“The ark on which the West survived”
According to Benedict XVI, that would be the monastic structure described in the Rule of St. Benedict (see also the article in the Telegraph). Nice phrase. And this too is not the comment of a trivial man:
“I would say,” he has declared, “that the Cross recapitulates in advance the horror of Auschwitz.”
Yet we suppose it’s all “dictatorship of relativism” from here on out, in the MSM. No, come to think of it, that’s too lofty for the Old Media. Hugh Hewitt has it right, all Least Common Denominator from now on in the MSM: “opinion polling on birth control.”
We daresay that for some time the elite liberal newspapers of America have been proving an old saw wrong: they are losing money underestimating the intelligence of the American people.
UPDATE
From Gerard Baker in the Times:
The cardinals think long and hard about the choice of a papal nomen. It is intended as a clear signal of their intent. Much attention has focused on the previous 15 popes called Benedict. But it is worth remembering that the first St Benedict was not a pope, but the founder of the monastic order that bears his name. Benedict is the patron saint of Europe. His principal legacy — the Benedictines — was critical in planting the roots of Christianity throughout Europe in the dark, post-Roman period of the 6th and subsequent centuries. Without Benedict, Europe may not have been the centre of Christianity in the Middle Ages that made it the birthplace of modern civilisation.