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Vaticana| year = 1994| url = http://www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/p123a9p3.htm%7C accessdate=25 October 2009}}</ref> and that the Bishop of Rome (the Pope) as the successor of Peter, possesses a universal primacy of jurisdiction and pastoral care.

and 22 Eastern Catholic Churches – each with distinct traditions regarding the liturgy and the administration of the sacraments. Each diocese is divided into individual communities called parishes, each staffed by one or more priests.

The church community is made up of ordained members (such as bishops, priests and deacons,) and the laity. Members of religious orders such as nuns, friars and monks are lay members unless individually ordained as priests.

Ordained members and Holy Orders

Men may become ordained clergy to serve as deacons, priests or as bishops through the sacrament of Holy Orders which is conferred by one or more bishops through the laying on of hands.

Deacons and all other clergy may preach, teach, baptize, witness marriages and conduct funeral liturgies. The sacraments of the Eucharist, Reconciliation (Penance) and Anointing of the Sick may only be administered by priests or bishops.

All clergy who are bishops form the College of Bishops and are jointly considered the successors of the apostles. Only bishops can administer the sacrament of Holy Orders. They are also responsible for teaching, governing, and sanctifying the faithful of their diocese, sharing these duties with the priests and deacons who serve under them.

The Church teaches that since the twelve apostles chosen by Jesus were all male, only men may be ordained as priests. While some consider this to be evidence of a discriminatory attitude toward women, the Church believes that Jesus called women to different yet equally important vocations in Church ministry. Pope John Paul II, in his apostolic letter Christifideles Laici, states that women have specific vocations reserved only for the female sex, and are equally called to be disciples of Jesus.

Married men may become deacons but only celibate men are ordinarily ordained as priests in the Latin Rite. However, married clergymen who have been received into the Church from other denominations may be exempted from this rule. The Eastern Catholic Churches ordain both celibate and married men to the priesthood, but married men cannot become bishops. All 23 particular Churches of the Catholic Church maintain the ancient tradition that marriage is not allowed after ordination.

Men with transitory homosexual leanings may be ordained deacons following three years of prayer and chastity, but homosexual men who are sexually active, or those who have deeply rooted homosexual tendencies, cannot be ordained.

Lay members, marriage

The laity consists of those Catholics who are not ordained clergy. Saint Paul compared the diversity of roles in the Church to the different parts of a body, all being important to enable the body to function. The Church therefore considers that lay members are equally called to live according to Christian principles, to work to spread the message of Jesus, and to effect change in the world for the good of others. The Church calls these actions participation in Christ's priestly, prophetic and royal offices. Marriage and the consecrated life are lay vocations. The sacrament of Holy Matrimony in the Latin rite is not administered (conferred) by the priest or deacon who presides. Instead, the ministers of the sacrament are the bride and groom, who mutually confer the sacrament upon each other by expressing their consent before the priest or deacon who serves as a witness. In the Eastern Catholic Churches the minister of this sacrament, which is called "Crowning", is the priest or bishop who, after receiving the mutual consent of the spouses, successively crowns the bridegroom and the bride as a sign of the marriage covenant. Church law makes no provision for divorce, but annulment may be granted when proof is produced that essential conditions for contracting a sacramental union (valid marriage) were absent. Since the Church condemns all forms of artificial birth control, married persons are expected to be open to new life in their sexual relations. Natural family planning is approved.

Lay ecclesial movements consist of lay Catholics organized for purposes of teaching the faith, cultural work, mutual support or missionary work. Such groups include: Communion and Liberation, Opus Dei and many others. Some non-ordained Catholics practice formal, public ministries within the Church. These are called lay ecclesial ministers, a broad category which may include pastoral life coordinators, pastoral assistants, youth ministers and campus ministers.

Consecrated life

Both the ordained and the laity may enter the cloistered consecrated life as monks or nuns. There are also friars and sisters who engage in teaching and missionary activity and charity work such as the various mendicant orders. A candidate takes vows confirming their desire to follow the three evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty and obedience.

The majority of those wishing to enter the consecrated life join one of the religious institutes which are also referred to as monastic or religious orders. They follow a common rule such as the Rule of St Benedict and agree to live under the leadership of a superior. They usually live together in a community but individuals may be given permission to live as hermits, or to reside elsewhere, for example as a serving priest or chaplain. Examples of religious institutes include the Benedictines, Carmelites, Cistercians, Augustinians, Dominicans, Franciscans, Marist Brothers, Paulist Fathers, Sisters of Charity, Sisters of the Destitute, Sisters of Mercy, Legionaries of Christ and the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), but there are many others.

Tertiaries and "Oblates (regular)" are laypersons who live according to the third rule of orders such as those of the Secular Franciscan Order or Lay Carmelites, either within a religious community or outside. The Church recognizes several other forms of consecrated life, including secular institutes, societies of apostolic life and consecrated widows and widowers. It also makes provision for the approval of new forms.

Membership

Membership of the Catholic Church is attained through baptism. For those baptized as children, First Communion is a rite of passage when, following instruction, they are allowed to receive the sacrament of the Eucharist for the first time in the Latin (Western) Church; the Eastern Churches confer the sacraments of initiation at once – Baptism, Chrismation (Confirmation) and Eucharist – to unbaptized children or unbaptized adult converts. Adults who have never been baptized may be admitted to Baptism by participating in a formation program such as the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. Christians – those baptized with flowing water and in the "Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit" – baptized outside of the Catholic Church are admitted through other formation programs but are not re-baptized.

Members of the Church can incur excommunication for serious violations of ecclesiastical law. Excommunication does not remove a member from the Church but severely limits the member's ability to participate in it. For very serious offenses, the excommunication can be incurred automatically. Examples include violating the seal of confession (committed when a priest discloses the sins heard in the sacrament of Penance), persisting in heresy, creating schism, becoming an apostate, or having or performing an abortion. Excommunication is the most severe ecclesiastical penalty because it forbids a person from receiving any sacrament. Such offences can only be forgiven by the Pope, the bishop of the diocese where the person resides, or a priest authorized by the bishop to do so. A similar concept is a minister's power to refuse to distribute communion to a person not yet declared excommunicated (but nonetheless excommunicated latae sententiae) who has publicly committed a very serious sin.

Excommunication, which is a "medicinal" measure meant to lead to repentance, does not make the person to whom it is applied cease to be a member of the Church. To terminate one's membership, a person must present to the competent Church authority a formal act of defection. If that person later wishes to rejoin the Church, the procedure is the same as for any baptized non-Catholic, namely by a profession of faith, again before the competent Church authority.

Catholic institutions, personnel and demographics

Church membership in 2007 was 1.147 billion people, significantly increased from the 1950 figure of 437 million and the 1970 figure of 654 million. The Catholic population increase of 139% outpaced the world population increase of 117% between 1950 and 2000. The Catholic Church is the largest Christian church, encompassing approximately half of all Christians and one sixth of the world's population, making it the largest organized body in any world religion, although the number of practicing as opposed to lapsed Catholics worldwide is not reliably known. The Church operates transnational relief organisations across the world, it also operates the world's largest non-governmental school system.

In 2003, the church had about 405,450 priests worldwide, a 3.7 percent drop from 1978. In the United States and Europe, numbers fell about 20 percent over this period while recruitment in Africa, Latin America and Asia grew. In 2009, the Vatican announced that in 2005 the number of priests had increased from 405,891 to 406,411, although Europe and America saw a decrease of about one-half point of a percentage point and Australia of 1.8%.

Church membership in Africa and Asia grew by 3.1% and 2.71% respectively in 2005. Of Catholics worldwide, 12% live in Africa, 50% in the Americas, 10% in Asia, 27% in Europe and 1% in Oceania.

Cultural influence

The influence of the Catholic Church on world culture and society has been vast, first and foremost in the development of European civilization from Greco-Roman times to the modern era. The church rejected and helped end practices such as human sacrifice, slavery, infanticide, and polygamy in evangelized cultures throughout the world, beginning with the Roman Empire. In addition, the Church played a significant role in moderating some of the excesses of the colonial era. Over the course of its history, the Church has influenced the status of women, condemning infanticide, divorce, incest, polygamy and counting the marital infidelity of men as equally sinful to that of women. The official Church teaching considers women and men to be equal, different, and complementary.

Catholic universities, scholars and many priests including Nicolaus Copernicus, Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Robert Grosseteste, Nicholas Steno, Francesco Grimaldi, Giambattista Riccioli, Roger Boscovich, Athanasius Kircher, Gregor Mendel, Georges Lemaître and others, were responsible for many important scientific discoveries. The Jesuits produced the large majority of priest-scientists, who contributed to worldwide cultural exchange by spreading their developments in knowledge to Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Most research took place in Catholic universities that were staffed by members of religious orders who had the education and means to conduct scientific investigation. The 1633 Church condemnation of Galileo Galilei created the perception of antagonism between the Church and science of that era. According to historian Thomas Noble, the effect of the Galileo affair was to restrict scientific development in some European countries. In part because of lessons learned from the Galilei affair, the Church created the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1603. This scientific organization reached its present form by 1936.

The Catholic Church was the dominant influence on the development of Western art, at least up to the Protestant Reformation. Important contributions include its consistent opposition to Byzantine iconoclasm, its cultivation and patronage of individual artists, as well as development of the Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance styles of art and architecture. Renaissance artists such as Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Bernini, Botticelli, Fra Angelico, Tintoretto, Caravaggio, and Titian, were among a multitude of innovative virtuosos sponsored by the Church. In music, Catholic monks developed the first forms of modern Western musical notation in order to standardize liturgy throughout the worldwide Church, and an enormous body of religious music has been composed for it through the ages. This led directly to the emergence and development of European classical music, and its many derivatives. The Baroque style, which encompassed music, art, and architecture, was particularly encouraged by the post-Reformation Catholic Church as such forms offered a means of religious expression that was stirring and emotional, intended to stimulate religious fervor.

History

Early Christianity

The Catholic Church considers Pentecost to be the beginning of its own history. According to historians, the Apostles traveled to northern Africa, Asia Minor, Arabia, Greece, and Rome to found the first Christian communities, over 40 of which had been established by the year 100.

The New Testament gospels indicate that the earliest Christians continued to observe traditional Jewish pieties such as fasting, reverence for the Torah and observance of Jewish holy days. However, Christians were directed by Jesus to evangelize non-Jewish peoples. As Christianity spread to non-Jews, disputes over observance of the Mosaic law generated intense controversy. A pivotal moment in this dispute occurred in the mid-1st century, when the circumcision controversy arose and was ultimately addressed at the Council of Jerusalem. At this council, Paul made an argument that circumcision was no longer necessary, vocally supported by Peter, as documented in Acts 15. This position received widespread support and was summarized in a letter circulated in Antioch.

In the second century, writings by teachers such as Ignatius of Antioch and Irenaeus defined Catholic teaching in stark opposition to Gnosticism. Other writers such as Pope Clement I, Justin Martyr, Augustine of Hippo influenced the development of Church teachings and traditions. These writers and others are collectively known as Church Fathers.

Persecution

and living conditions brought about by the Industrial Revolution, Pope Leo XIII published the encyclical Rerum Novarum. This set out Catholic social teaching in terms that rejected socialism but advocated the regulation of working conditions, the establishment of a living wage and the right of workers to form trade unions. The Catholic Church exercised a prominent role in shaping the labor movement in the United States.

Although the infallibility of the Church in doctrinal matters had always been a Church dogma, the First Vatican Council, which convened in 1870, affirmed the doctrine of papal infallibility when exercised in certain specifically defined pronouncements. This decision in many eyes gave the pope "enormous moral and spiritual authority over the worldwide" Church. Reaction to the pronouncement resulted in the breakaway of a group of mainly German churches which subsequently formed the Old Catholic Church. The loss of the papal states to the Italian unification movement created what came to be known as the Roman Question, a territorial dispute between the papacy and the Italian government that was not resolved until the 1929 Lateran Treaty granted sovereignty to the Holy See over Vatican City.

By the close of the 19th century, European powers controlled most of the African interior. Catholic missionaries followed colonial governments into Africa and built schools, hospitals, monasteries and churches. In Latin America, a succession of anti-clerical regimes came to power beginning in the 1820s. Church properties were confiscated, bishoprics were left vacant, religious orders suppressed, the collection of clerical tithes ended, and clerical dress in public prohibited.

The 1930s also saw violence against clergy and expropriation of Church properties in Spain, Mexico and the Soviet Union. During the 1936–39 Spanish Civil War, over 6,000 priests and nuns were killed by republicans and anarchists. In the Soviet Union, persecution of the Church included the execution and exiling of clerics and the confiscation and closure of churches.

On 20 July 1933, the Vatican signed an agreement with Germany, the Reichskonkordat, which guaranteed the Church certain rights and freedoms. Violations of this led to Pope Pius XI issuing the 1937 encyclical Mit brennender Sorge which publicly condemned Nazi persecution of the Church, neopaganism and the culture of racial superiority.

After the Second World War began in September 1939, the Church condemned the invasion of Poland and subsequent 1940 Nazi invasions. During the war, several thousand Catholic clergy were imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps.

In the Holocaust, Pope Pius XII directed the Church hierarchy to help protect Jews from the Nazis. However, the Church has also been accused of encouraging centuries of antisemitism and Pius himself of not doing enough to stop Nazi atrocities. Debate over the validity of these criticisms continues to this day.

In accordance with Soviet doctrine regarding the exercise of religion, postwar Communist governments in Eastern Europe severely restricted religious freedoms. Even though some clerics collaborated with the Communist regimes, the Church's resistance and the leadership of Pope John Paul II have been credited with hastening the downfall of communist governments across Europe in 1991. The rise to power of the Communists in China in 1949 led to the expulsion of all foreign missionaries. The new government also created the Patriotic Church whose unilaterally appointed bishops were initially rejected by Rome before many of them were accepted. The Cultural Revolution of the 1960s led to the closure of all religious establishments. When Chinese churches eventually reopened they remained under the control of the Patriotic Church. Many Catholic pastors and priests continued to be sent to prison for refusing to renounce allegiance to Rome.

Second Vatican Council and beyond

The Catholic Church initiated a comprehensive process of reform under Pope John XXIII. Intended as a continuation of the First Vatican Council, the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), developed into an engine of modernization, making pronouncements on religious freedom, the nature of the Church and the mission of the laity. The role of the bishops of the Church was brought into renewed prominence, especially when seen collectively, as the college of the successors of the Apostles in teaching and governing the Church. It also permitted the Latin liturgical rites to use vernacular languages as well as Latin during Mass and other sacraments. Christian unity became a greater priority. In addition to finding more common ground with the various Protestant denominations, the Catholic Church has reopened discussions regarding the possibility of reconciliation between the Eastern Orthodox churches and the Catholic Church.

Changes to old rites and ceremonies following Vatican II produced a variety of responses. Although most Catholics "accepted the changes more or less gracefully", some stopped going to church and others tried to preserve what they perceived to be the "true precepts of the Church". The latter form the basis of today's Traditionalist Catholic groups, which believe that the reforms of Vatican II have gone too far. Liberal Catholics form another dissenting group, and feel that the Vatican II reforms did not go far enough.

In the 1960s, growing social awareness and politicization in the Church in Latin America gave birth to liberation theology, a movement often identified with Gustavo Gutiérrez who was pivotal in expounding the melding of Marxism and Catholic social teaching. A cornerstone of the Liberation Theology were ecclesial base communities, groups uniting clergy and laity in social and political action. Although the movement garnered some support among Latin American bishops, it was never officially endorsed by any of the Latin American Bishops’ Conferences. At the 1979 Conference of Latin American Bishops in Puebla, Mexico, Pope John Paul II and conservative bishops attending the conference attempted to rein in the more radical elements of liberation theology; however, the conference did make a formal commitment to a "preferential option for the poor". Archbishop Óscar Romero, a supporter of the movement, became the region's most famous contemporary martyr in 1980, when he was murdered by forces allied with the government of El Salvador while saying Mass. In Managua, Nicaragua, Pope John Paul II criticized elements of Liberation Theology and the Nicaraguan Catholic clergy's involvement in the Sandinista National Liberation Front. Pope John Paul II maintained that the Church, in its efforts to champion the poor, should not do so by advocating violence or engaging in partisan politics. Liberation Theology is still alive in Latin America today, although the Church now faces the challenge of Pentecostal revival in much of the region.

The sexual revolution of the 1960s precipitated Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae (On Human Life) which rejected the use of contraception, including sterilization, asserting that these work against the intimate relationship and moral order of husband and wife by directly opposing God's will. It approved Natural Family Planning as a legitimate means to limit family size. Abortion was condemned by the Church as early as the first century, again in the fourteenth century and again in 1995 with Pope John Paul II's encyclical Evangelium Vitae (Gospel of Life). This encyclical condemned the "culture of death" which the pope often used to describe the societal embrace of contraception, abortion, euthanasia, suicide, capital punishment, and genocide. Feminists disagreed with these and other Church teachings and, with a coalition of American nuns, called on the Church to consider the ordination of women. They stated that many Church documents contained anti-female prejudice and studies were conducted to discover how this may have developed as it was deemed contrary to the openness of Jesus. These events led Pope John Paul II to issue the 1988 apostolic letter Mulieris Dignitatem (On the Dignity of Women), which declared that women had a different, yet equally important role in the Church. In 1994 the apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (On Ordination to the Priesthood) further explained that the Church follows the example of Jesus, who chose only men for the specific priestly duty.

Since the end of the twentieth century, sex abuse by Catholic clergy has been the subject of media coverage, legal action, and public debate in Australia, [[Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Ireland||ref=harv}}

• Samora, Julian; Simon, Patricia Vandel; Candelaria, Cordelia; Pulido, Alberto L (1993). A History of the Mexican-American People. University of Notre Dame Press. ISBN 9780268010973. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
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84. McGrath (2006). Pp 174–175.
85. Davidson, p. 169, p. 181.
86. Norman, pp. 27–28, quote: "A distinguished succession of theological apologists added intellectual authority to the resources at the disposal of the papacy, at just that point in its early development when the absence of a centralized teaching office could have fractured the universal witness to a single body of ideas. At the end of the first century there was St. Clement of Rome, third successor to St. Peter in the see; in the second century there was St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Irenaeus of Lyons and St. Justin Martyr; in the fourth century St. Augustine of Hippo, the greatest theologian of the Early Church."
87. Duffy, p. 240.
88. Leith, p. 143.
89. Duffy, p. 232.
90. Pollard, pp. 7–8.
91. Fahlbusch, p. 729.
92. Bokenkotter, pp. 306–307.
93. Bokenkotter, pp. 386–387.
94. Hastings, pp. 397–410.
95. Bethell, Leslie (1984). The Cambridge history of Latin America. Cambridge University Press. pp. 528–529, 234. ISBN 0521232252.
96. Stacy, p. 139.
97. Kirkwood, Burton (2000). History of Mexico. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, Incorporated. pp. 101–192. ISBN 9781403962584.
98. Hamnett, Brian R (1999). Concise History of Mexico. Port Chester, NY: Cambridge University Pres. pp. 163–164. ISBN 0-521-58120. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: length (help)
99. Norman, pp. 167–172.
100. Butler, Alban, Butler's lives of the saints, Vol 7, pp. 169–179
101. Chadwick, Owen p. 240.
102. Riasanovsky 634
103. ^ Coppa, p. 132-7
104. Rhodes, p. 182-183
105. Rhodes, p. 197
106. Shirer, p. 235 quote "On July 25, five days after the ratification of the concordat, the German government promulgated a sterilization law, which particularly offended the Catholic Church. Five days later the first steps were taken to dissolve the Catholic Youth League. During the next years, thousands of Catholic priests, nuns and lay leaders were arrested, many of them on trumped-up charges of 'immorality' or 'smuggling foreign currency'. Erich Klausener, leader of Catholic Action, was, as we have seen, murdered in the June 30, 1934, purge. Scores of Catholic publications were suppressed, and even the sanctity of the confessional was violated by Gestapo agents. By the spring of 1937, the Catholic hierarchy, in Germany, which, like most of the Protestant clergy, had tried to co-operate with the new regime, was thoroughly disillusioned.
107. ^ McGonigle, p. 172 quote "Hitler, of course flagrantly violated the rights of Catholics and others whenever it pleased him. Catholic Action groups were attacked by Hitler's police and Catholic schools were closed. Priests were persecuted and sent to concentration camps. ... On Palm Sunday, March 21, 1937, the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge was read in Catholic Churches in Germany. In effect it taught that the racial ideas of the leader (fuhrer) and totalitarianism stood in opposition to the Catholic faith. The letter let the world, and especially German Catholics, know clearly that the Church was harassed and persecuted, and that it clearly opposed the doctrines of Nazism."
108. Bokenkotter, pp. 389–392, quote "And when Hitler showed increasing belligerence toward the Church, Pius met the challenge with a decisiveness that astonished the world. His encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge was the 'first great official public document to dare to confront and criticize Nazism' and 'one of the greatest such condemnations ever issued by the Vatican.' Smuggled into Germany, it was read from all the Catholic pulpits on Palm Sunday in March 1937. It denounced the Nazi "myth of blood and soil" and decried its neopaganism, its war of annihilation against the Church, and even described the Fuhrer himself as a 'mad prophet possessed of repulsive arrogance'. The Nazis were infuriated, and in retaliation closed and sealed all the presses that had printed it and took numerous vindictive measures against the Church, including staging a long series of immorality trials of Catholic clergy."
109. Rhodes, p. 204-205 quote "Mit brennender Sorge did not prevaricate. Although it began mildly enough with an account of the broad aims of the Church, it went on to become one of the greatest condemnations of a national regime ever pronounced by the Vatican. Its vigorous language is in sharp contrast to the involved style in which encyclicals were normally written. The education question was fully and critically examined, and a long section devoted to disproving the Nazi theory of Blood and Soil (Blut und Boden) and the Nazi claim that faith in Germany was equivalent to faith in God. There were scathing references to Rosenberg's Myth of the Twentieth Century and its neo-paganism. The pressure exercised by the Nazi party on Catholic officials to betray their faith was lambasted as 'base, illegal and inhuman'. The document spoke of "a condition of spiritual oppression in Germany such as has never been seen before", of 'the open fight against the Confessional schools and the suppression of liberty of choice for those who desire a Catholic education'. 'With pressure veiled and open,' it went on, 'with intimidation, with promises of economic, professional, civil, and other advantages, the attachment of Catholics to the Faith, particularly those in government employment, is exposed to a violence as illegal as it is inhuman.' 'The calvary of the Church': 'The war of annihilation against the Catholic Faith'; 'The cult of idols'. The fulminations thundered down from the pulpits to the delighted congregations. Nor was the Fuhrer himself spared, for his 'aspirations to divinity', 'placing himself on the same level as Christ': 'a mad prophet possessed of repulsive arrogance' (widerliche Hochmut)."
110. Vidmar, p. 327 quote "Pius XI's greatest coup was in writing the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge ("With Burning Desire") in 1936, and having it distributed secretly and ingeniously by an army of motorcyclists, and read from the pulpit on Palm Sunday before the Nazis obtained a single copy. It stated (in German and not in the traditional Latin) that the Concordat with the Nazis was agreed to despite serious misgivings about Nazi integrity. It then went on to condemn the persecution of the church, the neopaganism of the Nazi ideology-especially its theory of racial superiority-and Hitler himself, calling him 'a mad prophet possessed of repulsive arrogance.'"
111. ^ Vidmar, p. 329.
112. Cook, p. 983
113. Bokenkotter p. 192 quote "The end of the war saw the prestige of the papacy at an all-time high. Einstein, for instance, in an article in Time, paid tribute to Pius and noted that the Church alone 'stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign.' ... 'Rabbi Herzog, the chief rabbi of Israel, sent a message in February 1944 declaring "the people of Israel will never forget what His Holiness ... (is) doing for our unfortunate brothers and sisters in the most tragic hour of our history."' David Dalin cites these tributes as recognition of the work of the Holy See in saving hundreds of thousands of Jews."
114. Eakin, Emily (1 September 2001). "New Accusations Of a Vatican Role In Anti-Semitism; Battle Lines Were Drawn After Beatification of Pope Pius IX". The New York Times. Retrieved 9 March 2008.
115. Phayer, pp. 50–57
116. Bokenkotter, pp. 480–481, quote:"A recent article by American rabbi, David G. Dalin, challenges this judgement. He calls making Pius XII a target of moral outrage a failure of historical understanding, and he thinks Jews should reject any 'attempt to usurp the Holocaust' for the partisan purposes at work in this debate. Dalin surmises that well-known Jews such as Albert Einstein, Golda Meir, Moshe Sharett, and Rabbi Isaac Herzog would likely have been shocked at these attacks on Pope Pius. ... Dalin points out that Rabbi Herzog, the chief rabbi of Israel, sent a message in February 1944 declaring 'the people of Israel will never forget what His Holiness ... (is) doing for our unfortunate brothers and sisters in the most tragic hour of our history.'" Dalin cites these tributes as recognition of the work of the Holy See in saving hundreds of thousands of Jews."
117. Deák, p. 182.
118. Dalin, p. 10
119. Smith, Craig (10 January 2007). "In Poland, New Wave of Charges Against Clerics". The New York Times. Retrieved 23 May 2008.
120. "Pope Stared Down Communism in Homeland – and Won". CBC News. April 2005. Retrieved 31 January 2008.
121. ^ Bokenkotter, pp. 356–358.
122. ^ Chadwick, Owen pp. 259–260.
123. "China installs Pope-backed bishop", BBC News 21 Sept 2007, retrieved 08 Sept 2009
124. ^ Duffy, pp. 270–276.
125. Paul VI, Pope (4 December 1963). "Sacrosanctum Concilium". Vatican. Retrieved 9 February 2008.
126. Duffy, Saints and Sinners (1997), p. 274.
127. "Roman Catholic–Eastern Orthodox Dialogue". Public Broadcasting Service. 14 July 2000. Retrieved 16 February 2008.
128. Bokenkotter, p. 410.
129. Bauckham, p. 373.
130. Bokenkotter, pp. 454–457.
131. Bokenkotter, p. 463.
132. ^ Rohter, Larry (7 May 2007). "As Pope Heads to Brazil, a Rival Theology Persists". The New York Times. Retrieved 21 February 2008.
133. "Liberation Theology". BBC. Retrieved 12 September 2008. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |dateformat= ignored (help)
134. ^ Paul VI, Pope (1968). "Humanae Vitae". Vatican. Retrieved 2 February 2008.
135. ^ Bokenkotter, p. 27, p. 154, pp. 493–494.
136. "The Death Penalty Pro and Con: The Pope's Statement". PBS. Retrieved 12 June 2008.
137. ^ Bokenkotter, pp. 465–466.
138. John Paul II, Pope (1988). "Mulieris Dignitatem". Vatican. Retrieved 21 February 2008.
139. Bokenkotter, p. 467.
140. John Paul II, Pope (22 May 1994). "Ordinatio Sacerdotalis". Vatican. Retrieved 2 February 2008.
141. Cowell, Alan (31 May 1994). "Pope Rules Out Debate On Making Women Priests". The New York Times. Retrieved 12 February 2008.

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