Word: secularization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...culpability--but still found enough blame to lay on America's "wider context of sexual mores" as well. The Pope's political reflexes will be tested again and again as he seeks to shepherd a flock that does not always share the certainties of its leaders, sacred and secular alike...
Maybe the cringe factor would have been less had Obama not been speaking in San Francisco, a regional headquarters for secular condescension, or at a private fund raiser, where the rich and powerful gather for shrimp and special access; or if Obama, a comfortably devout Christian, had not said that "bitter" small-town voters "cling" to their faith, along with their guns and their "antipathy to people who aren't like them." By any measure, it was a graceless move to characterize an entire demographic group--and vital voting bloc--as irrational and bigoted. And it came from a candidate...
...average American church is strangely out of tune with the Pope’s sentiment. American preachers seldom mention animal rights, except as evidence of the excesses of secular radicalism. National polls show an inverse correlation between church attendance and support for animal rights. Churches celebrate the blessing of the animals on the feast day of Saint Francis of Assisi, and then largely ignore animal ethics for the rest of the year...
Long before he became Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Jospeh Ratzinger had been caricatured as the Catholic Church's Grand Inquisitor, the fearsome guardian of orthodoxy - with an eye on America's Catholic colleges, which the Vatican since the 1960s was wary were becoming more like their secular counterparts. In 1986, Ratzinger officially silenced theologian Fr. Charles Currran of Catholic University in Washington D.C., leading to Curran's dismissal (and a subsequent re-tooling of the school along more conventionally Catholic lines). That apparently led to more obedience to Rome's dictates. In 1999 the American bishops mandated that...
...secular power which cracked down on the ranch because of sex-abuse allegations that faces its own quandary: What is Texas going to do for the well-being and the future of these boys and girls? It is an enormous legal and welfare challenge. Most have never attended school nor worn contemporary clothes; and each one is likely to require his or her own lawyer. (Fortunately more than 350 lawyers have already offered their pro bono services to represent the chidren...