Basic HTML Version
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, NOVEMBER
18,
1986
PAGE
15
[University of Chicago1 Historian [Martin E.1 Marty, a Lutheran
who attended the Second Vatican Council
as
an observer, puts it
another way. "This Pope is very good at being Pope in the
Third World. He's the Pope for the poor and oppressed, he's
the Pope for people just getting their act together." But,
Marty adds,
"I
don't think he likes Northwest Euro e, and
I
5Z-E
in P o i Z i m e r % +iie regime i s a l w a y s m n g unity upon
the church, he is not really ready for the wild, free pluralism
we have in America."...
don't think h e - l i r a Idtofthi-about
America
-7F
r a i n x a g
Many Catholics seem to welcome the debate the Vatican crackdown
has inspired as healthy--and overdue.... Besides, says the Rev.
James Burtchaell, professor of theology at Notre Dame, it may
be time to take a hard look at some of the notions that have
crept into American Catholicism since Vatican
11.
Take
"pluralism," for instance. While the church always has allowed
for cultural differences in different countries, Hitchcock
observes, "there is ultimately
a
unity of doctrine--we all
believe the same thing." The "extreme Americanists," says
Hitchcock, essentially deny that: 'They'll say
John
Paul's
views of sexuality
or
morality may be all right for Poland, but
they aren't right for the United States." That concept,
Hitchcock argues, is intolerable for the church. How far does
pluralism go? He says that ordination of women, for instance,
cannot be approached with a pluralistic attitude. "You can't
have half the church with women priests and half without," he
argues. "At some point, there has to be a decision."...
No matter what actions the Vatican takes, debate in the United
States will continue long into the future. And dissent from
official teaching is inevitable. By almost all accounts, the
reat confrontation will: come over the role of women
in
t h e c
-
next
i h
urc
:
Recent studi-yTe=io=
OpiniG Researz
Center show that
50
percent of Catholic women under 50--and two
thirds of those under 30--no longer accept the church's
traditional definitions of who may be priests, yet John Paul
I1
has declared that the ordination of women is out of the
question. "It's going to get worse," Curran predicts.
Europe's
Unity
Process:
Huch
Hidden
from
Public
View
Several times in
the last years of his life Herbert
W.
Armstrong wrote, especially in some
of his co-worker letters, that individuals were working tirelessly behind
the scenes to bring about a united Europe.
Mr.
Armstrong knew personally,
of course, of one such individual--Otto von Habsburg, an energetic member
of
the European Parliament. Whether
Mr.
Armstrong specifically knew of
others involved in the unification process
I
can't say. He never
mentioned any other names
to
me. But
I
suspect that, convinced of what
must happen prophetically, coupled with first-hand discussions with Dr.
Habsburg, Mr. Armstrong had a "spiritual sixth sense" of what must surely
be taking place.
-
Now there is demonstrable evidence that
Mr.
Armstrong was indeed correct
in his assessment. Behind the scenes, especially inside the European
Parliament, much indeed is happening, and has been occurring unknown to
the general public, for the past three years. The culmination of these