the rationality of conscience and the universality of social goods as bulwarks against social disintegration and political tyranny.21 It is here that secular modernity stands in need of faith. Not because the church is itself a social project or a political power. Ever since his doctoral work on Augustine’s City of God, Ratzinger has emphatically maintained the necessary distinction between temporal and spiritual power. The church is not an alternative social order, nor does it have its own unique