Word: synods
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...agenda item in this week's talks between Gorbachev and the Pope. Friendlier contacts, and a papal visit to the U.S.S.R., cannot occur unless this, the world's largest underground religious community, is restored. Under Stalin, all Ukrainian Catholic bishops were imprisoned and a fraudulent 1946 synod dissolved their jurisdictions, handing over 4,100 churches to Russian Orthodoxy. The majority of the Catholic priests rejected the takeover and either were arrested or went into hiding...
...dissidents, who refuse to recognize women priests, decided to act after the February consecration of Boston's Barbara Harris as the first woman Episcopal bishop. Synod members decry the church's liberalized teachings on such matters as divorce, abortion and homosexuality. They also insist that parishes be allowed to use the 1928 Book of Common Prayer instead of the modernized worship forms that the church approved in 1979. But unlike the small factions of tradition-minded members who walked out of the Episcopal Church in the late 1970s, the Synod stops short of making a dramatic split with the Episcopal...
...membership. "We must remain within the church to transform it," vows dissident Bishop David Schofield of Fresno, Calif. If separation is forced upon the flock, he states, "we will take the path when it comes." Says Bishop Clarence Pope of Fort Worth, who was elected president of the new Synod: "We are moving one step at a time to test the waters...
Pope, Schofield and four other bishops who now head regular Episcopal dioceses will also be the leaders of six Synod "areas" across the U.S. Fireworks are likely to start if, without approval, one of these six Synod bishops moves into a liberal diocese to perform rites for a traditionalist parish. Such a radical step, some believe, would break canon law and constitute a schism. Getting right down to basics, a spokesman for the diocese of southeast Florida contends that if and when a parting of the ways occurs, there will be serious legal and financial opposition to the schismatics, with...
Despite such hazards, the Fort Worth gathering drew significant backing. Besides the six active bishops, 20 retired U.S. bishops participated, along with nine bishops from overseas, where Anglicans are generally more sympathetic to the Synod's views than in the U.S. All in all, the Synod claims a founding flock of 290 parishes in 85 of the 95 U.S. dioceses. Boosters are talking grandly of enlisting 200,000 Episcopalians by Christmas of 1990 to sign the Synod's Declaration of Common Faith and Purpose, which so far has been endorsed by 26 dissident bishops and 13,000 priests...