Word: alfrink
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Philadelphia and the Vatican's John Wright are both "princely" and "authoritarian." The ideological bias flaws judgment in some instances. It is dubious whether Belgium's Leo Jozef Suenens was the non-Italian "front runner in the early 1970s" or that another liberal, Holland's Bernard Alfrink, will be "one of the most influential" conclave members...
Under the tolerant eye of the now retiring Bernard Cardinal Alfrink, Dutch Catholics were long in the forefront of innovation. Generally asserting autonomy vis-à-vis Rome, in 1966 the Dutch church issued a celebrated "New Catechism," that invited reinterpretation of traditional dogma. In 1970 its national Pastoral Council went so far as to endorse the idea of women priests and an end to the celibacy rule. In response, Pope Paul named hard-line conservatives Adrianus Simonis and Johannes Gijsen to two of the seven Netherlands bishoprics. The liberals exploded in extraordinary public wrath over both choices and there...
Thus when Alfrink approached the retirement age of 75, Pope Paul faced a delicate decision. One solution would have been to ask Alfrink to stay on and delay the appointment, perhaps so that Monsignor Karen Kastell, a Dutch moderate in the Vatican evangelism office, could be made a bishop and groomed for Alfrink's job. The favored candidate of the Dutch hierarchy was Alfrink's top assistant in Utrecht, Anton Vermeulen. But the Curia found Vermeulen too independent-minded, and Paul may also have been reluctant to appear to recognize any right of the Dutch bishops to pick...
...Young people] recognize the paradox of the joyless herald of the Good News and are repelled by it." Even more strongly, Bernard Cardinal Alfrink of The Netherlands asked the bishops to "examine their consciences" to see if they did not "obscure the image of the church and damage her credibility...
...many new theological ideas welcome in teaching. Last fortnight The Netherlands' Bernard Jan Cardinal Alfrink returned from Rome after doing some explaining about a controversial high school catechism* course. The course, more than a little untraditional, emphasizes the student's need, as one of its authors puts it, "to believe according to his own way of thinking." It lets students decide for themselves, for instance, whether Jesus was God; it offers the Resurrection as an inspiring belief rather than historical fact. The authors-some 50 theologians, most from the Catholic University of Nijmegen-are convinced that this open...