Word: communion
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Although several autonomous branches of the worldwide Anglican communion, including the U.S. Episcopal Church, have admitted women into the clergy, the Church of England, the parent body, has refused to follow their example. Leaders in the mother church have feared that such a move would end all hope of future reunion with Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox, and prompt wholesale defections of Church of England traditionalists...
...lowest rank, which is beneath priests and bishops. If Parliament agrees, as seems likely, the church's 350 deaconesses, who are not ordained, can take their place alongside male deacons, performing marriages and assisting priests in other ways. Priests will continue to be the only celebrants of Holy Communion and dispensers of absolution. The pressure will be great, however, to allow the women deacons to advance to the next step, priesthood...
...past two decades, the Netherlands has become something of a laboratory for progressive Catholicism and a continuing source of worry to the Vatican. Liberal Catholics, including some priests, have openly espoused women's ordination, birth control, an end to mandatory clerical celibacy, approval of remarriage after divorce, sharing Communion with Protestants and acceptance of homosexuality. John Paul has distressed many of the Dutch not only by opposing such views but by installing a series of unpopular conservative bishops to enforce his policies, rejecting candidates proposed by the Dutch clergy...
...deplored the Catholic Church's ecumenical regression and blamed it on "instructions from higher authority." Read: Rome. For his part, John Paul skipped some hard-line passages in his prepared address, but the text remains the Pontiff's most forthright statement on his approach toward Protestantism. Discussion of joint Communion services is futile, he indicated, and Rome is unwilling to explore changes in the nature of the priesthood. The speech removed any remaining doubt that John Paul now foresees substantial ecumenical progress only with the Eastern Orthodox churches...
...video turns out to be more moving than the song, in part because the tune itself is a pretty fragile vehicle, and in part because what is most touching about We Are the World is not simply the choir, but the sense of communion. Musicians from rival factions of the business are seen putting aside differences of style and temperament and coming together to share and spread a little decency. "Many of them had just been together at the American Music Awards," says Belafonte, "but that was competition, narcissistic and self- possessed. The session really purified them." Says Kenny Rogers...