Word: theologian
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...Benedict XVI's papacy may have been delivered the day before he became Pope. Just hours before entering the Sistine Chapel to help choose John Paul II's successor, then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger gave an impassioned sermon in which he decried the "dictatorship of relativism." The conservative German theologian used the phrase to warn against modernity's creation of a secular ideology "that does not recognize anything as definitive, and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's ego and desires." The "dictatorship of relativism" quote has become a rallying cry for some Roman Catholic conservatives, especially those dismayed...
...once again, American leaders refused. They hewed to containment, a policy premised on a very different mind-set. "The advocates of preventive war with Russia assume that Russia will grow stronger and we will get weaker," argued theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, whose writing influenced the Truman Administration. "Their calculations are not only strategically mistaken but morally wrong." "NSC-68," which outlined the Truman Administration's cold war strategy, predicted it was Moscow that would eventually falter, because the "idea of freedom" is "peculiarly and intolerably subversive of slavery...
...last great conservative gestures as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: Dominus Jesus, a reassertion of the primacy of Catholicism over other religions. Other members are "consultors" to that key office, and Opus' canon lawyers saturate Rome. Asserts John Navone, a Jesuit theologian at Gregorian University: "They're in the forefront of the Vatican...
...first encyclical, "God Is Love," might suggest a religious twist on a late Beatles song, but to those who know the life's work of Professor Joseph Ratzinger, the 72-page document "Deus Caritas Est" carries the imprint of an exceptionally clear-minded and utterly convinced Catholic theologian...
...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...