Word: church
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...that the roots of trouble are deeper. For some young curates in an old-fashioned rectory, it may be simply a feeling that they are not realizing their potential; for others, the cause is frustration with a system of authority that seems overbearing and out of date. Yet the church cannot just abandon the structure. Too many generations of priests, says Sociologist Philip Murnion, have been "socialized"?conditioned to react only to the dictates of an established structure. When priests live and work on their own, as they have in some experimental programs, they often leave the active ministry...
...many today, and minister and congregation both may be uncertain which role is more appropriate: that of prophet anticipating the future, or that of stabilizer reaffirming the past. On the other hand, Dr. Dale Moody, a Baptist theologian currently teaching at Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University, believes that the church is being deliberately dinned out of its complacency: "God is giving the church a good shaking today. With his left hand he disturbs her slumber with the noise of social revolution, and with his right hand he rings the bell calling for relevance to such pressing social problems as race...
...without realizing that the conservative seminaries, which are preserving the languages, would thus acquire a virtual monopoly on biblical exegesis. But in other areas, the students are forcing the best seminaries into meeting the problems of society headon, and in the process are clearly forming the future of the church...
...benefits. Libraries are better. Snared facilities raise teaching standards while keeping individual seminary costs at a bearable level. Cross-registration affords each student the chance to pursue his own curriculum under the best available teachers. The interaction of the diverse groups also contributes dramatically to future changes in the church. President John Dillenberger of G.T.U. even hopes that local parishes will tie in to the cluster and participate directly in this transformation...
Such, ferment in the seminaries indicates that the church has any number of options. The suggestions from the schools?and from ghetto, pulpit and cloister?are broad: team ministries, part-time ministries, specialized ministries; elaborate celebrations, informal rituals; large, united churches, small groups. Some forms that now seem incompatible may well come to live side by side. Most of them are already being tested by ministers even...