Word: monsignors
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...contrast, Kevin Grumbach's performance as Monsignor Escudero has many more dimensions, but it is confusing. He is the typical Catholic priest making gentle jests over his supposed sinfulness, the suspicious courtier "educated in the most select European intrigues" and the imperious confessor; but he does not seem...
...never thought that I would live long enough to see this," declared Msgr. John Egan, 60, grand old man of Catholic social action. What the balding monsignor saw as he looked out upon the throng in Detroit's Cobo Hall was an unprecedented gathering of representatives of the U.S. Roman Catholic hierarchy and the church's grass roots: 110 bishops meeting openly in discussion with 1,230 priests, nuns and laity. Said Egan: "The voice of the church is about to be heard through these delegates...
Another sign of disaffection: the divorce rate among American Catholics is approaching that of non-Catholics. As one result, diocesan marriage tribunals have been examining an increasing number of broken marriages, and last year granted almost 10,000 annulments - declarations that a sacramental marriage never existed. Says Monsignor Marion Justin Reinhardt, judge of the Brooklyn tribunal: "If two people really cannot live together, there must be some reason why not, and it should be up to us to find that reason. If we find it existed at the time of the marriage, then that marriage must be null and void...
...Monsignor William Stapleton, pastor of St. Columbkille's, believes the wholesale defections of priests were a signal from on high: "I think it's God's way of saying 'Hey, the priests are not the only ones in my church, and I can make use of the laity as well.' Lay people are the church as much as I am." Indeed, laymen-and women-are increasingly distributing the Communion bread, an innovation that is not always popular. Says Robert Drummond, 47, a lay minister of Communion at St. Ambrose's parish in Dorchester, Mass...
Many Catholics have come to like their new independence and even many priests agree that on balance, it may be a good thing. "Too long we had this parent-child relationship between the church and its people," says Monsignor John Sheridan of Our Lady of Malibu parish. "That...