Word: pope
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...Though the tide in Rome was shifting back toward the doctrinal firmness he would come to embody, 1968 was a complicated year for Joseph Ratzinger, the current pope. According to his biographers, the then theology professor recoiled from the maelstrom of student protest and provocative behavior on the campus of Tübingen University, where he was teaching. Indeed, the following year he would move to the more conservative (and quiet) campus of the University of Regensberg...
...Since becoming Pope, Benedict has stepped up his so-called "dialogue" with the secular-scientific world. Three months into his papacy he suggested a way to find moral common ground with non-believers, suggesting atheists behave "as if God existed." Benedict even praised Karl Marx in his last encyclical for his "incisive language and intellect ... precision and great analytic skill," before dissecting the errors of his ideology. Next year, the Vatican has slated special conferences to confront the ideas of Galileo and Darwin...
...that Benedict's critique of the West's spreading secularism is as sharp as ever. Just before his election, he provocatively warned against "the dictatorship of relativism," a let-it-all-slide mentality, particularly in the West, that he sees as promoting a lifestyle of loose morals. Yet the Pope seems to understand that hiding from or denying that trend is a losing strategy...
...French philosopher André Glucksmann, considered one of the intellectual fathers of the May 1968 movement in Paris, is one of a growing number of atheist intellectuals who have praised the Pope for his call for a shared morality based on reason. He sees Ratzinger's campus experience 40 years ago as a "generational" effect that actually has its roots in an earlier, more cataclysmic turning point in perceptions of the world's workings. "The decline of faith has little to do with '68, Glucksmann told TIME. "It came from the end of World War I, when people stopped thinking...
...April 1966, TIME posed a simple question on a now famous cover: "Is God Dead?". That question remains a rich and perennial subject of dialogue - partly, no doubt, because the current Pope is keen to engage with those who answer it in the affirmative. With reporting by Francesco Peloso/Rome