Word: pius
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...possible canonization of POPE PIUS XII, which the Vatican has been investigating for over 25 years, is drawing fire from a Jewish leader. Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, says Pius XII (who reigned from 1939 to '58) was publicly silent during the Holocaust. Hier also says a letter he obtained from a Vatican official indicates that the nomination is moving forward. Father John Pawlikowski of the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago says outrage is premature: "The process is a long one, and any major decisions could be years away." Look for the issue to spark discussions...
...incapable of fathoming the ultimate origins of matter and energy, which will always come under the realm of religion. George Coyne, a Jesuit astrophysicist who directs the Vatican Observatory, warns against reducing science to religion, or vice versa. For instance, when the Big Bang theory was brand new, Pope Pius XII wrote that "scientists are beginning to find the finger of God in the creation of the universe." Coyne thinks the Pope was wrong to "take a scientific conclusion and interpret it in favor of supporting a theological doctrine." Working scientists "don't need God for our scientific understanding...
...papacy has been making the multicultural rounds. A safe Italian followed the sharp-edged Pole, John Paul II, but then came South American, African and Asian Popes (one African American nearly made it). Finally, the Italians reinstituted their monopoly over the throne of Peter. The incumbent Italian, Pope Pius XIV, is slowly reacquiring some of the art masterpieces sold off to cover Vatican debts...
...accommodationists review the history of innovation. In the '50s, when artificial insemination with donor semen was introduced, many ethicists said it separated procreation from marriage in a destructive way. Pope Pius XII, who denounced artificial insemination even from husband to wife, declared, "To reduce the cohabitation of married persons and the conjugal act to a mere organic function for the transmission of the germ of life would be to convert the domestic hearth, sanctuary of the family, into nothing more than a biological laboratory." When Louise Brown, the first test-tube baby, was born in England in July 1978, alarmists...
...classic, History of the United States. To generations of American schoolchildren, Columbus has been the all-time heroic figure portrayed by Channing and, more romantically, by Washington Irving in 1828: "a man of great and inventive genius" whose "ambition was lofty and noble." No wonder that Pope Pius IX wanted to make the discoverer of America a saint, or that more places in the English- speaking world are named for the Admiral of the Ocean Sea than for any other historical personage except Queen Victoria...