Word: popes
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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While the encyclical reiterates the pope's conservative stance on issues of sexuality, it will prove far more controversial for the position it stakes out on the role of the Catholic clergy in stifling dissent. According to the Times report, "The Pope tells the bishops that they have a 'grave obligation to be personally vigilant' and must take 'appropriate measures to insure that the faithful are guarded from every doctrine and theory contrary' to official church teaching...
...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...
...some respect, then, the pope is merely trying to break past this "agree to disagree" attitude that has silenced most recent debate on Humanae Vitae. Yet he is doing so in a manner that is designed to make many American Catholics feel that a gauntlet has been thrown down between them and their church...
These statistics are sometimes lost amidst pictures like those this summer that showed half a million adoring Catholics cheering the pope on at World Youth Day in Denver. But for many American Catholics, disagreeing with some article of church doctrine is less important than the community and family identity that the church represents to them...