Word: synods
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When Lutheran Minister D. Douglas Roth last November defied his bishop and refused to leave his church in a depressed steel town near Pittsburgh, police were called in, and Roth was jailed for 112 days. Last week a church synod voted 499 to 33 to defrock the still outspoken minister. It was only the second such action in the 22-year history of the Lutheran Church in America. Said Nadine Roth, his wife: "I guess we're like any other unemployed family...
...first enjoyed the support of the church when in 1980 they proposed to enlist Pittsburgh corporations to help laid-off steelworkers. But then they turned to confrontation, disrupting church services attended by bank and steel executives, and ignored church orders to stop. After his defrocking at last week's synod in Greenville, Pa., Roth seized the podium and refused to leave the auditorium, shouting, "There is great corruption in the church!" He was arrested again, along with a fellow dissident minister, then released on the condition that he not go near the auditorium. Said Bishop James Crumley: "We're tired...
Perhaps the Pope's most important confrontation was with the Rev. Henk Huting, chairman of the Netherlands Reformed Synod. Huting deplored the Catholic Church's ecumenical regression and blamed it on "instructions from higher authority." Read: Rome. For his part, John Paul skipped some hard-line passages in his prepared address, but the text remains the Pontiff's most forthright statement on his approach toward Protestantism. Discussion of joint Communion services is futile, he indicated, and Rome is unwilling to explore changes in the nature of the priesthood. The speech removed any remaining doubt that John Paul now foresees substantial...
Officially, Roth's crime was "willful disregard and violation" of the church's constitution in disobeying a command from his superior, Kenneth May, bishop for the Western Pennsylvania-West Virginia Synod. More broadly, however, the Roth case is part of an ongoing conflict in the Pittsburgh area over social-action protests by some two dozen Protestant clergy. Unemployment in the region stands at 9%, and in some pockets is almost double that. Roth and his colleagues in the radical Denominational Ministry Strategy repeatedly blamed local businessmen for the economic suffering in the mill towns. D.M.S. and its allies adopted such...
...Rome. Vatican II did not explicitly make such a demand, which would exclude not only Protestants but also the Eastern Orthodox, reunion with whom has long been considered a prime personal interest of John Paul's. If nothing else, Ols' declaration will heighten interest in the special Bishops' Synod called by the Pope for next fall to reexamine the work of Vatican...