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Informationen zum Autor Mary Ann Glendon is Learned Hand Professor of Law emerita at Harvard University and a former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See. In 1995, she led the Vatican delegation to the UN’s World Conference on Women in Beijing, becoming the first woman ever to lead a Vatican delegation. Her books include Rights Talk; A Nation Under Lawyers; The Transformation of Family Law; A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; and The Forum and the Tower . She lives in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Klappentext "A rare firsthand account of Vatican politics as Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis each endeavored to lead the Catholic Church into the modern world-from an accomplished diplomat, lawyer, and Harvard professor. "In my years of service to the Holy See, I was a stranger in a rather strange land-a layperson in a culture dominated by clergy, an American woman in an environment that was largely male and Italian, and a citizen of a constitutional republic in one of the world's last absolute monarchies." Harvard professor Mary Ann Glendon sheds light on some of the most vexing issues in the Catholic Church today, from the work to protect women's rights internationally, to responding to clergy sexual abuse, to the corruption of the Vatican Bank and Roman Curia. Readers will see a side of popes and prelates rarely seen from Glendon's account of these three papacies, and they will be inspired by her efforts to share in the Holy See's work for a better Church and a better world. It is her hope that lay Catholics especially will find her account of the ups and downs of her daily work in the Holy See helpful in their own struggles to be "salt, light and leaven" during this time of turbulence in the Church and society"-- Leseprobe Chapter One From Dalton to Rome I thought I knew everything when I came to Rome, but I soon found I had everything to learn. —Edmonia Lewis, American sculptor I attended the University of Chicago at a time when the wags used to say that it was the university where Jewish professors taught Thomas Aquinas to Marxist students. Works by Augustine and Aquinas were taught by the likes of Richard Weaver, Leo Strauss, and Richard McKeon. Catholic luminaries like Jacques Maritain and Martin D’Arcy were frequently on campus for long visits. I became acquainted with the riches of the Catholic intellectual tradition through the core “great books” curriculum installed by Robert Maynard Hutchins, who once referred to the Catholic Church somewhat enviously as having “the longest intellectual tradition of any institution in the world,” and who drew freely from that tradition in constructing Chicago’s mandatory core of courses. Not only did I thus become familiar with the “greats” in my own tradition but I observed that those thinkers were held in high esteem by the best Chicago teachers. The same education that reinforced a critical approach to learning also helped reinforce the religious habits and practices I had acquired in Dalton. Especially significant to my formation was the work of Thomas Aquinas. He understood the intellect as a gift from God—a gift whose use would advance one’s ability to better know, love, and serve the Creator. I absorbed a little of Thomas’s approach to knowledge, which had enabled him to engage pagan philosophy with confidence that his desire to know would not unsettle his faith but rather bring him closer to the mind of God. As in the case of many Catholics of my generation, my education gave me a lively appreciation for the spiritual and intellectual riches of Catholicism, but I had minimal exposure to Catholic social thought, the body of Church teaching about economic and political matters. That changed with the appearance of Pope John XXIII’s famous encyclical Pacem in Terris, “Peace on Earth.” It was the spring of 1963, and I wa...
