Democracy's Good, But It Requires Sanctity

As an addendum to yesterday's Potpourri, I have to note this, from B16's address at the Lisbon airport when he first arrived. It's interesting to me that multiculturalism was such a big topic here (it came up in every meeting with various groups), and here he gives the foretaste of what's to come in the other addresses:
From a wise vision of life and of the world, the just ordering of society follows. Situated within history, the Church is open to cooperating with anyone who does not marginalize or reduce to the private sphere the essential consideration of the human meaning of life. The point at issue is not an ethical confrontation between a secular and a religious system, so much as a question about the meaning that we give to our freedom. What matters is the value attributed to the problem of meaning and its implication in public life.
That's vintage Benedict: you can't have justice before you know who and what you are, so let's have that conversation. Now look at this (look very hard, you Catholics suspicious of democracy):

By separating Church and State, the Republican revolution which took place 100 years ago in Portugal, opened up a new area of freedom for the Church...

But nothing says that freedom is easy. It's thrilling, but also frightening in that no one can make you be who you're called to be, and under pluralism, the quality of Chrisitian witness must be more intense:

Living amid a plurality of value systems and ethical outlooks requires a journey to the core of one’s being and to the nucleus of Christianity so as to reinforce the quality of one’s witness to the point of sanctity...