Letters to Europe took much longer. Imagine that in this age of instant e-mail.
No doubt we were poor but we never felt deprived or “underprivileged.”
My memory is of a wonderful, happy childhood. I don’t know how our parents
did it. But they did not act like victims or feel sorry for themselves, so we didn’t
either.
V as in Victor makes me grateful all over again for the Victor and Lucy
Gladishes, the Cairns and Eva Hendersons, of the world. They, too, were the
Greatest Generation.
(BMH)
doctrine is our policy
It has been suggested to the Board of Directors of the General Church that
ordination is a matter of policy, not doctrine. But the General Church was
founded upon the principle that all its policies, as far as possible, should
be determined by doctrine. This is what has distinguished the General
Church from the beginning, and has made it the most vital of New Church
organizations on earth.
It is true that the doctrines don’t spell out every little detail of our
organization, such as whether ministers should wear robes (although even
these relatively unessential practices reflect an effort to incorporate principles
derived from doctrine). But the question at hand is ordination – not a minor
issue to be lumped in with other smaller matters. And on this the doctrines
give us an abundance of guidance: namely, the teachings regarding the use of
the priesthood, and those that explain the difference between men and women
and their uses.
In the General Church, policy and doctrine are not competing interests,
but make a one. To abandon the main principle upon which the General
Church was founded and structured would mark the end of this church as a
spiritual entity, and we would be left with just a soulless, hollow shell of the
church it once was.
(WEO)
allegiance to doctrine
The Church’s allegiance to doctrine is more than just one of its strong points,
it is the Church’s very reason for