Word: churches
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...body to the crematorium. Obviously, the problem for the Christian is to strike a balance in which death can be faced as the mystery it is, with neither false confidence nor excessive grief. Ideally, says the Rev. Dr. Albert J. Penner, president of the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ, death should be accepted as "a natural part of existence, part of the bargain we make with life at birth...
...Pope Paul VI, the solemn ceremonies of Holy Week were more sorrowful than usual. On two successive days, in his most anguished public statements to date on the crisis in the Roman Catholic world, the Pope issued extraordinarily direct attacks on defecting clergy and dissent within the church...
Speaking to pilgrims in St. Peter's Basilica on Wednesday of Holy Week, the Pope identified the present-day sufferings of the church with the agony of Christ. "The Lord tests us," he declared. "The church suffers from the abandonment by so many Catholics of the fidelity that centuries-old tradition merits." Even "favored sons" engage in destructive criticism, and by their defections, "certain ecclesiastics and religious crucify the church." At Holy Thursday services next day, he spoke of the "practically schismatic ferment that divides and subdivides the church. How can the living and true church be authentic...
Paul has frequently denounced excesses of reform within the church, but last week marked the first time that he has publicly referred to schism-a word that has almost never been mentioned by pontiffs since Clement VII hurled the accusation at Henry VIII more than four centuries ago. To many Vatican observers, the Holy Week statements suggest that the Pope has taken as much as he can from the dissenters and is ready to deliver an ultimatum to those who persist in ecclesiastical rebellion...
...four new American cardinals chosen by the Pope, proved that he is a man of much more flexible steel. He approved a long list of recommendations, put forward by a lay-dominated synod, that makes Detroit a model of democratically guided reform in the post-Vatican II church...