Word: curial
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Dates: during 1964-1964
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...Second Vatican Council, a few conservative officials of the Roman Curia have tried to block the bishops' ambitious efforts to reform and renew the Catholic Church. Time and again, the progressive-minded majority has suffered these tactics in silence and indecision. Last week, goaded by the most serious curial threat so far to the spirit of Vatican II, the bishops openly rebelled...
...latest curial maneuver came to light in a letter that Augustin Cardinal Bea gloomily read out to the bishops and theologians who serve on the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity. Signed by Archbishop Pericle Felici, the council's secretary, the letter proposed that the somewhat lackluster declaration on anti-Semitism (TIME, Oct. 9), which a majority of bishops wishes to strengthen, should be reduced to a short chapter in the schema, De Ecclesia (On the Church). Felici also urged that a declaration on religious liberty be rewritten by a special committee of four bishops-three of them conservatives...
...Ritter of St. Louis, met at the Roman residence of Cologne's Joseph Cardinal Frings to draft a memo to the Pope ominously entitled Cum Magno Dolore (With Great Sorrow). It protested Felici's directives on the two declarations, as well as two other recent and repressive curial moves: a threat to end the council at the end of the current third session and an attempt to water down the passage in De Ecclesia defining the authority of the bishops over the church...
...eyes of many observers, the council seems finally to be coming to fruition. The first session saw a well-mannered power struggle between contending ecclesiastical viewpoints, and the gradual unfolding of progressive strength; the second was bogged down by papal indecision and defensive parliamentary maneuvering by Curial forces. But by the end of the third session's second week, the bishops had taken 37 votes on sections of the 219-page schema De Ecclesia (On the Church), rushed through discussion of two other chapters, started debate on a schema outlining the duties of bishops, and drafted declarations concerning religious...
Sensing that the council is finally going their way, the bishops appear more confident of themselves, more inclined to treat Curial prelates as anachronistic staff officers rather than superiors. There was also a new tone in the bishops' references to Pope Paul VI, in which respect for his position was tempered by realistic appraisals of his qualities. Some bluntly described him as "afraid," "so sensitive," "in need of our help." "Let's face it," said one Australian bishop. "He's weak...