University professors, in particular, are called to embody the virtue of intellectual charity, recovering their primordial vocation to train future generations not only by imparting knowledge but by the prophetic witness of their own lives.

I’m guessing the attendant professors did not welcome the above comment!  What?  Judge me by my lifestyle, not what I say in the classroom?  Ouch!

#1MT, good points, but as an analyst who must deal with the ‘sensible’ and the ‘insensible’ on many occasions, I am constantly amazed at the propensity of my more, umm…“atheistic” research buddies to insist that as soon as they have figured out some new truth about the way nature behaves, then that process they have observed and identified becomes off limits to God.  I think it is that sort of arrogance PBXVI is referring to. 
I can highly recommend his new book “Jesus of Nazareth”, having just finished it, I find the first 5 chapters especially to be quite sensible and moving.  Although let’s be clear, he says up front the book does not have magisterial weight and is essentially his own theological opinions.  I found so much more in common with his viewpoints that I ever did with JP2, who seemed a bit fixated on his “Culture of Death” argument to the point of applying it to nearly everything.
Good read “Jesus of Nazareth”, especially the points about how the church has sufferred mightily when it sought earthly power and control.  You never hear anything like that come out of Rome in my lifetime.
KTF…mrb

I’m unclear why you think he is referring to the methodologies underlying scientific research. Isn’t he rather suggesting that the reasoned quest for knowledge in all its branches (scientia) should, ultimately, be set in the context of humanity’s transcendent vocation.

Surely he is arguiong for a concept of reason that extends beyond the reductively empirical (as in, for example, reasoned discussion about humanity’s final ends or moral goods).

He is suggesting the realm of reason extends properly into areas beyond fact finding. This is indeniable. But his larger claim is to invite his audience to engage in a dialogue about the capacity of reason to dialogue reasonably about human ends and human goods. Surely properly, he did not focus on the the remit of the realm of faith and those truths that can be known only by faith. Instead he wants to encourage those committed to reasons sway to dialogue not just over facts but over purposes.

#7 MT, if indeed PBXVI is intending to prosper faith at the expense of reason, or faith at the expense of science, then I am in agreement with you that we are dealing, as in your last paragraph, with equal and opposite incorrect positions.
My reading of this address, viewed through the lens of CJRatzinger’s earlier writings, leads me to the belief that he is convinced the pendelum of faith vs reason has swung so far away from faith as to be difficult to recover.  As an extremely well-read historian, he would be thinking in terms of how the great universities of Europe became seats of Aristotelian thinking that lasted, despite purges, the Inquisition, and the Enlightenment through to the present age.  If I wanted to launch a new movement within Europe today, certainly moving the Great Universities into alignment with my plan would be an important first step. 
Interesting.  Having read quite a bit of JP2 versus PBXVI, I think Rome is MARKEDLY better off with PBXVI, despite his lack of a theatrical background.
Again…just my 2 cents….

KTF!...mrb

Is he not asking us to handle rationally those things which are not, in themselves, subject to scientific investigation? In short, isn’t he asking us to give significant form to those things which are not quantifiable? The giving of form can be a rational undertaking as it can be an artistic one or a spiritual one. In the concept of form, the artistic and the noetic come together, or perhaps I should say the ineffable and the noetic share common ground.

  There are two orders of knowing: I think therefore I am and, even more important, I know that I think etc. This latter is the discovery of form. The Pope has stepped boldly into very difficult territory indeed, a territory where words are inadequate directly, but cogent metaphorically,and where numbers cannot do what numbers ordinarily do for the scientist.

  I see that this is ill expressed, but perhaps in this matter, it cannot be otherwise. This is a most interesting discussion, one ordinarily reserved for artists at three oclock in the morning at the cafe when all the other artists-manque have gone. Larry