Word: superchurch
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Superchurch...
...time is some uncertain date in the 1990s, and the sign of the cross has become an anachronism. A Third and Fourth Vatican Council have come and gone. The Vatican, now thoroughly embroiled in a highly ecumenical superchurch, dutifully processes assignments through World Ecumen Council headquarters in Amsterdam. Priests skitter about the world in gray-green denim fatigues, carrying musette bags and spreading a gospel of social revolution. The father general of an old monastic order called the Albanesians is preparing to preside over the first phases of a new ecumenical breakthrough: dialogue with the Buddhists...
Rome uneasily dispatches a zealous young priest to correct the situation. He is a tough-minded, chillingly efficient young man named James Kinsella, who has been schooled in ecumenical diplomacy and trained in the dubious art of using power to revolutionary ends. Presenting the superchurch's problem to the old abbot, a man named Tomas O'Malley, Kinsella assures him smoothly that it is not a matter of heresy -merely one of creating "a uniform posture...
...those two churches were declared to be "moving to quite an advanced stage." Lutherans, however, have not yet established full intercommunion among their own U.S. denominations. And Episcopalians are potential participants in the proposed multichurch Protestant merger, the Church of Christ Uniting. Should the Episcopal Church join the new superchurch, the questions of Episcopal belief, the Eucharist and ministerial orders could become more complicated...
...major black Methodist churches, probably more than 1,500,000 in smaller groups and store-front churches. The three black Methodist denominations are considering joining the giant Consultation on Church Union (TIME, March 2). Though blacks will make up less than one-sixth of the potential membership of the superchurch, black delegates at COCU's annual meeting last month won a guarantee that each presiding bishop of the new church must have a "different racial background" from his predecessor-meaning that virtually every other one will be black...