Word: bishops
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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There Is No Right. Dibelius said it quietly, in a birthday letter to his colleague, Hanns Lilje, Bishop of Hannover. And he said it in a form to which Germans are especially sensitive: a discussion of the text in St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans 13:1 that has sometimes been blamed for Christian docility to Hitler-"Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance...
...totalitarian state, wrote Bishop Dibelius, has no claim to the Biblical status of "the powers that be." In a totalitarian system "there is no right in the Christian sense of the word . . . Paul's words are set aside." Encountering a speed-limit sign along a highway in the free world, wrote Dibelius, he would not hesitate to slow down. But not in East Germany. First, because the speed limit would not be applied equally to ordinary citizens and Communist functionaries and because the slowdown would be made necessary, in all likelihood, by some immoral purpose, such as starving...
...Authority. Printed as a 23-page brochure by Bishop Dibelius' friends, the bishop's birthday letter exploded like a bomb in both Germanys. "The most sensational and most unsettling for church members of all the sensational and unsettling things [Dibelius] has said, preached and written," spluttered the West German Lutheran biweekly Stimme der Gemeinde (Voice of the Congregation). Bishop Lilje recoiled from his surprise package. "I cannot share Dibelius' views,'' he said. "One can't drive down the street any way one wants to." The board of managers of Dibelius' own Evangelical Church...
...Bishop Dibelius said nothing. He had succeeded in what he had set out to do: remind Germans of their precious right to say no to authority...
...Little "St." Hugh never made the official Catholic calendar of saints, is not to be confused with St. Hugh of Lincoln (1140-1200), who founded the first Carthusian Charterhouse in England, became bishop of Lincoln, and built the present cathedral. At his death he was deeply mourned by the Jews, whom he had defended and befriended...