Word: clericalism
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...road to sainthood, it pays to have connections. A mystic with blood on his hands was scheduled to move a step closer to becoming a saint this week with Pope John Paul II's beatification of the Capuchin friar known as PADRE PIO. The cleric, who died in 1968, is a favorite of the Pontiff's and a cultlike figure to many other Catholics. Last year 7 million pilgrims--more than went to Lourdes--trekked to the remote hillside village of Italy's San Giovanni Rotondo, where he's buried; the village bustles with the construction of hotels...
...most Americans, the Islamic Republic of Iran is known for denouncing the Great Satan U.S., swearing out fatwas on any renegade soul and defining women's rights as the privilege of wearing a chador. For two decades, Iran has been, notoriously, fascism with a cleric's face. So it is a conundrum and a wonder that the republic has allowed the production of highly sophisticated films that are both touching, in the style of Italian postwar neorealism, and at least implicitly critical of aspects of the ruling theocracy. How do Iran's auteurs pull off this double feat? Frequently...
...MacLeod. "Everyone in the region wants to get rid of Saddam, but they don't want to maintain an indefinite bombing campaign." Despite weekend press reports of U.S. officials nodding and winking about coup prospects, MacLeod is skeptical. "The assassination, quite possibly by the regime, of a Shi'ite cleric in the south last week, sparked some unrest, but it was all over in a couple of days," says MacLeod. "You can't put out fires that quickly if you don't have a firm grip on your security forces." Washington, therefore, may need a little more than carborundum...
...Taliban, the Islamist rulers of most of Afghanistan, have not cracked down on him. In July the head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki al Faisal, flew to Kandahar and asked the black-turbaned Taliban leaders to keep bin Laden quiet. After the prince left, Mullah Mohammed Omar, the cleric who founded the Taliban movement, had a chat with bin Laden. "We told him," the mullah told TIME, "that as a guest he shouldn't involve himself in activities that create problems for us." Anyway, he added, "how can he do these bomb explosions when he's sitting so far away...
...salvation as earned, a function of one's merit. Like many people, Luther was periodically paralyzed by fear that his merit might fall short. He was also angry that the church, as age-old intermediary between believer and God, was profiting from this fear. For a price, the appropriate cleric would perform merit-building practices like prayer, penance or pilgrimage on one's behalf. The sale of such "indulgences" financed many a medieval cathedral. Retreating to his New Testament, Luther considered St. Paul's letter to the Romans. Human "works," preached Paul, could not affect anyone's eternal life; "Justification...