The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1780 page)

Papacy
.

The office of the
bishop
of Rome as leader of the
Roman Catholic Church
. Claims to some form of leadership over the churches seem to be implicit in Roman documents from the end of the 1st cent. onwards, but were made more explicit in the century between popes Damasus and Leo. Acceptance of the papal fullness of authority (‘plenitudo potestatis’) over other churches has varied with the personal standing of the bishops of Rome and other historical circumstances, but is generally held to have been at its height during the pontificate of Innocent III. At
Vatican I
the bishops asserted the pope's ‘ordinary and immediate’ authority over all churches and members of churches, and his
infallibility
when defining matters of faith or morals to be held by the whole church.

 
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Papal aggression
.

Popular name for the action of Pope
Pius IX
in 1850 making England and Wales an ecclesiastical province of the
Roman Catholic Church
(with an archbishop and twelve
suffragans
with territorial titles), referring with evidently calculated contempt to the Church of England as ‘the Anglican schism’.

 
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(
c.
60–130 CE)
. Christian bishop of Hierapolis in Asia Minor. His work
Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord
, known only from quotations in
Irenaeus
and
Eusebius
, contained oral traditions and legends. The most important of these concern the writing of the
gospels
:
Matthew
‘composed the sayings (
logia
) in Hebrew, and everyone translated them as best he could’;
Mark
was ‘the interpreter of Peter’ who set down ‘accurately though not in order’ Peter's memories of Jesus' words and activities.

 
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Para
.

Skt., ‘supreme, highest’, found in conjunction with many Hindu words to express the superlative state—e.g.
para-
bhakti
and see under
VI
U
. Unless some special sense is created, the meaning will be carried within the basic word, and will not be listed separately here.

 
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(Gk.,
parabol
). A story or illustration of important teaching, used by
rabbis
and by Jesus, more direct than
allegories
, and, in the case of Jesus, usually making a demand on the hearers. Jesus' insistence on teaching in parables, implies something about the nature of the
kingdom of God
. Most of the thirty to forty gospel parables are found in Matthew (e.g. the clusters in chs. 13, 25) and Luke (among the best-known, 10. 25–42, 15. 11–32). For Jewish parables, see
M
SHAL
.