Word: synods
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...international Synod of Bishops went into its final days in Rome last week, some Catholics still clung to the hope that it would somehow prove a dramatic sequel to the Second Vatican Council. Close by the Vatican's new audience hall, where the prelates conferred in splendid isolation, liberals who wanted definitive reforms manned command posts and held daily press briefings. Those who think Pope Paul is not traditional enough pressed for a more conservative line. Members of the right wing's yippie element lobbied in their own way by sloshing paint on the coats of arms...
...there was no new revelation on how the church could deal with its pressing problems (see TIME ESSAY, opposite). The synod is a sounding board, not a legislature. The Pope summons it, sets its agenda, and decides what to do with its recommendations. This fall it has merely affirmed -and in some cases lagged behind-positions Pope Paul has already taken...
...nowhere, although it produced last week's liveliest discussion. Liberals had hoped that such ordination would be urged for countries where priests are in short supply. The final wording, however, left the matter wholly up to the Pope. Conservatives and liberals alike were disgruntled by confused synod procedures. Said Archbishop Joachim Ndayen of the Central African Republic: "We didn't come thousands of kilometers to dance a farandole...
Ukrainian Defiance. More significant than any of the synod's actions was the result of a mail ballot by bishops round the world. It handed a thumping defeat to the proposed text of a church "constitution," a preamble to the new code of canon law. The document, known as the Lex Fundamentalis, had been the target of a sustained assault by progressives because of its emphasis on authoritarian aspects of the church (TIME...
...only real debate in the Synod so far has been between those who consider the priesthood a divine gift defined by revelation and those who stress the priest's duty to be active in social reform. In his opening presentation, Germany's Joseph Cardinal Hoeffner insisted that Jesus Christ did not intend to "establish a purely human solidarity with the less privileged as though he were a 'revolutionary' on the point of overturning existing social conditions." This view was disputed by Bernard Jan Cardinal Alfrink of The Netherlands. In his view, it represented "Christ...