LY Faber criticizes remarks made by Francis Cardinal George regarding Duns Scotus.* These days I cringe whenever a bishop or theologian does intellectual history -- the narrative they provide usually seems facile and poorly informed? Who has the time to do history and become an expert on more than one thinker? Very few specialists. A bishop should study good theology instead and not worry about who said what, but too many Catholic intellectuals seek to explain "modernity" and its problems through intellectual currents of the past. Too much of an academic exercise, and not sufficiently "pastoral" -- what do the Christian faithful really need, an egghead or a pastor who will teach them about God?

Unfortunately the tendency to do bad intellectual history seems to be a fault of Joseph Ratzinger as well.

*They are in an unpublished manuscript, “Catholic Christianity and the Millennium: Frontiers of the Mind in the 21st Century.”