Word: dogma
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Many Protestants are unaware of it, but the infallibility of the Pope has never once been officially exercised since the doctrine was defined by the Vatican Council in 1870.* This week, the vast machinery of the Roman Catholic Church seemed almost ready to proclaim, by papal infallibility, a new dogma which all true Catholics would be required to believe: that upon the death of the Virgin, her body was taken up directly into Heaven...
Although the Feast of the Assumption has been celebrated in the Church at least since the 7th Century, and the Assumption is one of the "glorious mysteries" on which Catholics meditate while saying the Rosary, this belief has never been pronounced a dogma. Informed sources now predict that Pius XII will do so next April 2-the 50th anniversary of his ordination...
...machinery of such solemn decisions grinds slow and small. Some 200 years ago, a monk wrote to Pope Clement XIII begging him to define the bodily Assumption of Mary as "a most certain dogma of faith." Clement passed the matter on to the Holy Office. In 1863, Spain's Queen Elizabeth made the same request. Pius IX, though recognizing the Queen's good intentions, was somewhat annoyed at a temporal sovereign's interference in sacred matters. He replied: "I am not worthy to publish such a dogma. The wishes of Your Majesty, the holy wishes of Your...
...convenient [deceat], is it opportune [expediat to adhere to these requests [for the dogmatic definition of the Assumption]?" The letter explicitly asked the "Venerable Brothers" if, "according to your wisdom and prudence, you believe that the Bodily Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin be established and defined as a dogma of faith and if this would be in accord with the wishes of your clergy and people." The Pope is reported to have said that the "answers, in their great majority, are favorable...
...quickly the practice of conservation will spread throughout the world, U.S. soil men cannot say. But they do say that the obstacles are economic and social, not technical. Science can stop most kinds of soil deterioration and will surely lick the rest. For the Neo-Malthusian scare-dogma that the world's soil must inevitably lose its productiveness, the soil men have a one-word answer: bunkum...