Stacy Meichtry writes in Thursday’s RNS report that Pope Benedict XVI is tougher on Islam and terrorism than his predecessor: In his historic 2001 visit to Syria, the late Pope John Paul II became the first pope to visit a mosque, where he stressed the common heritage of Christianity and Islam and highlighted the prominence of the Virgin Mary in the Quran. He also noted a certain “misuse (of) religion itself to promote or justify hatred and violence,” but left it undefined. But when his successor, Pope Benedict XVI, met with Muslim leaders in Germany on Saturday (Aug. 20), he stuck to one issue and gave it a name-terrorism.

Kevin Eckstrom checks out the Princeton Review’s latest university rankings and finds which schools top the the most secular and most religious lists: Reed, a private liberal arts and sciences school, placed first in overall academic excellence in the annual survey of 110,000 college students, but it also topped the category of schools where “students ignore God on a regular basis.” Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, the Mecca of Mormon higher education, was rated the nation’s most religious university. Perhaps not surprisingly, BYU also was dubbed the “most stone-cold sober” campus in the country.