Word: edicts
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...convention's suburban hotel, a desultory troupe of 750 mostly middle-aged guests drank beer and mineral water -- a far cry from previous years, when you could count on 5,000 former and current flyers to show up. Active-duty personnel stayed away because an ominous Pacific Fleet edict had warned that no officer could attend in uniform or join in public discussions, and the 20-odd young pilots who did appear were far outnumbered by the media and seemed as fearful as they were disconsolate. What was there to do? "Listen to a bunch of old geezers talk about...
...grenade. Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth), the encyclical which will be formally issued tomorrow, is a reaction to what the Pope writes is "an overall and systematic calling into question of traditional moral doctrine." According to The New York Times, which obtained an official English translation of the edict, the document details "fundamental moral principles" which "transcend all eras and cultures...
...other words, the pope is charging his bishops (to whom the edict is addressed) to tear down the uneasy balance between religious allegiance and personal belief that many Catholics hold on issues such as birth control. Pope John Paul II's views are not a surprise--he has always been far more conservative on this issue than the majority of American Catholics. But by directing the Catholic clergy--many of whom strongly disagree with him--to censure all who fail to strictly abide by church teaching, he is throwing a divisive stake right down the center of American Catholicism...
...Catholics, who have a tendency to view the Catholic church as some sort of authoritarian Stalinesque entity, may be surprised that an edict ordering clergy to stifle dissent will cause such commotion. There is a tendency to judge Catholicism from what the pope says, rather than from what the majority of American Catholics do. Yet consider, for example, the following responses to Humanae Vitae...
Reception of this latest papal encyclical will be divided. Nothing new in that piece of news--except that the very nature of the edict would preclude such division. If the pope was hoping to stifle the issues of authority raised twenty five years ago by Humanae Vitae, he may have only sparked a new surge of active dissension...