Word: synods
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...Rome last week, Pope Paul VI opened a month-long synod of the Catholic bishops with a clear warning to walk, not run, toward further reform. "Immense dangers" confront Catholicism, he said, "insidious dangers, which even from within the church find utterance in the work of teachers and writers." After that keynote, following a concelebrated Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, the foregathered prelates knew that their role in the sessions ahead would at best be advisory and consultative...
...papal injunction was a gloomy beginning to a meeting that many Catholics regard as a real test of how willing church leaders are to extend the accomplishments of the Second Vatican Council. Specifically, the synod represents the first real test of collegiality-the democratic notion, adopted by Vatican II, that the bishops collectively share ruling power with the Pope. As a kind of ecclesiastical senate, the synod is expected to advise the Pope on current problems troubling the church and to extend the legislative accomplishments of the council. But as at the beginning of Vatican II, change-fearing conservatives...
...Missouri Synod (membership: 2,800,000) takes seriously Luther's warning that Christians should not compromise doctrine. For that reason, the church has never joined the National or World Council of Churches. Until last year, when it helped form a nation wide service agency called the Lutheran Council in the U.S.A., the synod had remained relatively isolated from even its sister denominations, the American Lutheran Church (2,600,000) and the Lutheran Church in America (3,300,000). At last week's convention, delegates heard a report on recent theological discussions between the synod and the A.L.C...
...example of the kind of cooperation now possible, the synod for the first time urged its churches to work with other Christians in sponsoring open housing for Negroes. A resolution urged members to help establish fair-housing programs in their cities, authorized the creation of a church loan fund to help Negroes buy or build homes. And in still another precedent-breaking action, convention delegates authorized a new "study and evaluation" of the World Council of Churches...
Some Missouri Synod leaders now concede that the denomination might some day join the council - if it could be established that it was simply an organization for Christian cooperation rather than an ecclesiastical institution having the nature of a church...