Well-placed for the Easter weekend, when Christianity arguably enjoys its largest worldwide attention, Russell Shorto's lengthy profile of Pope Benedict XVI gets top billing in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine. And, despite the Vatican's refusal to an interview "as it routinely does with journalists," the piece is a winner as it sheds light on a firebrand figure who as "Bavaria’s most illustrious native" embraces the revealed truth of dogma unapologetically, proudly even. That this site has in the past heaped enough satirical scorn on the pope for his appearance and apparent salt-in-the-wound discussion starters -- and the howling rage from large swaths of the Islamic world shortly thereafter -- is enough to allow for a more sympathetic look at the man and his mission: to redeem Europe of its extreme rationalism.

His argument, elaborated in the years leading up to his election and continuing through his daily speeches and pronouncements, reduces to something like this: Secularism may be one of the great developments in history, but the secularism that holds sway in much of the West — that is, in Western Europe — is flawed; it has a bug in its programming. The mistaken conviction that reason and faith are two distinct realms has weakened Europe and has brought it to the verge of catastrophic collapse.

In today's materialistic world (the philosophical sense), embrace of dogmatic belief and intellectual curiosity may seem at first glance to be mutually exclusive but Shorto asserts convincingly that Benedict XVI is "one of the most intellectual men ever to serve as pope." His quest to close the gap between fundamentalist faith and atheistic logic seems like bending the laws of nature, akin to splitting the atom. Is it possible or even desirable? Fundamentalism is, many would argue, the fighting stuff that drives a good number of this world's global conflict. Pope Benedict is certainly right to be outspoken on the slaughter in Iraq and that "peace is sorely needed" but one has to wonder how this can be accomplished with an olive leaf in one hand and a golden crucifix in the other.