Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Can the New Argentine Pope Save the Catholic Crisis in Latin America


http://www.thecrownmanagement.com/can-the-new-argentine-pope-save-the-catholic-crisis-in-latin-america/

Can the New Argentine Pope Save the Catholic Crisis in Latin America

There had never been a Latin American pope despite that it is home to nearly half of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics but between 2000 and 2010, the percentage of Mexicans that identify as Catholic dropped from 88 to less than 83 — the largest fall recorded to date.  Now that the new Pope is the place, can he save his church?  Furthermore, the Vatican had been concerned about the remarkable decline of Catholicism throughout the region in the preceding decade. Vatican had once seen the area as a “continent of hope,” it now thought of it as a “continent of concern.”

Politicians have defied the church in ways, such as in Mexico City, officials legalized euthanasia, and same-sex marriage and adoption, in 2009.  The peril of excommunication did nothing to alter their minds.  Argentinian President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner legalized same-sex marriage in 2010.  She countered to the resistance accumulated by Bergoglio by accusing him a relic from the past “reminiscent of the Middle Ages and the Inquisition.”  Chilean President Sebastián Piñera, of the historically Catholic Christian Democratic Party, enacted an anti-discrimination law that included sexual orientation as a category for protection against the strenuous opposition from Catholic officials in 2012.  And up to this day, Piñera is pushing legislation to legalize same-sex civil unions.

10 Years After: Britain Today


http://www.thecrownmanagement.com/10-years-after-britain-today/

Prime Minister Tony Blair, addressed the nation: Britons woke to the footage of fireballs over Baghdad on March 20, 2003.  The first cruise missiles were launched from American ships in the Persian Gulf.
“The threat to Britain today is not that of my father’s generation.  War between the big powers is unlikely.  Europe is at peace.  The Cold War already a memory.  But this new world faces a new threat: of disorder and chaos born either of brutal states like Iraq, armed with weapons of mass destruction, or of extreme terrorist groups. Both hate our way of life, our freedom, our democracy.”
The comments wittingly said by Mr. Blair in his speech in Chicago in 1999 in which the prime minister, flush with success in Kosovo, had outlined his doctrine:
“We are all internationalists now, whether we like it or not. We cannot refuse to participate in global markets if we want to prosper. We cannot ignore new political ideas in other counties if we want to innovate. We cannot turn our backs on conflicts and the violation of human rights within other countries if we want still to be secure.”