Word: papal
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...PAPAL POWER: Insofar as it concerns my humble person, I would not like to claim any special inspiration. I content myself with the sound doctrine which teaches that everything comes from...
Popes, like kings, have traditionally spoken of themselves in the first person plural-an arrogation that to many Protestants seems a sign of the issues that divide Catholicism from the rest of Christianity: the primacy of Rome, the doctrine of papal infallibility. When the non-Catholic Christian observers to the Second Vatican Council gathered in the Sistine Chapel for an audience with Pope John XXIII, they heard a rare and significant departure from form: the Pontiff pointedly referred to himself in the first person singular, and spoke with moving humility (see box). For the observers-some of them second-stringers...
...world of today. To equalize the distribution of priests-the U.S. has one for every 800 Catholics, Latin America one for every 10,000-the council may approve procedures that would let the Pope transfer clergy to areas where they are most needed. Thanks to a plethora of papal charters and privileges, most of the church's religious orders are largely exempt from the jurisdiction of bishops. Dominicans and Jesuits, who are proud of their status as the Pope's spiritual elite guard, will object strongly, but the council may give bishops more authority over personnel of religious...
...XXIII. So far, his record is puzzling. One of his first major personnel changes was removing the aged, archconservative Giuseppe Cardinal Pizzardo as head of the church's doctrine-guarding ministry, the Holy Office-only to name the equally conservative Cardinal Ottaviani as Pizzardo's successor. As Papal Nuncio to France, John seemed to be sympathetic to the worker-priest movement, despite strong Vatican disapproval; after he became Pope, John issued an order that killed the experiment for good. In talks with audiences, John has sometimes spoken favorably of translating parts of the Mass into the vernacular...
Vatican I had nearly as vast an agenda as Trent; yet in four argument-ridden sessions in 1869 and 1870, the 774 bishops succeeded only in formulating two decrees: papal infallibility and a statement on the nature of faith. More than one-fifth of the bishops did not want papal infallibility defined, and 55 of them walked out of the council rather than vote on the decree (all ultimately accepted it). A storm raged over Rome on the day the doctrine was approved; each favorable vote was echoed from outside St. Peter's Basilica by an awesome clap...