UNITED STATES
NPR
[with audio]
by Barbara Bradley Hagerty
July 4, 2012
The Catholic Church is drawing a line in the sand.
Perceiving its core beliefs to be under threat from popular culture, the White House and even Catholics themselves, the Vatican and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops are pushing back.
In recent months, the church leadership has been cracking down on liberal theologians, disciplining nuns and emphasizing a more orthodox theology.
The most recent example is the bishops’ response to the new health care law. After the Obama administration announced that religious universities, hospitals and charities must offer insurance plans that cover birth control, the bishops swung into action. …
Reese says today’s church leaders remind him of parents of teenage children.
“They realize they’re losing control,” he says, “and they think the solution is simply to shout louder, and to say, ‘No, you can’t do that,’ or, ‘Not in my house, you won’t,’ or, ‘Because I said so!’
“That’s simply not going to work with an educated laity,” Reese says.
‘Maybe Our Time Has Come’
Reese believes that top-down approach, combined with the bishops’ handling of the sex abuse crisis, has alienated many of the faithful.
Polls show that one-third of people raised Catholic no longer attends church.
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