Word: clergymen
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Oregon was so sold on abolition once more that the idea won the full support of the state's leading clergymen, newspapers, politicians, law-enforcement officers and finally the voters, who killed the death penalty (gas chamber) by nearly 5 to 3 in a referendum last November. Multnomah County (Portland) District Attorney George Van Hoomissen summed up Oregon's attitude: "The specter of an innocent man unjustly executed is constantly in my mind...
...cause of neurosis. Dr. Leon Salzman, professor of clinical psychiatry at Georgetown University medical school, argues that it is often difficult "to determine where religion ends and disease begins." At the annual meeting in Washington of the Academy of Religion and Mental Health, a number of psychiatrists and clergymen tried to define the tenuous borderline between healthy and neurotic faith...
Church-Induced Guilt. Both clergymen and doctors agreed that authoritarian religion can be a major source of neurosis. Salzman noted some symptoms of unhealthy faith that often show up among new adherents to dogmatic churches: "an irrational intensity of belief" in the new doctrine, greater concern for form and theology than for ethical and moral principles, hatred of past beliefs, intolerance of deviation, and the desire for martyrdom to prove devotion. Jesuit Philosopher and Critic William F. Lynch added that neurotic religion frequently shows up among Roman Catholics as a denial of human feelings, a desire to find the will...
...secretary of the United Presbyterians' Inter-Board Office of Personnel Services, argued that "there is a crisis in health with moral, physical and emotional manifestations among American clergy." One sign of widespread disturbance among ministers, he noted, is that of the nation's 8,500 United Presbyterian clergymen on pastoral assignment, 3,000 want to leave their churches, while 1,200 congregations are dissatisfied with their current preacher...
Humanity Breaks Through. Clergymen with emotional problems, both pastors and doctors agreed, usually come from homes with a weak father and a domineering mother. Unaccustomed to strong paternal authority, argued Golden, these ministers find their problems accentuated when they take over a parish, often to be overprotected by congregations that look up to them as Christ figures. Usually the symptoms of emotional distress are evident long before neurotic clerics are ordained, suggested Psychiatrist Robert J. McAllister, a consultant to Catholic University. Reporting on 100 hospitalized Catholic priests at the Seton Institute, he pointed out that 77 had serious emotional problems...