This week, The Pilot launched a preview of our new online opinion section "Echoes," which we describe as "a forum of Catholic thought."

Catholic thought has shaped the world for two millennia. It has guided Catholics in their lives, has helped develop the foundation for a civilization of love and care for the poor and the sick and has confronted -- and sometimes assimilated -- every school of thought the human mind has developed.

In the last three centuries, philosophical and sociological movements have sought to move the concept of God away from the center of people's lives. They have offered them new ways of life, often proposed as liberation from outdated religious precepts that restrained their freedom and happiness. The expectation was -- and still is -- that Catholic thought would eventually be crushed under the weight of that evident secular truth, become irrelevant and finally extinct.

Those movements, while not without their positive elements (for example, helping people abandon pure superstition) have not quenched our ultimate thirst for love and justice. Worse, in some cases, they have removed barriers meant to discourage self-destructive behaviors that are now frequently described as "liberating."

The truth about the human person has been separated from the moral decisions individuals should be making and Catholics and other people of goodwill find themselves having to choose between their faith and the temptation to simply conform their values to those of the wider culture.

Is it, in fact, true that Catholic thought and perspective are becoming irrelevant? Are they unable to respond to the needs of contemporary society? The last three pontiffs have answered that question in different, but complementary, ways.

Pope St. John Paul II stressed that the Church is not about imposing laws but proposing to every culture and each individual that revelation is a liberating force. He argued the current culture has eliminated the concept of perennial truth and in its place has substituted the idea of free will, many times calling evil what is good and good what is evil.

Pope Benedict XVI built on that by highlighting the devastating consequences of moral relativism that makes human desires the basis for moral judgment and he spoke frequently about the need for faith and reason to go hand-in-hand.

Now, Pope Francis has placed the need for dialog at the center of his ministry. As much as we need to propose and offer faith to the world, to be effective we also need to be perceptive of the joys and anguishes of our contemporaries in order to better craft our message.

Presenting the beauty of revelation in the light of reason and shaped by dialog is the ultimate purpose of Echoes. Catholic thought takes from the strong and clear voice of revelation handed to us through Scripture and tradition and explains it, adapts it, deepens it -- in short, Echoes it -- to fit as an answer to each issue.

We are the most educated generation in history. It is our hope that, through regular visits, readers of Echoes will become educated about their faith in accordance to the Truth of the Gospel, the only one that can make them free.

We invite you to preview Echoes by clicking the banner on our home page or you can visit the page directly at Echoes.TheBostonPilot.com.