As revelations of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests continue engulfing Western Europe, the Pope – who publicly pledged to revive Christianity in the Continent – finds the church, his papacy and even himself desperately on the defensive. The scandal stems not only from child molestation by priests but also from the church’s apparent decades-long cover-up of the practice and its practitioners in the clergy.
In its broadest context, the Catholic church’s scandal seems likely to reinforce other trends in European society that have weakened trust in official institutions of both church and state. In that sense, the fate of the papacy has geo-political implications – which start with the credibility of the pope himself.
In Practice, Leaders’ Refusal to Grapple with Immigration Breeds “Dark Tribalism”
Almost in a fit of absent-mindedness, major European countries have become magnets for immigration. Between 1990 and 2009, 26 million migrants arrived in Europe -- compared to 20 million to America – a country that (unlike Europe) naturally thinks of itself as a land of immigrants.Once again the US Congress is mystifying the world and seriously muddying US-Turkey relations by trying to pass a resolution declaring that it was “genocide” when over a million Armenians were massacred in 1915 by Ottoman Turks. The proposed U.S. measure was passed out of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in early March.
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