Word: priesthoods
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...jealous YHWH inspired by the religious policies of the Pharaoh Akhenaton, who reigned in Egypt from 1353 to 1336 B.C.? Closing the temples of the powerful priesthood of Amon, this royal Egyptian heretic established the state cult of a godhead embodied in the sun disk, or Aton. In Moses and Monotheism, Sigmund Freud speculated that Moses was actually an Egyptian who passed single-deity worship derived from Akhenaton to the Jews. (Was there not, he asked, an echo of Aton in Adonai?) Other scholars, like German academic Jan Assmann, author of Moses the Egyptian, believe Moses and Hebrew monotheism...
Despite such hostility, Ramerman hopes that "God will part the Red Sea so that I can do what I love to do." But in the meantime she's not waiting for divine intervention. At United Presbyterian she has formed an impromptu priesthood of her own: about 100 worshippers are wearing stoles. One is shot through with glitter, another with gold lame stars. They are all purple, the color, confides a congregant, of the Resurrection. (Actually, purple symbolizes penitence, an unintended irony.) Garbed in forbidden raiment, the parishioners rock to the lyric, "You allowed us to come together one more time...
...bombshell lobbed at conservatism in general or--so it sometimes seemed--John Paul II in particular. Vatican ideological crackdowns had produced "much cruelty," Weakland wrote; many competent women "feel they are second-class citizens in a Church they love"; the Pope's decree that an all-male priesthood is divinely directed and unquestionable was "theologically suspect." And after six "listening sessions" with Catholic women who had resorted to abortion, Weakland urged open discussion and more compassion on the issue. For that, the Vatican vetoed an honorary degree he was to receive in Switzerland. Papal supporters picketed a 1995 Weakland event...
...world had bumped into the answer to Stalin's question: How many divisions has the Pope? And the Pope was engaging in spiritual geopolitics at summit level: he wanted human rights for the faithful in Russia. Karol Wojtyla's training was extensive, dating back to discreet studies for the priesthood under Nazi occupation in Poland. After that, parish work and academic studies under communist rule, leading in 1963 to the episcopacy in Cracow. Pity poor Gorbachev. Seventy-two years of formal national commitment to atheism, backed by the Gulag, and now, 1989, a street poll revealed that 40% of Soviet...
...priests, contraception, and the indissolubility of marriage. He accepts Rome's position on all four, although he is troubled by the reasoning behind the ban on birth control, hopes for a tad more flexibility on remarriage after divorce, and sees no doctrinal barrier to the eventuality of a married priesthood (which exists in the church's Eastern rite...