Religion: Hard Questions on the Issues

The Pope's moral stands deal with sex and complex history

The Pope and his church are out of step with contemporary Americans, including many Roman Catholics, in dealing with sexuality. In the U.S. generally, sexual pleasure has lately come to be regarded as a matter of personal gratification unconnected with social responsibility or, of course, with sin. Even among U.S. Catholics the trend is toward the belief that any individual act whatever is acceptable if it can be thought to foster love or self-esteem and enrich the life of the participants. The position of...

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