Word: benediction
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Thanks for the lovely article on Pope Benedict XVI [April 14]. I appreciated your bringing out his appreciation for America, its unique and diverse faith history and his current efforts to balance science with morality as well as his efforts to balance faith with reason. I disagree, however, with the suggestion that Catholics have the prerogative to "legitimately balance church teaching against the demands of their conscience." There is a Vatican II that existed only in the imaginations of a generation into sex, love and rock 'n' roll. When one attends to the actual written documents of that Council, what...
...privileges: the first foreign visitor to be greeted on the tarmac by President Bush; 12,000 well wishers on the White House South Lawn, more than for the Queen of England; 21 guns, fife and drums, and a cake for his 81st birthday. The anticipation of Pope Benedict XVI's visit was so great, the response was so warm, it was as though his hosts were trying to raise him up, a Pontiff in many ways still in the shadow of his predecessor, John Paul Superstar. And no one seemed more eager to cast him in the brightest light than...
...greeting, the Pontiff did not mention the war, though he did call for "patient efforts of international diplomacy to resolve conflicts." The Pope will need to draw on all of that sensitivity. His visit came as many American Catholics remain livid over the church's recent pedophilia scandals. Benedict agreed in remarks to U.S. bishops that the issue had been "sometimes very badly handled"--the first real admission of the church's culpability--but still found enough blame to lay on America's "wider context of sexual mores" as well. The Pope's political reflexes will be tested again...
...devout Catholics crowd the new Washington Nationals Stadium this morning for a Holy Mass led by Pope Benedict XVI, animal protection is not likely to be on their minds. Amid the great questions of war, justice, and life, animals might also appear a humble concern for the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics. But the Pope himself has suggested that the issue of animal protection is far from irrelevant to the Catholic faith...
With “creation care” a growing environmental movement in American congregations, animal protection will hopefully gain religious notice. In the meantime, Catholic priests can look to the words of Pope Benedict XV, the current Pontiff’s namesake, who in 1915 enjoined priests to support the Italian SPCA, “that they may offer to the animals refuge from every suspicion of roughness, cruelty, or barbarism, and lead men to understand from the beauty of creation something of the infinite perfection of their Creator.” Lewis E. Bollard...