Word: sexuality
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...After plummeting in the 1970s and '80s, the number of priestly vocations is growing steadily, but the average age of priests is still nearly 60. And the Church is under attack for refusing to ordain women or condone homosexual behavior as well as for its handling of cases of sexual abuse by priests and brothers. Protesters have prepared their own World Youth Day activities, foisting condoms on pilgrims and selling "Pope Go Homo" T-shirts. Some Sydney residents are also upset that the New South Wales state government has made it an offense to willfully "cause annoyance" to World Youth...
...bedclothes before still-celebrating wedding guests. Though the decision made no mention of religion, the fact that the couple were Muslim sparked complaints that France's strictly secular state is being undermined by traditional Arab cultural strictures. The court ruling also infuriated feminists, who saw its acceptance of prior sexual experience as grounds for annulment as tantamount to treating marriage as the equivalent of a commercial transaction in which the buyer had discovered a hidden flaw in his purchase. Many Muslim leaders were also outraged, insisting that Islam does not demand virginity as a precondition for marriage, and claimed that...
...prompted a growing number of young betrothed women in France to make a last-ditch attempt to avoid the humiliation, repudiation, and possibly violence that could result from husbands and families discovering from blood-free bridal sheets that their wedding night had not been their first sexual experience...
...Even then, there's plenty of anguish and surrender involved. Doctor Stephane Saint-Leger, head of the Children and Women's Ward at the Robert Ballanger Hospital in the ethnically diverse Paris suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois, agrees the social and sexual differences between young Muslim and non-Muslim women in France are shrinking - including a trend of marrying later in life. That trend has generally reduced the likelihood of women of any faith marrying as virgins. But Saint-Leger says the pressure and intimidation evoked by the Muslim women who come to him for help as their traditional weddings...
...there are, as the Vatican always points out, in all walks of life. In Australia, victims' rights groups are calling on the Pope to respond as he did in the U.S. This comes as news that the Catholic Church in Australia has been forced to review allegations of sexual assault by a priest committed more than 20 years ago. The Melbourne-based support group Broken Rites says it has been contacted by 3,500 people in the past two decades complaining of Church-related abuse...