Tangoing with the Roman Pontiff

"Obedience characterizes Christianity. Obedience is what distinguishes Christianity, for example, from Gnosticism, a religious and philosophical doctrine stating that it is possible to obtain salvation through the sole avenue of knowledge. Today we have many Christianities that become a kind of Gnosticism, because they are satisfied with academic knowledge, and want nothing to do with obedience," the Cardinal pointed out.
-- Benedict XVI in a Zenit interview.

Your Greek is certainly better than mine, Your Holiness, and you surely must be aware that gnosis is used not to identify the factual, academic knowledge (of which you and I both appear to be quite enamored) which is the realm of textbooks and treatises, but rather an experiential kind of knowing arising from spiritual experience.

While Gnostics may want nothing to do with the obedience you praise as one of Christianity's vital characteristics, it has nothing to do with being satisfied by mere knowledge. It's the quest to know and understand that Gnostics embark upon, and slavish obedience to authoritarian rules and dogma is but a pothole in the road. It is better to walk around that pothole, or take another road entirely, than to fall in it.

In my experience as an orthodox priest, most people aren't satisfied by knowledge or obedience... they want to experience.