Words & Works

P: The 2,000,000-member Lutheran Missouri Synod launched a "Senior Citizens' Project" to take systematic advantage of the spare time and energy of its elder laymen for "God-pleasing endeavors." The synod's Laymen's League will probably appropriate $10,000 to begin the project, prepare a manual to suggest jobs that will benefit both churches and oldsters.

P: The U.S. wryly informed the Soviet Union that it is ready to accept a permanent Soviet clergyman in return for permission to send a new U.S. Roman Catholic priest to Moscow to replace ousted Father Georges Bissonnette.

P: The plunging necklines and backless dresses of modern brides are becoming an increasing distraction to clergymen officiating at weddings, the Rev. Leslie Aitken of Burley Vicarage, Leeds, England complained to his Anglican parishioners. "During the ceremony," the clergyman said, "the girls stand two steps below me . . . It's all terribly embarrassing."

P: Breaking the Soviet press's seven-month practice of soft-pedaling attacks on religion, the Leningrad Pravda charged that the celebration of religious holidays by collective farmers is causing vast damage to Russian agriculture, declared that the people are "not in need of religion."

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