Acton PowerBlog: The pope gets into the Intellectual Freedom fray.

…or he gets dragged into it, whatever. So he was supposed to speak at a public university. So some professors and students called foul. So he stayed away (but his speech was released and read in his absence anyway). So some Italian folks freaked. And now the academics are the bad guys?

But, according to the article (posted by Bernd Bergmann), the pope did say this along the way:

Benedict praised the academic community at La Sapienza for its high scholarship and particularly emphasized the importance of that “autonomy which, on the basis of its founding principles, has always been part of the nature of the university, which must always be exclusively bound to the authority of the truth. In its freedom from political and ecclesiastical authorities, the university finds its special role, and in modern society as well, which needs institutions of this nature.”

We like the quote. But we’re not sure we’ll really ever be able to wrap our heads around the whole thing. You know, the whole catholic thing.