Sublime

John F. Kennedy, the most seductive American public figure of modern times, was a walking paradox: an East Coast aristocrat with a love of the common man, an obviously masculine man—a war hero—with a vulnerability you could sense underneath, an intellectual who loved popular culture.

Innocent III was the first great Pope in whom there was no element of sanctity. The reform of the Church made the hierarchy feel secure as to its moral prestige, and therefore convinced that it need no longer trouble to be holy. The power motive, from his time on, more and more exclusively dominated the papacy, and produced opposition from some

All human beings are called to the new people of God. Therefore this people, while remaining one and unique, is to be spread throughout the whole world and through every age to fulfil the design of the will of God, who in the beginning made one human nature and decreed that his children who had been scattered should at last be gathered together

a new experience of Pentecost, from which the Church would enter its third millennium with revitalized evangelical zeal and a new passion for mission.

For this reason the Council was not first of all to condemn the errors of the time, but above all to strive calmly to show the strength and beauty of the doctrine of the faith.

The great institutional renewal of the Roman Church, though, began when Pope Paul III (1468–1549) convoked the Council of Trent in 1545. This council continued (with occasional interruptions) under a number of popes until 1563. It instituted a massive reform and regularization of the Western liturgy, dealt systematically with a number of clerical