Word: sin
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Borrowing a leaf from the evolutionary theme of French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the theologians interpret human history as an upward curve, with God acting with man in a cooperative process of liberating humanity and the world. Sin is anything that resists or undercuts this process, or any oppression of one person-or group-by another. Salvation lies in a commitment to love of neighbor and thus a willingness to fight oppression, with revolution if need be. Camilo Torres, the Colombian guerrilla priest who was shot down by government troops in 1966, is the folk hero of liberation theology...
...prominent New York family, Edith grew up in a world of high, narrow town houses and high, narrow minds. As a woman, she was supposed to know enough to be a good hostess and no more; to be educated was tantamount to being pushy, a sin just below adultery in the eyes of old New York. Judged by those almost Oriental rules, Edith Jones was a misfit, and she was more at home in the library than in the drawing room...
...latest economic and political crises compounded Nigeria's more chronic problems, which include a notorious degree of corruption-known locally as "dash"-among military and government officials. As one Nigerian newspaper editor recently observed, "If original sin goes back to the Garden of Eden, then Adam must have been a Nigerian." Although Gowon is considered irreproachably honest, he was unable to control the widespread graft that helped prevent equitable distribution of the nation's oil wealth ($8 billion for 1974) to most of the 79 million Nigerians, who must still survive on an average per capita income...
...first Holy Year took place in 1300, when Pope Boniface VIII decreed a year known as the "Jubilee," after the Old Testament practice in which debts were forgiven every 50th year. In this case, however, the pardon was from penalties incurred through sin. In Catholic belief, the sinner was freed from eternal punishment (hell) through the sacrament of Penance. But temporal punishment (on earth or in purgatory) remained, and it could be removed in full by an indulgence granted to Holy Year pilgrims by the Pope, who controlled an "inexhaustible" treasury of the merits of Christ, Mary and the saints...
...interpretations make many novels sound better than they are. With Ragtime, just the opposite is true. Its lyric tone, fluid structure and vigorous rhythms give it a musical quality that explanation mutes. In Doctorow's hands, the nation's secular fall from grace is no catalogue of sin. no mere tour de force; the novelist has managed to seize the strands of actuality and transform them into a fabulous tale...