I'm not Catholic, but out of wide intellectual interest I have read some of Benedict's more notable writings. I agree that he is a profoundly intelligent, incisively analytical man, and his defense of faith as consistent with or even necessitated by reason was frankly really interesting. So - I don't know - maybe that intellectual legacy does live on for centuries or millennia.But that's not my take. My take is that this was a profoundly smart and well-educated man (with deep failings, to be clear, though this is not the point of this comment) who was suckered into dedicating those abilities to something silly at best, and sinister at worst. He won't be read for thousands of years because, let's be honest, religion is on its way out in this post-Enlightenment world. I DID find Benedict's take on Christianity as a combination of reason and revelation surprising, and even compelling to some extent. But, forgive me, who cares anymore?I guess I'm open to the idea that the modern world is failing us in many, many ways, which might be tied both to the lack of humility and charity taught by many fast-diminishing religious traditions and by the erosion of rigorous educated reasoned thought among our leaders (and ourselves), and even to the lack of beauty and mystery in our modern lives. But there's no stuffing the genie back into this bottle: we're not all going to embrace ridiculous fairy stories as revealed truth just because unhappiness is common and capitalism is cruel.

I'm not Catholic, but out of wide intellectual interest I have read some of Benedict's more notable writings. I agree that he is a profoundly intelligent, incisively analytical man, and his defense of faith as consistent with or even necessitated by reason was frankly really interesting. So - I don't know - maybe that intellectual legacy does live on for centuries or millennia.But that's not my take. My take is that this was a profoundly smart and well-educated man (with deep failings, to be clear, though this is not the point of this comment) who was suckered into dedicating those abilities to something silly at best, and sinister at worst. He won't be read for thousands of years because, let's be honest, religion is on its way out in this post-Enlightenment world. I DID find Benedict's take on Christianity as a combination of reason and revelation surprising, and even compelling to some extent. But, forgive me, who cares anymore?I guess I'm open to the idea that the modern world is failing us in many, many ways, which might be tied both to the lack of humility and charity taught by many fast-diminishing religious traditions and by the erosion of rigorous educated reasoned thought among our leaders (and ourselves), and even to the lack of beauty and mystery in our modern lives. But there's no stuffing the genie back into this bottle: we're not all going to embrace ridiculous fairy stories as revealed truth just because unhappiness is common and capitalism is cruel.

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