Word: synods
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...remarkable speech came at the start of the sixth Synod of Bishops, before 216 delegates summoned from around the world to advise John Paul on family issues. The speaker: San Francisco's Archbishop John R. Quinn, 51, who has hardly been known for boldness during his term as president of the U.S. bishops' conference. Quinn loyally endorsed the papal teaching, of course. But then he reminded the bishops of what most of them might prefer to forget...
Quinn's appeal was in stark contrast to the stand-pat paper the Vatican had sent out prior to the synod. Other synod speakers joined in lamenting the growing gap between Catholic teaching and observance, but the first week's deliberations were cautious. Some conservatives said the church should do more to enforce its policy and a powerful Vatican conservative, Pericle Cardinal Felici, told the bishops, "There is nothing to re-discuss. I consider the encyclical closed...
Even though the synod will also be busy mulling divorce, abortion, sexual morality and the decline of family life, the bishops will probably find much to discuss on birth control too. At the end of October they will offer final proposals to John Paul. Since papal policy at present seems to leave so little room for maneuvering, however, it could be that Quinn's speech has less to do with real hope of modifying the Vatican attitude than the U.S. bishops' need to retain the loyalty and sympathy of their parishioners...
Even then, progress was a hallmark of the city. By 1640, the church presumably had purchased a bell, for record show it bought a bell rope. And by 1643, it was chosen the site for a colony-wide synod called for the "purpose of opposing certain incipient tendencies towards Presbyterianism." The church was helpful not only as a standard of moral rectitude; it also set the boundaries of the city, in a manner described by Charles William Eliot II in S.B. Sutton's Cambridge Reconsidered: "The optimum area for a town was figured by the time-distance from a meeting...
...Anglican Bishop Hassan Barnaba Dehqani-Tafti and his British-born wife Margaret, spraying them with automatic-pistol fire. Four bullets pierced the pillow near the bishop's head. Amazingly, he was not hit, though his wife received a bullet in the arm. The bishop, president of the Central Synod which includes all Anglicans in the Middle East, fled to exile in Cyprus...