Word: vatican
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...birth control, sexual mores, freedom to dissent from church teachings and, of course, women priests. In addition, the Pope is demanding that the U.S. church abide by a new code of canon law, 24 years in the formulating, which goes into effect next week. Among its rules, which the Vatican expects to be obeyed: all members of religious orders, both men and women, must live in convents or in religious communities when possible, and they may not hold public office. In addition, the Pope wants nuns to wear some form of distinctive garb...
...enthusiasm for response. "I don't think the church can go back. It amazes me that they think they can do this," says Agnes Mansour, the Michigan state social services director who chose to resign as a nun earlier this year because she refused to comply with a Vatican directive that she state her opposition to publicly funded abortion...
...attitude is supported by the 2,000-member National Coalition of American Nuns, a radical group that is urging liberal nuns to consider severing their canonical ties with Rome. If some nuns do ignore the directives that are certain to follow the current scrutiny of religious orders, one Vatican official cautions that "there could be a real housecleaning." For many American nuns, however, this will not be an issue: the Chicago-based Institute on Religious Life, representing 25,000 traditionalist members of religious President Malone orders, has expressed "joy and gratitude" at the Pope's firm hand...
...university, protests, "We have priests saying Mass in sports shirts and some using French bread." Similar views are stated even more colorfully by the Wanderer, (circulation: 35,000), an extreme right-wing Catholic weekly published in St. Paul, which is said to be closely read in the Vatican. This month the paper thundered against "secularist sex education, dissident priests and theologians, politicized Catholic agencies and aberrant liturgies...
...three-year seminary investigation, supervised by Bishop John Marshall of Burlington, Vt., has produced little anxiety, and some seminaries have even found the meetings with visiting clergy to be enjoyable. But the visits have only just begun, and future tension is possible because of the Vatican's insistence that all theologians and biblical scholars must submit to the church's teaching authority, which is clearly not the case on some campuses. Not all schools are happy with the decree from Rome that only priests can serve as spiritual directors and that as a general rule nuns...