Word: priesthoods
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...realm of the wicked, built not only upon layers of deceitful whispers and abuse of religious power, but also upon the sadistic sexual molestation of these small boys. Smith's film cloaks itself in the robes of fiction, but draws upon real cases of pederasty in the priesthood of Newfoundland and Canada during the 1970's. Without degenerating into lurid sensationalism, the twopart film details the reality of this painful nightmare, as well as the brutal psychological effects both on the innocent souls of the boys and the souls of the guilty priests...
...been tempered with a cool willingness to compromise. The President has made conciliatory gestures to aristocrats who opposed his election. He has massaged the egos of political opponents who supported his ouster. He has acceded to the demands of church superiors who successfully pressured him to resign his priesthood in November. He has renewed his promise to step down at the end of his term in February 1996, even though he lost three years of his five-year tenure in exile. As he goes about the business of remaking the government, Aristide has never stopped preaching the gospel of reconciliation...
...male chauvinism has been challenged by feminists in the church. "It's an organization that can't find balance between men and women or between formal authority and individual conscience," says Maxine Hanks, a fifth-generation Mormon whose book Women & Authority: Re-Emerging Mormon Feminism claims women exercised priesthood powers in the 19th century when church followers were struggling to establish themselves in the Utah desert. "Contemporary Mormon women should reclaim their lost authority," she says. For holding such views, however, Hanks and other women have been excommunicated...
Lest those of you who know me accuse me of advocating allout cultural revolution, I must qualify. I do not equate non-conformity with Volkswagen vans, Maoism or World Music. Joining the priesthood or the Peace Corps, a farm or the Foreign Service are all valid rejections of the increased homogeneity of the Harvard community. The pocketbook might suffer, the parents might moan. Individualism does come at a price...
Ratzinger's behind-the-scenes interrogations and investigations exert a subtle chill on Catholic intellectual life. His actions imposed an 11-month "penitential silence" on Leonardo Boff, Brazil's exponent of liberation theology (who has since quit the priesthood); they also led to the removal of Charles Curran, a proponent of birth control, from teaching theology at the Catholic University of America. (He is now at Southern Methodist University.) In fact, Ratzinger sometimes seems to be turning his back -- literally -- on modern notions. The pre-Vatican II church, he said last April, was theologically correct in having priests "oriented toward...