Word: curiae
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What the Pope did was to order a shake-up of the Curia, the Roman Catholic Church's all-powerful governing bureaucracy. New regulations will bring to an end the dominance of a small clique of elderly, ultra-conservative Italian cardinals who have clung to the levers of power for a lifetime and used their position to stifle reform. Now the doors are open to a constant flow of clerics with varied backgrounds and, most important, new ideas...
...papal act requiring exquisite diplomacy and political tact. Ideally, a list of new cardinals should pay discreet homage to every major segment of the Roman Catholic Church: a prelate or two from major sees that traditionally require cardinal-archbishops; a sprinkling of faithful retainers from the Roman Curia; a spokesman for at least one nation that has never before had a member of the sacred college; a heroic bishop who has defended the Christian faith behind the Iron Curtain; and at least one energetic American...
Behind Closed Doors. Dutch Catholics modestly insist that they have no monopoly on Catholic radical thinking. "What we discuss openly," says Father Schillebeeckx, "is often discussed behind closed doors elsewhere." True or not, there is no doubt that Pope Paul VI and the Roman Curia have been deeply distressed about the extent to which the Dutch have challenged doctrine and tradition. The Pope's 1965 encyclical on the Eucharist was clearly directed against the theories of several Dutch theologians who had proposed to describe Christ's Real Presence in the bread and wine as transignification rather than transubstantiation...
...object of Luther's wrath might well be the bureaucratization of the churches. Although one target of the Reformation was the overweening power of the Roman Curia, hardly a U.S. church exists without a frightening quota of red tape and organizational concern. "The Law of Moses may have been abrogated," glooms Yale Historian Pelikan, "but not Parkinson's." Bureaucratic business goes hand in hand with clerical direction of the churches. "It is one of the great ironies of history," says Dean F. Thomas Trotter of California's Claremont School of Theology, "that whereas Protestantism began...
...incorporate more of today's democratic ideals in its structure, they urge a more distinct separation of executive, legislative and judicial functions. Under the present code, explained Jesuit Ladislas Orsy of Catholic University, there is a certain "imbalance" in church government: in practice, the offices of the Roman Curia both plan church regulations and enforce them. A wiser mode of government would be to have the law-creating function carried out by a separate, non-Curial agency-such as a senate of bishops. Another problem is that the church's courts-from Rome's Rota down...