|
(Continued from page 19)
temporary absence of a pope but nevertheless felt the vacuum.
• "There is something missing more or less in spirit," said the Rev. Joel Sulse, who celebrated mass at the Santuario de San Antonio parish in an upscale residential enclave in Manila's Makati business district. "It's also a challenge. It's like when there is no leader, you really have to stand for your convictions."
• ___
Cardinal Dolan of New York gentle enforcer of church teaching and longshot for pope
• NEW YORK (AP) -- Challenging a White House mandate for birth control coverage in health insurance, New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan sounded like a general rallying the troops.
• "The only thing we're certainly not prepared to do is give in," Dolan said at a national bishops' meeting last November. "We're not violating our consciences."
• Weeks earlier, he had appeared in a far less formal setting, at New York's Fordham University with comedian Stephen Colbert. From the 3,000 cheering audience members, one student considering the priesthood asked whether he should date. Dolan said it could help decide the right path, then quipped, "By the way, let me give you the phone numbers of my nieces."
• ___
• EDITOR'S NOTE: As the Roman Catholic Church prepares to elect a successor to Pope Benedict XVI, The Associated Press is profiling key cardinals seen as "papabili" -- contenders to the throne. In the secretive world of the Vatican, there is no way to know who is in the running, and history has yielded plenty of surprises. But these are the names that have come up time and again in speculation. Today: Cardinal Timothy Dolan.
• ___
Automatic spending cuts: Unwanted consequence of a trigger nobody liked or thought would pass
• WASHINGTON (AP) -- It's not the first time that government economic engineering has produced a time bomb with a short fuse.
• Back in 2011, few lawmakers, if any, thought deep and indiscriminate spending cuts, totaling about $85 billion and now starting to kick in, were a smart idea.
• The across-the-board cuts, set up as a last-resort trigger and based on a mechanism used in the 1980s, are a reality largely because President Barack Obama and (Continued on page 21)
|
|
