Word: dopfner
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Pope not to release it. While satisfactory to conservatives of the Roman Curia, Konig argued, the pronouncement was "most unwise pastorally and apostolically," and it would "do the church much damage." Such other European liberals as Belgium's Leo Josef Cardinal Suenens and Munich's Julius Cardinal Dopfner reportedly telephoned Pope Paul with similar objections...
...bishops of pluralistic Germany and The Netherlands spearheaded the drive for easier mixed marriages. The more conservative U.S. bishops and those of Ireland feared that easing the rules might undermine the faith of the Catholic spouse. In November 1964, on the motion of Julius Cardinal Dopfner of Munich, the Vatican Council voted 1,562 to 427 to hand over the drafting of the decree to the Pope; last week's decree was the result. Protestants responded with reserved satisfaction; a Church of England spokesman called the rules "a hopeful beginning...
These unpleasant truths persuaded Pope John XXIII that the council was needed, and gave new force to the traditional understanding of Catholicism as ecclesia semper reformanda-a church ever in need of reform. Christ himself was free of sin; but the continuation of his work, Dopfner pointed out, "has been entrusted to frail, sinful humans." Thus the church has sometimes been guilty of "failing to achieve what God had desired. The presentation of the love of Christ can lag if the church uses the means of power instead of humility, of force instead of service...
This means, according to Dopfner, that any reform can only be carried out by the church at the council in a spirit of penitence, or metanoia, in the knowledge that it is "a community of sinners." Reform also must be based on the teachings of Christ and Holy Scripture. It also must be in the nature of renovation rather than revolution, preserving what is good from the past tradition while remaining open to future possibilities of development. "We are in danger of resisting ideas, forms and possibilities to which perhaps the future belongs, and we often consider as impossible that...
...Wealth of Truth. Even in the area of church teaching, development is far from impossible, said Dopfner, since "a dogma as such is not finally synonymous with divine truth but only incompletely expresses the wealth of divine truth because it sees revelation in human terms." This does not mean that the church can recant or change dogmatic definitions of the past, but it can discover new aspects of truth and find new ways to express traditional teaching...