Word: laywomen
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...church is making headway in advocating social justice, but admitted that there is considerable "confusion over moral issues," including the limits of personal dissent and the role of conscience. The most significant passage dealt with the status of women. Malone, declaring that "particular attention must now be given" to laywomen and sisters, asserted, "Their role in the church and society must be clarified, their rights and dignity must be affirmed, and their advancement to positions of leadership and decision making must continue." He said nothing about women as priests, which both the Pope and the U.S. hierarchy oppose...
...unemployment, crowded housing and political turbulence. The church hierarchy is divided over the growing influence on the area's 338 million Catholics of a radical movement, partly influenced by Marxism, that is known as liberation theology. In the U.S., the papacy confronts restiveness and even anger among sisters and laywomen who are unhappy about the church's rigid stands on abortion, birth control and an exclusively male priesthood (see following stories). In Europe as well as in the U.S., the Pope and his aides face challenges from theological scholars whose reinterpretations of traditional dogma verge on what Rome considers heresy...
...study of all U.S. seminaries, and a principal reason for this, says the Vatican source, is to guarantee that these institutions "are not turning out psychiatrists and social workers in collars." For similar reasons Rome, concerned that women's orders could vanish if sisters appear little different from laywomen, is investigating the orders in the U.S. and requiring distinctive garb and community life...
...Milwaukee, Weakland has protested police brutality against blacks, endorsed church sanctuary for refugees from Central America, and advocated equal rights for homosexuals. He not only gave nuns and laywomen key staff positions but also at one time mused openly about the theoretical possibility of women priests; that may be one reason he is now looked on with disquiet by some Vatican officials. When Pope John Paul II tried to dampen dissident U.S. theologians, Weakland remarked that the Pontiff "probably doesn't quite understand the American approach to pluralism...