Word: church
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Catholic Church (and Pope Benedict XVI) were presented with a public-relations powder keg in March when news broke that a 9-year-old Brazilian girl underwent an abortion after she'd been raped and impregnated with twins by her stepfather. Catholics from São Paulo to Paris were outraged by the swift public declaration of the local Archbishop, José Cardoso Sobrinho, that the girl's family as well as the doctors who performed the abortion were automatically excommunicated. Monsignor Rino Fisichella, a solidly traditionalist Rome prelate considered to be close to Benedict, tried to soften the church...
...clarification" published on page 7 of a recent edition of L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican produced a document that unequivocally confirmed automatic excommunication for anyone involved in an abortion - even in such a situation as dire as the Brazilian case. It settles any questions about the absolute nature of church doctrine on the matter of abortion - but it could potentially reignite the p.r. firestorm. (See the original story of the controversial abortion in Brazil...
...Church conservatives have steadfastly defended Sobrinho, who had rejected Fisichella's criticism of insensitivity and said he was simply stating Catholic doctrine in response to reporters' questions. The L'Osservatore Romano document makes it more than likely that the Pope has felt it necessary to publicly defend the Brazilian prelate's hard line, ordering up the clarification to straighten out any confusion created by Fisichella's article. (See pictures of the Pope's visit to Brazil...
...White House never told the CIA why it panicked, at least as far as I know. But I do know that the Administration was living with the collective memory of the Church Committee hearings. In the mid-1970s, a Senate committee chaired by Frank Church hammered the CIA for its attempted assassinations of foreign leaders, including Fidel Castro. During the worst of it, the CIA wondered if it would survive. It did. But it was saddled with an order prohibiting assassination, and in 1981 Ronald Reagan amended it as Executive Order 12333. In the CIA, that was the closest thing...
...Congress about if they became real possibilities. (I won't try to guess what Cheney would have done.) Yet however overblown the story, if a full-fledged investigation into it does occur, it could be the last nail in the CIA's coffin. This Congress could succeed where the Church Committee failed. Even if things are not that dire - people are always talking about abolishing the CIA - it will undermine morale for years. Congress, no doubt, will explain in the coming months how a program that was no secret was somehow beyond the pale. But if this game is nothing...