Word: churched
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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From Day One, countering Europe's supposed slide into a godless secularism has been high on Benedict's agenda. Recently, that defense of the church's values has been looking almost like a counteroffensive. On Oct. 17 in Spain, the traditionally Catholic right turned out perhaps as many as 1 million people in the streets of Madrid to oppose plans by the country's center-left government to loosen abortion laws (allowing 16-year-old females, for example, to terminate their pregnancies without parental consent). And on Tuesday, in a Vatican meeting with the new European Union envoy...
...more than four centuries since King Henry VIII pronounced the Church of England independent from papal authority, certain Anglican conservatives have always drifted back to Rome, "swimming the Tiber," as reverting to Catholicism was called. But in the past two decades, more and more seem to be doing so. Benedict's latest ruling confirms and expands earlier ad-hoc decisions by Pope John Paul II to allow several married Anglican priests to convert and remain in the clergy. (Read about the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams...
Under the new structure, groups of Anglicans can move into a local Catholic Church that will be headed by former Anglican clergy, who can ease them into Catholicism without their having to kiss goodbye their own pastor or the rites they were raised on. Married Anglican priests who convert, like married priests in the Eastern Rite of Catholicism, will not be eligible to become bishops...
...have been trying to meet the requests for full communion that have come to us from Anglicans in different parts of the world in recent years in a uniform and equitable way," said Levada, who would not specify how many Anglicans he expected to convert. "With this proposal, the church wants to respond to the legitimate aspirations of these Anglican groups for full and visible unity with the Bishop of Rome." In a joint written statement, Williams, who as Archbishop of Canterbury is the worldwide spiritual head of the Anglican Church, issued a joint statement with the Catholic Archbishop...
...incoming converts, however, may offer a false comfort to Catholics that Rome is winning the battle for Christian hearts and souls in the West. Indeed, in the bosom of Europe, where traditional Catholicism became an immense political force, the church is very much on the defensive. The Holy See's eagerness to find a home for the core of conservative-minded Anglicans follows the Pope's outreach earlier this year to the traditionalist breakaway movement founded by French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, which opposes the modern-minded reforms of the Second Vatican Council. (See pictures of Pope Benedict XVI visiting America...