Word: synods
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...Synod of Bishops is potentially among the most useful reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Every two or three years a select group of Roman Catholic bishops from around the world gathers to advise the Pope. But as the latest synod closed in Rome last week, Archbishop John May of St. Louis, president of the U.S. bishops' conference, cautioned that unless such meetings "produce something rather significant," Catholics will begin to question the "expenditure of people, time and effort...
Those disquieting questions linger after the 1987 synod, which was summoned to discuss the role of the laity. The month-long conference of 232 bishops from 92 countries, joined by 51 official lay observers, produced no significant accomplishments and few concrete recommendations. The emptiness was apparent both in the synod's platitudinous message to the church at large, and in the secret "propositions" sent to the Pope, the Latin text of which was obtained by news organizations...
...born + last week in Columbus at a placid "constituting convention." The ELCA, an amalgamation of three Lutheran churches, will establish its headquarters close to Chicago's O'Hare Airport by January. Before then, some congregations that find the ELCA too liberal plan to break away. (The conservative Missouri Synod and Wisconsin Synod remain outside the merger...
...earliest faint stirrings of dissent occurred in 1974, when that year's synod departed from the traditional affirmation that apartheid derived directly from Scripture, and said only that apartheid was not in any way contrary to Scripture. That dissent grew stronger in 1980, when eight theologians published a statement protesting the "apparent inability of the institutionalized church in South Africa to fulfill its God-given calling of reconciliation . . . between different race groups." In 1982 the eight grew to 123 ministers calling on the N.G.K. to play a "much greater role of reconciliation," and though that year's synod elected...
When that revision came up for a decision last October, the synod completely reversed the church's traditional stand. "The Dutch Reformed Church is convinced that the application of apartheid as a political and social system which injures people and unjustly benefits one group above & another cannot be accepted on Christian ethical grounds since it conflicts with the principle of neighborly love and righteousness." The church declared its doors open to all races, and it elected the liberal Heyns as its moderator. This does not mean that the church has become or is about to become fully integrated (or even...