Word: synods
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Meeting last week in York, the Synod of the Church of England voted to change the rules. In a historic step, it decided by an overwhelming vote of 296 to 114 that divorced Anglicans could remarry in church. The key sentence declared that the synod "considers that there are circumstances in which a person may be married in church during the lifetime of the former partner." The meaning of "circumstances" was left undefined, pending further discussion...
...London Times earlier that morning. It quickly set all England rejoicing. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher told a cheering House of Commons that the engagement gave the government "great pleasure." Bishops of the Church of England, who happened to be discussing marriage at a general synod that day, rose in a standing ovation. "It's super," said Jane Ogden, a housewife in the crowd that quickly materialized at the palace gates. "People really like her. She's so friendly, and she hasn't lost her head...
...first synod, however, Pope John Paul deliberately picked the treacherous topics his predecessor avoided: the whole range of family issues, including contraception, abortion, sexual morality and the thorny question of divorced Catholics involved in second marriages. The bishops talked for a month, and when the synod closed last week it was evident that on birth control, the assembly had buttressed tradition rather than questioned it. The end result was a reaffirmation of Paul's teaching by the 216 delegates, which not only strengthens official policy but also makes it appear less the view of one man in Rome...
...synod began, there was a flurry of excitement. Led by Archbishop John R. Quinn, president of the U.S. hierarchy, a number of prelates from Western Europe, Canada and the U.S. baldly pointed out that large numbers of good Catholics simply do not understand the ban on birth control and are unwilling to obey it. But no one at the synod questioned Paul VI's teaching on birth control. And it soon became clear that many bishops in non-Western parts of the world take a dim view of contraception. Social-action liberal bishops from Brazil and other Third World...
...synod's final "propositions" for papal consideration, codified by West Germany's Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, have been kept secret. But most apparently endorsed tolerance: the birth control doctrine, as one Cardinal put it, "is not a discipline to be imposed in full rigor but should be gradually brought to the conscience of married couples as they mature." All sides agreed that the teaching must somehow be made more convincing...