{"id":708,"date":"2023-01-03T12:40:30","date_gmt":"2023-01-03T12:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=708"},"modified":"2025-09-29T02:22:43","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T02:22:43","slug":"the-journal-got-it-right-they-agree-with-me-pope-benedict-great-man-great-mind-pope-emeritus-benedict-xvi-died-saturd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=708","title":{"rendered":"Wall Street Journal on Pope Benedict: “A papacy dedicated to the interplay between reason and faith.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pope<\/a><\/p>\n

The Journal got it right. They agree with me! Pope Benedict – Great man, great mind<\/a><\/p>\n

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI died Saturday at age 95 at the monastery inside the Vatican where he\u2019d been living since he resigned in 2013\u2014the first pope to resign in nearly 600 years. His reason for stepping down was straightforward: Then age 85, he was no longer up to the demands of the job. But the writings of the man born Joseph Ratzinger are the most significant legacy of his life and papacy.<\/a><\/p>\n

They reflect his theological focus on the interplay between reason and faith, or between Athens and Jerusalem in the Western philosophical tradition. Rather than foes, he saw each as a necessary check on the other. This was the message of his 2006 address at the University of Regensburg, which was widely misinterpreted as an attack on Islam.<\/p>\n

\n

The irony is that Pope Benedict\u2019s most pointed criticisms were reserved for a West that was abandoning the transcendent moral truths its civilization was founded on. In his last sermon before becoming pope, he warned about \u201ca dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one\u2019s own ego and one\u2019s own desires.\u201d Sound relevant today?<\/p>\n

************************<\/p>\n

Yet for all his respect for tradition, Pope Benedict was not pining for a return to medieval society. He was a champion of the Second Vatican Council who recognized the secularizing trends in the West long before he moved to Rome. The modern church, he said, might have to become smaller to remain faithful, and operate as a \u201ccreative minority\u201d by offering a society a window to what life looks like when it is lived by Christian principle.<\/p>\n

The pope was fascinated by America, introducing himself on a 2008 visit to the White House as a friend of \u201cthis vast pluralistic society.\u201d Unlike French secularism, for example, America\u2019s was rooted in the self-evident truths of its Declaration of Independence, not on indifference or hostility to the very idea of truth.<\/p>\n

Above all, he believed in the necessity of honest dialogue, which requires religion to be open to reasoned debate. So it was with Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, an atheist who admired Pope Benedict for his defense of European civilization. \u201cI feel less alone when I read the books of Ratzinger,\u201d she told one of our writers before she died.<\/p>\n

Even those with irreconcilable claims to truth can have a fruitful dialogue if they are willing to address differences honestly. When Rabbi Jacob Neusner wrote a book explaining why he, if he had been a first-century Jew, would not have followed Jesus, Pope Benedict famously answered him in his own book\u2014the fruit of a long personal and intellectual friendship between the two men.<\/p>\n

***************************<\/p>\n

Pope Benedict had a tough act to follow when, much against his will, he was chosen in 2005 to succeed his friend and collaborator Pope John Paul II. But Pope Benedict left his own mark in profound writings, which will be instructive and influential for people of faith or reason for centuries to come.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Journal got it right. They agree with me! Pope Benedict – Great man, great mind Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI died Saturday at age 95 at the monastery inside the Vatican where he\u2019d been living since he resigned in 2013\u2014the first pope to resign in nearly 600 years. His reason for stepping down was straightforward: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=708"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7304,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708\/revisions\/7304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}