Crux publishes Benedict’s short summation of faith and grace. He wrote it in 2006, soon after he was appointed, at a “late hour in his life”, and then lasted 16 years longer. Wasn’t so late after all! Nevertheless, it’s a perfect short letter from a man of grace and gratitude and SCIENCE.

The sciencey part:

What I said before to my compatriots, I say now to all those who in the Church have been entrusted to my service: remain firm in the faith! Do not let yourselves be confused! Often it seems that science – the natural sciences on one hand and historical research (in particular the exegesis of Sacred Scripture) on the other – are able to offer irrefutable results in contrast with the Catholic faith. I have lived the transformations of the natural sciences since the ancient times and I have been able to see how, on the contrary, apparent certainties against the faith have vanished, proving not to be science, but philosophical interpretations only apparently due to science; just as, moreover, it is in dialogue with the natural sciences that faith too has learned to better understand the limit of the scope of its affirmations, and therefore its specificity.

On the dot. The more you know of REAL science, the more you must be convinced that the world was designed by a god. The specific affirmations of the various gods and creeds are not justified by REAL science, but may be useful in marketing or building communities.

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Nonbarking note a couple days later: Religious media on the web seem oddly uninterested in the death of the Pope. BigPulpit doesn’t list any stories on the subject. UncommonDescent hasn’t noticed it yet. In contrast, secular tabloid media like DailyMail are giving the death an appropriate level of respectful coverage.

I wonder if this is a caste distinction. The religious websites are elite, mostly interested in theology, while the tabloids are aimed at normal humans. Elites dismissed and ignored Benedict from the start and LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE their anti-Christian buddy Bergoglio.

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Major self-calibration: Back when I was locked into neocon imperialism, I disliked Benedict for the opposite reason. The elites disliked him because he seemed to be anti-Islam. I disliked him because he was unwilling to obliterate all Muslims. After I tossed the TV, the neocon crap went away FAST.