Word: synods
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...office itself, with its imposing princely titles, robes and privileges, seems somewhat anachronistic in a church moving toward simplicity and democratization. Instead of awarding new red hats, renewal-minded theologians had hoped that the Pope might gradually transfer the functions of the college to a new synod of bishops, composed of prelates elected by national hierarchical conferences, that will meet in Rome for the first time on Sept...
...first decrees was an order solemnly commanding Greece's young people to attend church. Last week the junta's reforming zeal turned on the church itself. With a curt de cree, the government dismissed the 86-year-old Chrysostomos and the twelve bishops of the Holy Synod, the church's highest governing body. In as the new Primate went Archimandrite leronymos Kotsonis, a professor of canon law who happens to be personal chaplain to King Constantine. The government also replaced the bishops with churchmen of its own choice...
Both actions took place at the annual synods of the two churches, which met under difficult conditions. In the past, the two branches of Protestantism have gathered in different sectors of divided Berlin, and some West Germans have been allowed to visit their brethren in the east. This time, Communist officials forced the East German synod to meet at Fiirstenwalde, 20 miles from Berlin-and made it clear ahead of time that they expected the meeting to end in a formal schism (TIME, April...
Strength from the Lord. Their hopes were bluntly disappointed. Addressing the opening session of the East German synod, Bishop Friedrich Wilhelm Krum-macher of Greifswald warned: "If Christians, who are limbs of the one Lord, and who belong together as limbs of one church, are no longer allowed to be mentioned in one breath, it is no longer an institutional question but a matter of the unity of faith in one Lord...
Equally defiant of Communist hopes was the synod's participation in the election of a new council chairman, Germany's top Protestant post. The man chosen-Bavaria's Bishop Hermann Dietzfelbinger, 58-was in fact formally proposed by the Fiirstenwalde session. Regarded as a moderate on the question of East-West relations, Dietzfelbinger was chosen over the pre-synod favorite, Hannover's Bishop Hanns Lilje, who is more closely identified with Germany's political controversies. Dietzfelbinger succeeds Bishop Kurt Scharf of Berlin-Brandenburg, who hopes to return to East Berlin, from which he was expelled...