Word: vaticans
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...John Paul's cleanup as one of historic proportions, comparing it with Pope Pius X's effort early in the century to crush the modernist movement. That dispute, says Grisez, "was basically a much smaller thing than what's happening now." Similarly underscoring the significance of the situation, the Vatican's official spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, stated last week that "this phenomenon of dissent, in the U.S. and elsewhere, touches the very nature of the church. The real question is no longer abortion, or even moral theology as a whole. It is the essence of Catholic faith about the church...
...Curran says his own plight will create a general "chilling factor, at minimum. Certainly people are going to have to think twice about what they might write." Francis Fiorenza, a colleague of Curran's at Catholic University, predicts that despite efforts at dissuasion by U.S. educators, the Vatican will issue controversial new rules requiring that theology teachers on all Catholic campuses be approved by local bishops...
While obdurate dissenters will apparently not be spared in the crackdown, church policy has been ambiguous in some cases. Shortly after Curran's ouster, the Catholic University board granted tenure to Canon Lawyer James Provost, whose writings had irked the Vatican. In gaining tenure, however, Provost had to agree to write clarifications of his past support for first Communion before first confession and for giving Communion to some Catholics who divorce and remarry without annulments...
...another exception, despite grumbling from conservative laity and bishops, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops hired Jesuit Michael Buckley as the executive director of its doctrine committee. In 1977 Buckley had signed a significant open letter to Rome complaining that the Vatican decree against women priests used "faulty" arguments and "could impose a grave injustice." However, the Vatican did not fight Buckley's appointment, reasoning that the letter did not exactly deny its teaching...
...results of an unusual investigation of all U.S. seminaries, ordered by John Paul, as harsh as some had feared. A Vatican report on 38 of the schools, out this week, declares them "generally satisfactory," though Rome is prodding a few seminaries (no names mentioned) to "resecure" loyalty to church teachings in moral theology...