He is obviously referring to temporal salvation from being "exterminated."  It's always the same theme, a purely humanistic, worldly material discourse.  

FWIW, eternal flames are, in fact, a "unique" experience where "salvation" is concerned.

Caminus said:

He's not talking about supernatural, eternal salvation since the man is still alive and he is speaking in the present/past tense. I'm all for exposing errors, but the first condition in doing so is to correctly identify and properly characterize the error of which we would like to expose.

I knew what you would say but it doesn't work.  To survive some kind of trauma is not "salvation," especially not when you actually say it is the Lord's salvation.  When a Catholic Pope so-called says the "Lord" it means God, not Satan, and it is well known what His salvation really is.  If Benedict had said "God wanted you to have a unique experience of His mercy" that would be one thing, but he didn't say that, he said "salvation."  

Then the rabbi who has the "unique experience of salvation" becomes the "sign and hope of rebirth" for other Jєωs.  You would have to bend over backwards, Caminus ( although you have become quite expert at that, how is life as a pretzel? ) to say that, in this context, right after hearing about "salvation," that merely surviving is a "rebirth."  A Jєω who survives the h0Ɩ0cαųst is still a Jєω.  Yeah, a secular person could get a divorce or something and say "I feel reborn!"  But this is not a secular person.  It's a supposedly Catholic Pope using Catholic words and concepts.

Again, Benedict speaks right at the beginning of the "Lord" as in the Catholic God, and then goes on to talk about rebirth and salvation.  You cannot start a sentence in a Catholic way and then shift gears on a dime into materialistic discourse.  He is using Catholic terminology -- salvation; rebirth -- because he is trying to give VII Catholics the impression that Jєωs can be saved and their religion is valid.  

As usual, he's trying to have it both ways, and you are giving it to him.  Yes, he is trying to be clever and is using the words in an ambiguous way thinking that no one can accuse him of heresy.  We know this technique from Vatican II and from all the encyclicals, we should be familiar with it by now.  Your argument is that the anti-Popes sidestep heresy through careful ambiguity -- it's nice to see you support them in their aims ( NOT!!! ) -- but in reality it is impossible to try to insinuate heresy and error without at least from time to time actually falling into heresy and error.  It is only natural that when someone is leaning too hard on the garden gate it is going to break and they are going to take a tumble into the mud.  

You would attribute to them a superhuman cleverness where they can erode the Church for almost fifty years now through ambiguity while never, ever actually falling into error.  This is simply disingenuous, there are heaps and heaps of errors and heresies that are piled up neck-deep by now.  Benedict of course is masterful at compressing three or four errors into one sentence and playing them off against each other so they almost ( but not quite ) cancel each other out through their very unintelligibility.  Maybe later I'll do one of my parodies, because it's easier to imitate than to describe.

The reality is that they have fallen into heresy and error, but God in His mercy has allowed it to be subtle so that there is still hope for certain people in VII.  The average Catholic is not going to understand the finer points of justification, for instance, or be able to see why the Joint Declaration on Justification is heretical.  God won't condemn some Mexican gardener for not getting that.  It all depends on your intelligence and how much you understand.  I'm not sure you have much of an excuse, Caminus.

Sorry Mike, your interpretation makes no sense because you're forcing the word "salvation" into a meaning that isn't there.  The notion of "temporal" salvation goes back to the beginning of the world and God rains upon both the just and the wicked.

It's an old Jєωιѕн propensity to look towards the temporal salvation of God.  Benedict apparently caters to that just like everything else.  It's quite nauseating.  

You mean has he failed in his duty?  I would say so.