Word: vatican
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...March 24, four days after the Vatican released a papal letter concerning the problem of sexual abuse in the Irish Church, Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation of Bishop John Magee. The 73-year-old clergyman, who became head of the diocese of Cloyne in 1987 and previously served as personal secretary to three Popes in the 1970s and '80s, had been under pressure for some time to step down because of his mishandling of abuse complaints that date back to the 1990s...
...they have, can shame us away from the Eucharist and the human elevation we derive from it. Our church's disrepute, in fact, compels us to consider our religion's virtues more seriously. For starters, it might prod more Catholics to question, say, how Christian it is to heap Vatican-style condemnation on gays and lesbians and yet insist that pedophile priests need forgiveness more than prison time. (See 10 surprising facts about the world's oldest Bible...
...stolen from us through its forfeiture of moral authority. The silver lining is that we're left to ponder our religion sans church, to define our faith not via hoary doctrine but via our own reason, which is how Catholicism is supposed to be practiced anyway. (Yes, despite the Vatican's warnings, it's safe to try theology at home!) Because Catholicism so richly contemplates Jesus' human as well as divine nature - Michelangelo didn't sculpt the Pieta in a theological vacuum - real Catholicism promotes human reason as a door to moral understanding and spiritual redemption. The Church...
There is a public expectation in Western democracies for a full accounting. And it is a sentiment that faithful Catholics share especially because of their piety. Jordan Bonfante, who covered the Vatican for TIME during the late 1970s, has been a rabbinical guide as I, a secular Jew, have covered the same beat in more recent years. In a rare quiet moment in 2005 when we together covered the period between the death of John Paul II and the election of Benedict XVI, Bonfante, a practicing Catholic, told me what continues to draw him to his faith. "Catholicism...
Some have incorrectly worried that personally confessing such shortcomings could undermine papal infallibility. But that doctrine refers only to the dogma of divine revelation. Others wonder if Church officials are worried about the effect of such a statement in opening up the Vatican to potential lawsuits. Well, if the lawyers are calling the shots on this, the Pope is in even worse shape than we thought...