Word: pius
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...which they stand-a distinction that sometimes led him into such odd locutions as "the God above God." On this score, he was the despair of the orthodox, who always wanted to know whether he thought that the tomb was really empty on that first Easter morning. When Pope Pius XII defined the doctrine of the Virgin Mary's bodily assumption into Heaven, one eminent Jesuit friend of Tillich's was looking forward to having a lively argument with him on the subject. "But Paul said he saw no difficulty with the doctrine whatsoever," he reported furiously. "When...
Balance & Consensus. Protégé of the austere Pius XII, close friend of the jovial John XXIII, Giovanni Battista Montim in the third year of his pontificate has slowly emerged from the shadow of his great predecessors with a style and program all his own. John was an intuitive, charismatic prophet who threw open the windows and doors of the church to let in fresh air without worrying about?or even fully understanding?the consequences. By contrast, Paul is a detached and painstakingly analytical technician who has left the windows open?but who keeps checking the thermometer lest any cold drafts...
Mohn also scans some manuscripts, usually turns down any that might be controversial. He has no regrets over rejecting the bestselling manuscript of Rolf Hochhuth's play, The Deputy, which criticized Pope Pius XII. The boss's only regret is that about one-third of West Germany's adults do not read books (according to a recent Gallup poll, 77% of the Americans it queried had not cracked a book within the past year). Mohn figures that Germany's small number of nonreaders will diminish if and when he can find more salesmen in the labor...
...gradually changing, official Catholic teaching was solidifying into an orthodoxy, supported by a juridical theology that emphasized precedent and natural law. In 1930, birth control had become an accepted fact of secular life and was even endorsed by the Anglican Lambeth Conference of bishops. Yet that same year, Pope Pius XI denounced all forms of birth control in the strongest terms as the "ruin of morals...
...Prophecy. Pius' encyclical Casti Connubii may have been the apogee of the church's denunciation of birth control. Five years after it appeared, German Theologian Herbert Doms was tentatively proposing a personalist theology of marriage that gave primacy to love rather than childbearing. Although the Vatican at the time criticized Doms's theories, papal statements on marriage were soon to shift emphasis. Even as he denounced "the pill" as immoral in 1951, Pope Pius XII strongly affirmed the spiritual values of sex. "The conjugal act," he said, "is a personal action, which, according to the word...