Word: pontiff
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...clear and simple call for Christian love and charity. Popes typically use their first encyclicals, the most authoritative form of Church writing, to set the tone for their reign rather than to spark debate or overhaul Catholic teachings. With this work, released Wednesday by top Vatican officials, the pontiff may have once and for all moved beyond the caricature painted by his opponents of a cold and rigid doctrinal enforcer from his quarter-century as John Paul II's chief of orthodoxy...
...pontiff-theologian then dissects the two categories of Christian love: "eros" (erotic love) and "agape" (spiritual love). Modern society, he argues, has debased eros, put sex up for sale, and defied the singularity of monogamous man-woman love. "Eros needs to be disciplined and purified if it is to provide not just fleeting pleasure, but a certain foretaste of the pinnacle of our existence," he writes. He concludes that eros and agape ultimately share a single destiny. "Love is indeed 'ecstasy,' not in the sense of a moment of intoxication, but rather as a journey, an ongoing exodus...
RELEASED. MEHMET ALI AGCA, 48, Turkish assailant who spent almost 20 years in prison in Italy for shooting and wounding Pope John Paul II in 1981, then served five more in a Turkish jail for the 1979 murder of a journalist; in Istanbul. The Pontiff, who was shot by Agca while riding in an open car through St. Peter's Square in Rome, forgave his would-be assassin and visited him in prison. But after the Turkish press railed at his release, Justice Minister Cemil Cicek ordered a review of whether Agca had been credited correctly for time served. Cicek...
...RELEASED. MEHMET ALI AGCA, 48, Turkish assailant who spent almost 20 years in jail in Italy for shooting and wounding Pope John Paul II in 1981, then served five more in a Turkish jail for the 1979 murder of a journalist; in Istanbul. The Pontiff, who was shot by Agca while riding in an open car through Rome's St. Peter's Square, forgave his would-be assassin and visited him in prison. But after the Turkish press railed at his release, Justice Minister Cernil Cicek ordered a review of whether Agca had been credited correctly for time served. Cicek...
...land in one fell swoop, launching desired changes internally while minimizing the duration of the public reverberations. Instead, the new "instruction" from the Congregation for Catholic Education has remained in the news for weeks, with flip-flopping interpretations that managed neither to limit criticism nor to clearly articulate the pontiff's purpose. And that, despite some optimistic interpretations by progressive Catholics, seems to be to sound a loud "No" to new gays entering the priesthood, with the caveat that defining who is a homosexual is not always a simple task...