Word: papal
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...state of Kerala, in southwest India, is overpopulated even by Indian standards, and life is hard for its 20 million residents. For the state's 2,600,000 Latin-and Syrian-rite Catholics, the burden is even heavier. Strictly loyal to papal birth-control teachings, Catholic families, some with incomes of less than $350 a year, often have between eight and 15 children. Thus dowries for marriageable girls are out of the question. Under such conditions, an opportunity to send a daughter off to a European convent was like a godsend-and hundreds of families took advantage...
...whose ruler, King Philip IV, banished Jews from the province in order to seize their property. Ironically, Philip had also helped provide a place of asylum. A quarrel between the king and Pope Boniface VIII had played a part in the election of a French Pope, who moved the papal court to Avignon in 1308. There it remained until 1377, and there the banished Jews found a home. The Avignon Popes, beginning with Clement V, welcomed them-at least partly as valued taxpayers-and guaranteed their safety...
...heavens broke open again as the roll call began. A window shattered almost directly over the pontifical throne. As the votes came in-an unbroken succession of placets (it pleases)-it became clear that the opposition, once strong, had melted before the papal presence. Rather than embarrass the Pope, many of the American bishops, who principally feared Protestant reaction in the U.S. to the doctrine of papal infallibility, had gone quietly home. But the Most Rev. Edward Fitzgerald, 36, episcopus petriculanus, bishop of Little Rock, Ark., had changed his mind and decided to stay. When his name was called...
...Consequences. Today, one century later, the definition of papal infallibility remains the most memorable accomplishment of the First Vatican Council. Yet, as it turned out, it had less effect at the time than was expected. There were few immediate consequences: Great Britain's Prime Minister William Gladstone grumbled that the Pope was trying to revive "universal monarchy"; Germany's Otto von Bismarck used the dogma as a pretext for his anti-Catholic Kulturkampf (struggle for civilization); a group of Catholics in Central Europe formed the schismatic Old Catholic Church partly in rebellion against the doctrine...
...power recognized on that stormy summer day. In 1950, Pope Pius XII defined ex cathedra the dogma of the bodily assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven. Still, the doctrine of infallibility continues to trouble many Catholics. Among other things, its mere presence lends greater authority to other papal pronouncements not usually defined as infallible, such as Pope Paul VI's controversial encyclical Humanae vitae, which reaffirmed strictures against artificial birth control...