{"id":2068,"date":"2007-04-18T14:35:26","date_gmt":"2007-04-18T14:35:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/04\/edictatorial.html"},"modified":"2007-04-18T14:35:26","modified_gmt":"2007-04-18T14:35:26","slug":"edictatorial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/04\/edictatorial.html","title":{"rendered":"Edictatorial?"},"content":{"rendered":"

My friend Meggan writes with a question:<\/p>\n

\n
\n
Often, in the newspaper or from friends, I hear the word "edict" being thrown around every time the Pope makes a speech or issues a document or letter.  The last time someone said it to me was Sunday when my friend said something about "When the Pope issued that edict about priests cleaning the communion vessels."  Oy!!<\/em><\/div>\n
<\/em><\/div>\n
I always try to help my friends or the folks in classes at church understand the Church’s communications. I try to correct their misconceptions.<\/em><\/div>\n
<\/em><\/div>\n
But this word "edict" puzzles me.  I understand exhortations, encyclicals, letters, motu proprio, etc.  But, I can’t find the word "edict" being used officially in the Church.<\/em><\/div>\n
<\/em><\/div>\n
Is there such a thing as a "Papal Edict"?  Is edict just a word to describe some of these other documents?   If so, which documents can be called "edicts"?<\/em><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My friend Meggan writes with a question: Often, in the newspaper or from friends, I hear the word "edict" being thrown around every time the Pope makes a speech or issues a document or letter.  The last time someone said it to me was Sunday when my friend said something about "When the Pope issued…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nEdictatorial? - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/04\/edictatorial.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Edictatorial? 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2068\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}