Seventy years ago a fateful meeting occurred in Rome. The Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (the future Pope Pius XII), and Germany’s vice chancellor, Franz von Papen, formally signed a concordat between the Holy See and the German Reich on July 20, 1933.

Maybe the devil made me do it, but after reading Bishop (now Cardinal) Walter Kasper's essay "On the Church" (reprinted in America, 4/23) for the second or third time, I went back through the text and conducted a little test.

Cardinal Walter Kasper on the relationship between the universal church and local churches.

The recent investigation and trial of the theologian Jacques Dupuis, S.J., alerted Catholics and others to the judicial methods of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (Am., 3/12, Signs of the Times).

Could a pope resign? Would a retired pope still be infallible? If a pope resigns and another is elected, are there in effect two popes?

From 1995: To its members, Opus Dei is nothing less than The Work of God. To its critics, it is a powerful, even dangerous organization.