"Let us say what we are for rather than what we are against," said Pope John XXIII last January, while proposing a new encyclical on world peace to a group of Vatican aides.* It was a point well taken: too many papal pronouncements in the past have displayed a finger-wagging, negative tone. Perhaps because of John's injunction to think positive, work on the new encyclical, the eighth of his pontificate, went rapidly; the Pope was pleased with the first draft, had only to pencil in a few flourishes of his own. Last...
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