Word: conform
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Benedict pointedly called it a "scandal" that a majority of us favor even limited legalized abortion. Yet we're not the Da Vinci Code heretics the Vatican suspects. We look instead to the Boccaccio Code, especially in the wake of the abuse crisis. We've learned to conform to the Catholic faith instead of the Catholic hierarchy. And if the Pope's visit and its aftermath indicate anything, it's that we aren't likely to change that stance until the church, with deeper structural and doctrinal reform, changes its own. As the Pope returns to Rome, a common question...
...generations, different members of the same religious family," he said. "We can only move forward if we turn our gaze together to Christ! In the light of faith, we will then discover the wisdom and strength needed to open ourselves to a point of view, which may not necessarily conform to our own ideas." This call for unity comes from a Pope who was seen as a touchstone for much of the divisions when he was a senior Vatican Cardinal...
...Faith can become a passive acceptance... without practical relevance for everyday life. The result is a growing separation of faith from life." Combined with what he called our "individualistic and eclectic approach to faith," he said this can lead to what he noted St. Paul termed a temptation to "conform to the spirit of the age." The Pope then gave a pointed example: "We have seen this emerge in an acute way in the scandal given by Catholics who promote an alleged right to abortion...
...NUDGE: IMPROVING DECISIONS ABOUT HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS (Yale University Press; 293 pages), the two University of Chicago professors sketch a new approach to public policy that takes into account the odd realities of human behavior, like the deep and unthinking tendency to conform, even in areas--like energy consumption--where conformity is irrelevant. For 30 years, Thaler has documented the ways people act illogically: we eat more from larger plates, care twice as much about losing money as about gaining it, fret over rare events like plane crashes instead of common ones like car accidents. That research underpins Nudge...
...Jiang's attempts to marshal modern history to conform to his ideas result in some passages that will strike many readers as far-fetched, if not downright silly. They also prevent a simple enjoyment of the book - its pleasant pastoral passages are sooner or later interrupted by jarring expositions that wouldn't look out of place in a 19th century manual of eugenics. Here's one from the novel's main character, Chen Zhen...