The Pope and the Professor

Here's a nice piece from The Washington Post by Fr. Richard John Neuhaus on expectations for the pope's visit.

Key to understanding the man [Pope Benedict XVI] is that he is much more of an Augustinian than a Thomist. Of all the great doctors (i.e. teachers) of the Catholic intellectual tradition, the fifth century St. Augustine and the thirteenth century St. Thomas Aquinas are the great lights by which most schools of thought are defined. To be sure, there are Augustinian Thomists and Thomist Augustinians, and the distinctions often have more to do with sensibility than substance. Put all too roughly, Thomists are devoted to a systematic presentation of unchanging principles of reason, while Augustinians are given to a discursive account of the complexities of mind and heart in pursuit of the right ordering of love to the truth, and ultimately to absolute truth, who is God.

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2008/04/the_heart_and_mind_of_benedict.html