledge.)
Sententia Probabablis - Theological opinions of lesser grades of certainty are called probable, more probable, well-founded. Those which are regarded as being in a agreement with the consciousness of Faith of the Church are called **pious opinions
**The least degree of certainity is possessed by the
tolerated opinion (opinio tolerata), which is only weakly founded, but which is tolerated by the Church. (Example: Rigorist (strict) view of “No Salvation Outside the Church”, or the existence of Limbo.)
We also have some respected individuals who would frown on any stifling of contemplative reasoning.
Frs. McCarthy, Rumble and the late Card. Msgr. F. J. Sheen( Radio Replies Vol I) have this to say concerning reasoning:
607 q. So, Catholics must strangle their reason and swallow anything the Church teaches, however unlikely?
a. The strangling of reason is left to people who are ready to believe anything they hear about the Catholic Church. But the Church asks no man to strangle his reason, and says that it is heresy to say that it ought to be. Nor must Catholics accept anything however unlikely. If a thing seems unlikely, they should suspend their judgement until they are secure evidence of it’s truths or falsity,
and then decide accordingly.
611 q. At least concerning the Catholic doctrine, you believe what the Church teaches, and consider further investigation sinful?
a. I certainly believe implicitly the official and defined teachings of the Catholic Church since Christ said “If a man will not hear the Church, let him be as the heathen.” ** But I may investigate as much as I wish.** The more I find out about the truth taught by the Catholic Church, the better the Church is pleased. It is one thing to deny a docrine;
quite another to investigate it’s full significance. But not all the investigation in the world will ever prove a single dogma of the Catholic Church.
AndyF
) to put the cards on the table and look at the evidence. The “authenticated” healing at Lourdes (And Fatima) have been reigourously documented–and do NOT fall into the category of spontaneous remissions that occurs outside of a religious context–we are talking about rapid cellular regeneration and the like.