Word: reformers
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...torn by radical demands for total change, on the one hand, and by fear of any sort of change, on the other. How can the U.S. reform its society without going to either extreme? No one has yet produced a completely satisfactory answer. But no one has tried harder than John W. Gardner, former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, now chairman of the Urban Coalition. In delivering the annual Godkin Lectures at Harvard, Gardner made an eloquent plea for constructive change in American institutions. Excerpts...
Among the dissenters today we hear a few with a special message. They say: "We don't need reform, we need revolution. The whole system is rotten and should be destroyed." I have talked long and seriously with such people and have found that most of them don't really mean it. There is an awesome theatricality about today's radicalism. But some, of course, do mean it. They have fallen victim to an old and naive doctrine-that man is naturally good, humane, decent, just and honorable, but that corrupt and wicked institutions have transformed...
Paul has frequently denounced excesses of reform within the church, but last week marked the first time that he has publicly referred to schism-a word that has almost never been mentioned by pontiffs since Clement VII hurled the accusation at Henry VIII more than four centuries ago. To many Vatican observers, the Holy Week statements suggest that the Pope has taken as much as he can from the dissenters and is ready to deliver an ultimatum to those who persist in ecclesiastical rebellion...
...style. Last week Iron John Dearden, one of four new American cardinals chosen by the Pope, proved that he is a man of much more flexible steel. He approved a long list of recommendations, put forward by a lay-dominated synod, that makes Detroit a model of democratically guided reform in the post-Vatican II church...
...resignation would be a mistake. The nature of the President's office, the manner by which the men who occupy it are selected, and their invariably intimate relationship with the Corporation, were all forces which pressed Pusey toward his decision, while insulating him from moderating influences. Only a comprehensive reform of the Administration will guarantee that Pusey's successor will be more responsive to the feelings of his constituents...