Word: detroits
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Cincinnati's Archbishop Joseph Bernardin, president of the bishops' conference, acknowledges that the Detroit meeting "tended to increase polarization and factionalism" in some quarters. Nonetheless, last fall he named a task force of bishops to figure out what response should be made. The behind-the-scenes struggle centered on preparation of a statement giving the hierarchy's formal views on the issues. The statement of response went through seven drafts. One version, completed in March, had a "Neanderthal" view of the church, in the opinion of Bishop James Rausch of Phoenix, the former general secretary...
Last week, however, when 246 U.S. bishops gathered in Chicago's Palmer House to discuss the matter at their semi-annual meeting, the 5,000-word final draft of the statement expressed appreciation for the Detroit meeting and a willingness to at least think about its long list of recommendations. Moreover, a group of 20 Call to Action enthusiasts, led by Newark's Archbishop Peter Gerety, put through an amendment that sets up a special committee to monitor the handling of the Detroit proposals over the next five years...
...recommendations will be turned over to committees of bishops, but the four most disputed topics from Detroit have already been ruled out by the Vatican and therefore dismissed in advance by the U.S. bishops...
HOMOSEXUALITY. The bishops sidestep the Detroit appeal for an end to discrimination against homosexuals and repeat the church teaching that homosexual activity is morally wrong...
...Detroit issues, one of the most anguishing is divorce. It was 93 years ago, at the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, that the U.S. hierarchy decreed excommunication for those who divorce and then enter second marriages against church law. Ever since, those who divorce and remarry have been treated as "lepers and outcasts," says Bishop Cletus O'Donnell of Madison, Wis., the plain-speaking progressive who heads the bishops' canon law committee. The Baltimore decree "is doing us no good," he argues...