Word: secularize
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Pope is, in Catholic belief, a direct successor of St. Peter's, the rock on whom Jesus Christ built his church. As such, John Paul sees it as his duty to trouble the living stream of modernity. He stands solidly against much that the secular world deems progressive: the notion, for example, that humans | share with God the right to determine who will and will not be born. He also lectures against much that the secular world deems inevitable: the abysmal inequalities between the wealthy and the wretched of the earth, the sufferings of those condemned to lives of squalor...
...sorry state of the globe he proposed to save. Patches of the Third World sank further into revolutionary bloodshed, disease and famine. The developed nations began to resemble weird updatings of Hieronymous Bosch: panoramas of tormented bodies, lashed, flailed and torn by the instruments of material self-gratification. Secular leaders dithered and disagreed and then did nothing about the slow death of Bosnia, the massacres in Rwanda...
...secular response to the tawdriness of contemporary life was not uplifting; it largely amounted to a mingy, mean spirited vindictiveness, a searching for scapegoats. Many interpreted the Republican sweep in the November elections as a sign that voters were as mad as hell and ready for old-fashioned verities. That seemed to be the view of incoming House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who called for a constitutional amendment allowing voluntary school prayer in public schools. He also suggested it might be a good idea to fill orphanages with the children of welfare mothers...
Some students would disagree with Harte's last statement, including Jonas Marson '95, a senior in Leverett House. "Perspective is important," he says, "because those who are not Christian often perceive such symbols as religious, while Christians perceive them as secular. But the fact is, other religious groups, such as Jews and Muslims, don't celebrate Christmas, and when a House uses students' money to erect Christmas trees, they ignore a substantial portion of the House population...
Outsiders want in; they fill midtown's hotels and clot its traffic. Secular pilgrims, they trek to the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center (and to its sibs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in Trump Tower and at Lincoln Center). They see a holiday show: the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, which will attract a million patrons this year at $25 to $55 a ticket, or another family entertainment (the Big Apple Circus, Shari Lewis' Lamb Chop on Broadway). And they window-shop on Fifth Avenue -- a promenade that remains the city's most bustling theatrical experience...