One could dwell upon the informality of the Bishop of Rome in phoning Scalfari and setting a place and time to meet — an informality which in itself says something very important to the entire world. But we need to turn to the substance of the Sept. 24 discussion between Scalfari and Francis.

Scalfari described how, by the age of 12 as a boy growing up in Rome, he had won a contest for knowing his catechism. In his high-school years, as he read the philosopher Rene Descartes, he found his mind heading in a direction for which, in a sense, Descartes was the enabler. Many people since the 17th century have looked upon Descartes as the person who gave philosophy a new direction. Many see his focus on the operations of the human mind as liberating philosophy from appeals to "authority" (whether that authority be an older philosopher or the church), and clearing a way for a more "scientific" way of pondering reality.

There is a certain irony in what Scalfari relates, given that Descartes remained a believing, practicing Catholic all his life, and influenced the Queen of Sweden so that she turned from Lutheranism to Catholicism. Indeed, as I check my notes on some of my reading of Descartes from a few years back, I find that he acknowledges space for faith in the midst of his rationalism. I had read a snippet of Descartes in high school; the students in that class came to the conclusion that he was like a spider spinning a web from itself, and we were not sure whether this was a worthy method for proceeding with reflection on ultimate truths.

Francis asks Scalfari what he believes. I find Scalfari's "belief in being," and its acceptance of bodies and forms spontaneously moving in and out of existence, to be quite vague and unsatisfying. I hope that I am not caricaturing his belief when I say that the apparent randomness of our transitions bespeaks a sense of the meaninglessness of human existence. (I am familiar with the counterargument that mortality — without the expectation of eternity — makes every moment of our existence ultimately meaningful.)

I find, in these first attempts at a papal- atheist dialogue, a sincerity and care which, I am afraid, I do not find elsewhere. Last time I mentioned American Atheist magazine. As I perused its 50th-anniversary issue, I found it largely suffused with attitudes about theists being fools, and believers endangering society for right-thinking people — that is, themselves. The idea of having any sort of dialogue with believers in God is ridiculed. These are attitudes likewise manifested in the so-called "New Atheism," the outstanding representatives of which are mainly to be found in Britain.

So it is wonderful to witness two people taking time and energy to attempt a meaningful discussion about ultimate truth. It appears that these two interlocutors have the patience to pursue a process which can potentially shed more light than heat.