Reason will not confirm. Unamuno, Life 4.20

In the end, the Catholic solution to the human condition is one that leaves us rationally unsatisfied, Unamuno says. Why? The next chapter of his book will make it easier to see, from his perspective, by laying out his view of what reason teaches us, when we allow her to engage without imposing the restraints required by dogmatic theologians.

La solución católica de nuestro problema, de nuestro único problema vital, del problema de la inmortalidad y salvación eterna del alma individual, satisface a la voluntad, y, por lo tanto, a la vida; pero al querer racionalizarla con la teología dogmática, no satisface a la razón. Y esta tiene sus exigencias, tan imperiosas como las de la vida. No sirve querer forzarse a reconocer sobre-racional lo que claramente se nos aparece contra-racional, ni sirve querer hacerse carbonero el que no lo es. La infalibilidad, noción de origen helénico, es en el fondo una categoría racionalista.

Veamos ahora, pues, la solución o, mejor, disolución racionalista o científica de nuestro problema.

We have essentially one vital problem, which we can pose generally as the immortality and eternal salvation of the individual soul. The Catholic solution to this problem satisfies our will, and in so doing meets the needs imposed by life, which it exists to serve. But when it attempts to rationalize itself with dogmatic theology, it does not satisfy reason. Reason has her own needs, as exacting as those imposed by life. It is no good wishing to force ourselves to recognize as super-rational what we clearly perceive to be simply anti-rational. Nor is it any good wanting to become simpletons when we are not already such. Infallibility, an idea of Greek origin, is fundamentally a rational category: its entrance into the lists demands that we engage with reason.

Let us see then the solution—or better, the dissolution—that reason or science offers when we present her with our problem.