Word: pontiff
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Newsweek poll taken at the time of the pontiff's visit to Denver showed that 62 percent of the American Catholics polled thought that the church was too conservative on birth control and that 63 percent had either used artificial birth control themselves or knew other Catholics who had. More remarkably, while the highest number of those polled said the church was "about right" on issues of abortion and human sexuality, the percentage who felt it was too conservative on both issues was only marginally lower than those who agreed with the church...
Pope John Paul II will not be led into temptation, and if his latest and most important encyclical has its way, he hopes to deliver his church from evil. For years the Pontiff has been aware that contemporary liberal morality has deeply influenced the beliefs and practices of the Roman Catholic Church's 980 million members. And he will have none of it. In his 179-page Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth), he argues that good is clearly distinct from evil, that morality is not situational, that right is right and wrong is really wrong, and that the church...
...want to know what the Pope does in the evenings?" asks a middle- ranking member of the Vatican bureaucracy. "This is what he does. He thinks about these things." Six years ago, the Pontiff announced his intention to set down in encyclical form his reflections on the nature of good and evil. Encyclicals are authoritative declarations of the church's teaching, warnings of new problems, and guides to parishes across the world. John Paul's task seemed so daunting to some and so useless to others that the Pope was the unwilling recipient of almost constant, contradictory advice from...
...years ago, a draft was circulated to a select group of theological philosophers for comment, with the understanding that the Pontiff thought his work was nearly completed. The draft caused so much internal -- and not always well-concealed -- debate that the Pope took it back and overhauled it. Of the final product, a Vatican insider says, "What he has written is a masterpiece. But it is far too dense to be transmitted to most people...
Indeed, encyclicals are never page turners, and the Pontiff, a philosopher and onetime professor, tosses around such celestial concepts as "fundamental option," "invincible ignorance," "teleology" and "consequentialism." John Paul also peppers his paper with 184 footnotes, citing for instance the Second Vatican Council, the new Catechism of the Catholic Church (as yet unavailable in English) and Thomas Aquinas, the medieval saint who defined the concept of natural law. The grand finale is a hymn to the Virgin Mary...