I see. Hope that when you have the time you will post about this in more detail.
About Voltaire, was he not a French Deist (as opposed to mainstream English/American Deism)? Was he still proposing a form of Christianity: the religion minus the church? I'll have to go over his stuff that I read, but from memory I thought he was a free-thinker. But then, most in Europe are after all conditioned by christianity and to some extent it is inextricable from their outlook. That might well include Voltaire. Western secularism itself was an anti-christian movement that makes little sense outside of a christoislamic milieu.
Concerning Benedict the 16th's recent statements, they are most definitely the Roman Church's attempt to reach out the typical christo hand of 'reconciliation' to wayward Europe: a 'compromise' only at its most superficial level, consisting of round-about words on reason and faith, where reason is still expected to submit to faith on everything.
About Voltaire, was he not a French Deist (as opposed to mainstream English/American Deism)? Was he still proposing a form of Christianity: the religion minus the church? I'll have to go over his stuff that I read, but from memory I thought he was a free-thinker. But then, most in Europe are after all conditioned by christianity and to some extent it is inextricable from their outlook. That might well include Voltaire. Western secularism itself was an anti-christian movement that makes little sense outside of a christoislamic milieu.
Concerning Benedict the 16th's recent statements, they are most definitely the Roman Church's attempt to reach out the typical christo hand of 'reconciliation' to wayward Europe: a 'compromise' only at its most superficial level, consisting of round-about words on reason and faith, where reason is still expected to submit to faith on everything.