Word: churches
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...priest? Why, virtually everything Powers had written till then had been about Roman Catholic clergymen in out-of-the-way Midwestern parishes. He had established himself as an uncannily intimate chronicler of their workaday / lives away from the altar: their immersions in church politics and fund raising, their intramural feuds and poker-table cronyism, their struggles with vinegary housekeepers, booze and loneliness. Not that Powers by any means fell into the cozy category of "Catholic writer"; his vision, though compassionate, was too unsparing for that. Still, a Powers book without a priest would be like -- well, a John Cheever book...
...Like many a middle-age professional man, he has problems with the home office (obstructive tactics by the chancery, presided over by Monsignor "Catfish" Toohey, a despised rival of Joe's since childhood), with his clients (an overbearing parishioner who wants to buy his child's way into the church school) and with his territory (blatant boosterism for the suburb's tacky shopping mall, dominated by the "40-foot idol" of the Great Badger, complete with waving paw and an exposed, red neon heart). Even his assistant lets him down at first. When Joe gets a curate assigned...
...illusions about imperfection, his own or the church's. Yet, although he is far removed from his days as a literal hair-shirt mystic at the seminary, he still believes the church is the one sure way to salvation. This, compounded by a moral disgust at his surroundings, leads to his most fundamental conviction: "The separation of Church and Dreck was a matter of life and death for the world...
...priests. Nan Peete of Indianapolis became the first female priest to address a Lambeth session and won a standing ovation, from half the audience, for her eloquent words. "In a world that rejected me and denied me my humanity based on my race," said Peete, who is black, "the church was the place I turned for sanctuary." Now, she added, feelings of rejection "come back when I am not accepted as a priest, this time because...
Bishops from the fast-growing Anglican churches in Africa and Asia had differing views on women but united to confront the West on other issues. The most striking example was a decision to end long-standing church teaching against the baptism of polygamists. The Africans said the traditional stand cruelly forced converts to abandon their plural wives. Now converts in polygamous societies will be allowed to keep their wives if they forswear further marriages...