Word: romanization
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...they are gaining in power. The most notable disputes have been over admitting women to equal status as clergymen. Ever since St. Paul's strictures on the subordination of women ("I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men"), Christianity has been patriarchal. Yet Roman Catholic women are now participating in the Mass as lectors, and in the distribution of the Eucharist. Nuns, of course, have undergone an astonishing transformation in the past decade, doffing habits and leaving cloisters to live in the community at large...
Among the extraordinary works in this collection are a 14th century processional cross decorated with an enthroned Christ and symbols of the Evangelists from Borbona (see cut); and a superb 13th century Limoges enamel casket, borrowed from the Roman church of Santa Maria in Via Lata (see color pages). There are a number of pieces that, regardless of their function, are extremely beautiful as sculpture. One is an angel from the cathedral of Vetralla, carrying relics of St. Andrew. Made in the early 15th century by the Viterban goldsmith Pietro di Vitale, it has a severe columnar air that distantly...
...realizes most vividly how church practice, including art, has changed across the centuries. What were once objects of universal veneration are now, to most people, oddities. The less intrinsically dignified the relic, the truer this seems to be. One cannot re-experience the feelings with which a devout Roman borghese of the 17th century might have knelt before the reliquary of Mary Magdalene's foot in the church of Sts. Celsus and Julian. To him it would have been an object dense in its reality and hallowed in association: one of the actual feet that propelled the repentant whore...
...fires to cook their scraps of food, defecating at curbstones, curling up in their cotton rags against a wall to sleep-and often to die. Out of this scene of unremitting human desolation has come an extraordinary message of love and hope. Its bearer is a tiny gray-eyed Roman Catholic nun who 27 years ago, alone and virtually penniless, set out to work among the city's "poorest of the poor...
...Roman Catholic Church, the only saint is a dead saint. Indeed, the very process of formal canonization was designed to determine who among the departed were certainly with God in heaven, and therefore could safely be asked to intercede for divine favors...