Word: church
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Vatican has also ordered bishops to withdraw support from groups that either are "ambiguous" or "neglect" the church's teaching. That was aimed especially at Dignity/USA, an organization that has 5,000 members in 100 chapters and formerly held Masses with church approval in dozens of cities. In the wake of that attack, the national Dignity convention last September declared clear-cut opposition to the church's moral teaching...
Catholic teaching holds that all homosexual acts are sinful, though a homosexual orientation is not. There are U.S. Catholic bishops willing to ordain priests with homosexual proclivities as long as they promise to remain celibate and support church teaching on the topic. But in practice, the barrier between homosexual orientation and homosexual activity is difficult to maintain. No doubt aware of that, the Vatican issued a sharp decree in October 1986 that is known among enraged gay Catholics as the "Halloween letter." The text warned that homosexual inclination tends "toward an intrinsic moral evil" and "must be seen...
With growing support from liberal theologians, the gay activists insist that Christianity has unjustly repressed a perfectly moral alternative life-style. For Catholics, the dispute is a classic test of loyalty to the Pope and the magisterium, or teaching authority, of the church. For Protestants, it is an example of the deep-seated conflict between the traditional and liberal approaches to the Bible...
RELIGION: Big church battles over gay clergy...
SENIOR WRITERS: David Brand, Margaret Carlson, George J. Church, Richard Corliss, Otto Friedrich, Paul Gray, John Greenwald, Robert Hughes, Walter Isaacson, Ed Magnuson, Lance Morrow, Bruce W. Nelan, Frederick Painton, Walter Shapiro, R.Z. Sheppard, Frank Trippett...