The Regensburg Lecture

Fr. James Schall, S.J., provides us with a great article discussing Pope Benedict XVI's recent lecture at Regensburg University:

"On September 12, on his visit to his native Bavaria, Benedict XVI gave a formal academic lecture at the University at which he formerly was a professor. It is a brilliant, stunning lecture, and it is a lecture, not a papal pronouncement. It brings into focus just why there is a papacy and why Catholicism is an intellectual religion. Indeed, it is a lecture on why reason is reason and what this means. The scope of this lecture is simply breathtaking, but also intelligible to the ordinary mind. In watching my computer and listening to various colleagues the day after this address was given, I felt a kind of hush in the air. Something important had happened, something more than the ordinary went on in Regensburg, something that was addressed to the heart of modernism but also to Islam, our current enigma. When I read the lecture, I understood why..."

If you have the time, go read the entire article, The Regensburg Lecture: Thinking Rightly About God and Man, at Ignatius Insight.