Another good piece on Pope Benedict

This time from Michael Novak, in the NY Times. (Registration required to read the whole thing, so visit BugMeNot.com to get a login/password.) Here's a snippet I found particularly interesting:

The new pope will not be a clone of the old. I've spoken to him several times over the last 40 years, and he is a much shyer man, quieter, more like a country pastor or a scholar than like an actor striding across all history as his stage. When one approaches him, he seems to back up an inch or two in diffidence. His voice is much softer than one expects....

Pope Benedict XVI, like several of his namesakes back to St. Benedict himself (the founder of Western monasticism and patron saint of Europe), is more likely to take culture as the central issue of the new millennium: What is the culture necessary to preserve free societies from their own internal dangers - and to make them worthy of the sacrifices that brought them into being?