The Apostolic Penitentiary, formerly called the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Penitentiary, is a dicastery of the Roman Curia and is one of the three ordinary tribunals of the Apostolic See. The Apostolic Penitentiary is chiefly a tribunal of mercy, responsible for issues relating to the forgiveness of sins in the Catholic Church. The Apostllic Penitentiary has jurisdiction only over matters in the internal forum (an act of governance made without publicity). Its work falls mainly into these categories: the absolution of excommunication latae sententiae (a latae sententiae penalty is a penalty that is inflicted ipso facto , automatically, by force of the law itself, at the very moment the law is contravened), reserved to the Holy See the dispensation of sacramental impediments reserved to the Holy See the issuance and governance of indulgences The head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Major Penitentiary , is one of the few Vatican officials who retain their positions sede v...

 Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians have studied that topic by using particular sources, techniques, and theoretical approaches. Scholars discuss historiography by topic--such as the historiography of the United Kingdom, that of WWII, the pre-Columbian Americas, early Islam, and China--and different approaches and genres, such as political history and social history. Beginning in the nineteenth century, with the develpment of academic history, there developed a body of historiographic literature. The extent to which historians are influenced by their own groups and loyalties--such as the nation state--remains a debated question. In the ancient world, chronological annals were produced in civilizations such as ancient Egypt and Ancient Near East. The discipline of historiography wa...

 Political economy is a branch of political science and economics studying economic systems (e.g. markets and national economies) and their governance by political systems (e.g. law, institutions and government). Widely studied phenomena within the discipline are systems like the labor markets and financial markets, as well as phenomena such as growth, distribution, inequality, and trade, and how these are shaped by institutions, laws, and government policy. Originating in the 16th century, it is the precursor to the modern discipline of economics. Political economy in its modern form is considered an interdisciplinary field, drawing on theory from both political science and modern economics. Political economy originated within 16th century western moral philosophy, with theoretical works exploring the administration of the states' wealth; "political" signifying the Greek word polity and "economy" signifying the Greek word oikonomos, or household management. Th...

 The hermeneutics of suspicion is a style of literary interpretation in which texts are read with skepticism in order to expose their purported repressed or hidden meanings. This mode of interpretation was conceptualized by Paul Ricoeur, inspired by the works of what he called the three "masters of suspicion" (French: maîtres du soupçon ): Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Friedrich Nietzsche, who, he believed, shared a similar view of consciousness as false. Ricoeur's term "school of suspicion" (French: ecole du soupçon ) refers to his association of his theory with the writings of the three, who themselves never used this term, and was coined in Freud and Philosophy (1965). This school is defined by a belief that the straightforward appearances of texts are deceptive or self-deceptive and that explicit content hides deeper meanings or implications. Hans-Georg Gadamer, in his 1960 magnus opus Truth and Method (German: Wahrheit und Methode ), offers perhaps the mos...

 Hypostatic union (from the Greek word hypostasis , meaning "person, subsistence") is a technical term in Christian theology employed in mainstream Christology to describe the union of Christ's humanity and divinity in one hypostasis or individual personhood. The most basic explanation for the hypostatic union is Jesus Christ being both fully God and fully man. He is both perfectly divine and perfectly human and has two complete distinct nature at once. The Athanasian Creed recognized this doctrine and affirmed its importance by saying, "He is God from the essence of the Father, begotten before time; and he is human from the essence of his mother, born in time; completely God, completely human, with a rational soul and human flesh; equal to the Father as regards to divinity, less than the Father as regards humanity. Although he is God and human, yet Christ is not two, but one. He is one, however, not by his divinity being turned into human flesh, but by God's tak...

 Botany, also called plant science, plant biology, or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist, or phytologist is a scientist who specializes in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek botane meaning "pastures," "herbs," "grass," or "fodder;" botane  is in turn derived from boskein , "to feed" or "to graze." Traditionally, botany has also included the study of fungi and algae by mycologists and phycologists respectively, with the study of these three groups of organisms remaining within the sphere of interest of the International Botanical Congress. Nowadays, botanists (in the strictest sense) study approximately 410,000 species of land plants of which some 391,000 species are vascular plants (including approximately 369,000 species of flowering plants), and approximate 20,000 are bryophytes. Botany originated in prehistory as herbalism with effo...

 The octet rule is a chemical rule of thumb that reflects the theory that main-group elements tend to bond in such a way that each atom has eight electrons in its valence shell, giving it the same electronic configuration as a noble gas. The rule is especially applicable to carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and the halogens, although more generally the rule is applicable for the s-block and the p-block of the periodic table. Other rules exist for other elements, such as the duplet rule for hydrogen and helium, or the 18-electron rule for transition metals. The valence electrons can be counted using a Lewis electron dot diagram as shown below for carbon dioxide: The electrons shared by the two atoms in a covalent bond are counted twice, once for each atom. In carbon dioxide, each atom shares four electrons with the central carbon, two (shown in red) from the oxygen itself, and two (shown in black) from the carbon. All four of these electrons are counted both in the carbon octet and the oxyg...