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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (45321)	9/19/2002 10:08:02 AM
From: Ilaine	Respond to of 281500

Good luck to them in getting a more liberal Church. Catholics in the US just do what they want when it comes to matters like divorce, birth control, even abortion, "cafeteria Catholics." In Africa, it is not at all unusual for a Catholic priest to have a sexual union with a woman, so maybe the mandatory celibacy bit will change. I doubt we will ever have women priests, especially as the demographics shift South. The unchanging nature of the Catholic Church is one of its strongest virtues. Everywhere you go, it's the same.

To: LindyBill who wrote (45321)	9/19/2002 11:51:17 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

In any case, these conversions certainly affect our Foreign Policy. Agreed. And I'm going to try to find some time later this evening to read that Atlantic Monthly piece. As for the religious numbers game, it's always extremely difficult to estimate them. The problems I know about are: 1. Many national census, particularly in less economically developed countries which the article seems to be about, are very unreliable. Some of those numbers probably come from those sources. 2. The meaning of "membership" is notoriously unreliable. Generally, it is the result of simply asking folk for identification. Which, obviously, is a far cry from attending religious services and/or seriously believing, which is generally what we wish to mean by membership. Do you have any idea how this author deals with those problems?