Word: xiv
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...papacy has been making the multicultural rounds. A safe Italian followed the sharp-edged Pole, John Paul II, but then came South American, African and Asian Popes (one African American nearly made it). Finally, the Italians reinstituted their monopoly over the throne of Peter. The incumbent Italian, Pope Pius XIV, is slowly reacquiring some of the art masterpieces sold off to cover Vatican debts...
...catalog is massive, with 23 essays by various hands -- a long symposium. The '20s, Clair points out, were the first "name" decade in cultural history. In an older and slower-changing Europe, cultural periods were identified with long reigns -- the age of Pericles, Louis XIV. But now, in a time of fantastically accelerated communications and stylistic shifts, what Clair calls "the tyranny of the short term" begins: rapid identifiable packaging in culture...
...considering how high expectations were running. Just last year France looked well placed to become more than the center of gravity of a newly ascendant Europe. By some lights, it was emerging as the best of all possible worlds. Three centuries after the reign of the Sun King, Louis XIV, and nearly two after Napoleon bestrode the Continent, Paris was confidently pulling the strings of Europe, positioning itself to be the capital of a new political-economic imperium...
...Congress wants to reassert its constitutional prerogative to decide whether or not the nation should go to war. About time. U.S. Presidents have gone much too far toward claiming (or rather exercising without even bothering to claim) the power of Louis XIV to send a whole nation into battle on his sole judgment, even whim. The makers of the Constitution were determined never to give one man that power in the new republic, and they were right. If the U.S. is to fight Iraq, it should be by conscious decision of its elected representatives, reached after full debate...
First came The Shoes of the Fisherman, then The Clowns of God. Lazarus (St. Martin's Press; 293 pages; $19.95) completes Morris West's papal trilogy. Few laymen have written so knowledgeably about Vatican politics. West charts the course of Leo XIV, a crusty soul who has alienated the liberals in his flock. Now the Pontiff must undergo bypass surgery, and as if that were not threat % enough, Muslim terrorists are offering $100,000 for his life. Pope Leo returns from the operation like Lazarus from the dead. But he is a changed man, with plans to alter his church...