Word: absolutist
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...state, they have not only endured in peace (by and large) but also they have greatly nourished their common society. Not that they have understood or loved one another. A great many Americans still see their Catholic fellow citizens as vaguely alien and as narrow-minded servants of an absolutist theology. Because their church is vast diverse and all too easily regarded as monolithic," American Catholics are often taxed with everything from Spanish Catholic intolerance to Italian Catholic cynicism, from Legion of Decency censorship to neo-Thomist philosophy...
...with the rise of the absolutist monarchies in the 17th century, Gelasius' finely balanced dyarchy was shattered. Between Pope and King stood a saint who took 309 years to be canonized, Robert Francis Romulus Bellarmine (1542-1621), whose influence reached far beyond his lifetime. His was a time of upheaval; Galileo was turning the old earth-centered cosmos upside down, a new national consciousness was breaking up the Holy Roman Empire, and the "heresy" of Protestantism was digging in throughout the world. As one of the greatest polemical theologians in his church's history, Jesuit Cardinal Bellarmine...
Different Revolution. In the long run, it was the supporters of state power who won out against the champions of church power. In the words of Father Murray, the Gelasian principle of "two there are" became "one there is"-one increasingly powerful state. From absolutist monarchy, Murray sees a straight line of development to modern "totalitarian democracy" via the French Revolution's Jacobin republic, which put the civil government in almost complete control of church affairs. To this day, French separation of church and state makes Thomas Jefferson's famous "wall" look like a split-rail fence...
...large society will contain fanatics who are willing to kill people in pursuit of absolutist aims or our of sheer, if well-rationalized, destructiveness. But most of the men who are involved in the policy of deterrence are neither fanatics nor personally destructive. We must therefore ask why so many of them are either blind to where their actions lead or cynical about it--even despairing--or lacking in the imagination to contemplate consequences and possibilities. In our judgment, the continued acceptance of deterrence as the basis of defense reflects a deep malaise from which, in varying forms and degrees...
What had gone wrong in the sun-drenched paradise (no income taxes, no military service) ruled by Rainier and his beautiful Princess Grace, nee Kelly? The majority of the National Council wanted constitutional reforms and limits placed on the Prince's power-he is the only absolutist monarch left in Europe. The Prince, "thinking of my son" (Prince Albert, aged eleven months), and invoking the memory of his Grimaldi great-grandfather, Prince Albert I, was determined not to lose a single prerogative. When the council, which has only advisory powers, put pressure on the Prince by refusing to approve...