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To: Torie
"Here is a reason the Church hierarchy fears honest discussion: It fears it will expose a crisis of belief. There is a pervasive sense within the Church that no one really believes its teachings on sexuality anymore--not the laity, not even the clergy. In a strict hierarchy, no one wants to say the emperor has no clothes."

Well, yes, but one has to clarify what one means by "believe." Some may accept these teachings as true in some ideal sense, but not be willing to live by them.

There is a potential for schism if the Church moves too quickly to change. I seem to recall that one of Walker Percy's books featured a conflict between a liberal official Catholic Church and American conservative schismatics. An international organization has to keep time by a multitude of clocks which give different indications about what people are ready for. What seems to work in some parts of the world is manifestly a failure in others.

I have to wonder if the Church can be "saved" for many in the areas affected by the scandal. Maybe the predictions of Jefferson and Adams will come true after all and New England will become the Unitarian bastion they envisioned.

26 posted on 04/27/2002 12:55:17 PM PDT by x
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To: x
I didn't know Adams had a Unitarian vision. I thought he was a bit more of an orthodox Congregationalist.

At the risk of going out on a limb here, if the Winter's vision becomes operative, perhaps Catholicism in the US will be not that much different the Episcopaleanism (just still a bit more hierarchical and no divorce perhaps). Episcopaleanism is not thriving in this land. It may well be that more cerebral and less emotive denominations tend over time to be crowded out by secular humanism in this day and age in developed countries. It may be an irrevisible trend.

27 posted on 04/27/2002 1:44:38 PM PDT by Torie
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