Schall on Benedict

Published by St. Augustine's Press

The Regensburg Lecture
by Pope Benedict XVI (Sep 12, 2006)

Today the Enlightenment settlement that imposed a public truce with respect to the truths that matter most, divorcing fact from value, knowledge from meaning, and faith from reason, needs to challenged, and challenged boldly. Whatever one may think of papal authority, on the world-historical stage that challenge is being pressed most boldly, even audaciously, by the bishop of Rome. That was the real significance of Benedict’s lecture at Regensburg University on September 12, 2006. The media excitement focused on a few words about Islam. And he did say that the use of violence to impose religion is to act against reason, and to act against reason is to act against the nature of God, for God has revealed himself as logos—the word and the reason by which all came to be and in which all coheres.
But the gist of Benedict’s argument at Regensburg and in many other forums is directed to Christian intellectuals who, in the name of “de-Hellenizing” Christianity, pit biblical faith against the great synthesis of faith and reason achieved over the centuries of the Christian intellectual tradition. -- Richard John Neuhaus (Nov 21, 2008)

Commentary by George Weigel and James V. Schall, S.J. and Raymond de Souza

Benedict XVI on Jesus of Nazareth
[Preface 1] [Preface 2] [Synopsis] [Analysis] [Excerpt]
[Franz Michel Willam, the Theologian the Pope Has Rescued from Oblivion]