Word: archbishop
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Tucked in the archive section of the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams' website, a visitor can find a video of the soft-spoken Anglican leader reflecting on his momentous 2006 visit to the Vatican. Williams had come to meet Pope Benedict XVI to mark the 40th anniversary of the opening of Catholic-Anglican dialogue after five centuries of hostilities between the two churches. The video opens with images of a bustling St. Peter's Square, and Williams' wistful voiceover: "There's undoubtedly something about Rome...
...that will also spell out its position against abortion and in vitro fertilization. A draft of the document makes the case that marriage has been under assault for decades by secularists, feminists and others who see it as a social construction easily morphed into new shapes or ignored altogether. Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, who leads the U.S. church's efforts to prevent the legalization of same-sex marriage, was encouraged by the recent referendum in Maine. He told TIME over the the weekend, "In Maine, when people were asked to - and I would call it not so much a vote against...
Kurtz reiterated his church stands opposing the discrimination against and ill-treatment of homosexuals. "The church truly desires to be a defender of human rights," says the Archbishop. He also admits that many Americans do not share Catholic teachings about marriage. Nevertheless, he says the church believes that the "defense of truth," as God, nature and human history have revealed it, cannot be separated from the pursuit of justice. You can't have justice, he argues, if the truth of marriage between one man and one woman as a cornerstone of human society is denied. (See a pictorial history...
...marriage as a whole. "We are aware that some of the the statistics that were presented to us shows that, I am told from the 1980s to mid-2005, there's been a decrease of 40% to 50% of couples turning to the church for sacramental marriage," says the Archbishop. "We had an awareness of marriage becoming an increasingly private affair, whereas of course the church believes it is anything but a private affair. Obviously it is very important to the husband and wife who are getting married, but it is also of great importance to the church...
...question now is whether the Vatican will move again to muzzle Burke. When he criticized Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl last spring during a videotaped interview, he was forced to apologize less than 24 hours after the video aired. In early September, the bishop of Scranton, Pa. - a Burke protégé - abruptly resigned after a stormy tenure and was not reassigned. Veteran Vatican watchers took it as a sign that some Burkean antics - such as threatening to refuse Vice President Joe Biden Communion and disparaging the USCCB - would not be tolerated...