User:Ling.Nut/maychin
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[edit] History
- Further information: History of Christianity, History of Western civilization, and Criticism of the Catholic Church
[edit] Roman Empire
The Catholic Church considers Pentecost to be its moment of origin because this was the day when the apostles first emerged from hiding to publicly preach the message of Jesus after his death.[1][2] The apostles traveled to various areas in northern Africa, Asia Minor, Arabia, Greece, and Rome forming the first Christian communities.[1] Over 40 of them had been founded by the year 100.[3]
From the first century onward, the Church of Rome was respected as a doctrinal authority because the Apostles Peter and Paul had led the Church there.[4][5][6] The apostles had already convened the first Church council, the Council of Jerusalem, in or around the year 50 to reconcile doctrinal differences concerning the Gentile mission.[7] Although competing forms of Christianity emerged early and persisted into the fifth century, the Roman Church retained the practice of meeting in ecumenical councils to ensure that any doctrinal differences were quickly resolved.[8]
In the first few centuries of its existence, the Church defined and formed its teachings and traditions into a systematic whole under the influence of theological apologists such as Pope Clement I, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, and Augustine of Hippo.[9] Because early Christians refused to offer sacrifices to the Roman gods or to defer to Roman rulers as gods, they were frequently subject to persecution.[10] The ferocity or absence of the persecution varied depending upon the policies of the emperor in question. Persecution began under Nero in the first century, and by the mid-third century it was extensive throughout the empire, culminating in the great persecution of Diocletian and Galerius at the beginning of the fourth century, which was seen as a final attempt to wipe out Christianity.[11] In spite of these persecutions evangelization efforts persisted, leading to the Edict of Milan which legalized Christianity in 313.[12]
In 325 the First Council of Nicaea was convened in response to the Arian challenge concerning the trinitarian nature of God. The council formulated the Nicene Creed as a basic statement of Christian belief.[13] During the reign of Pope Sylvester I, Emperor Constantine I commissioned the first Basilica of St. Peter, as well as the Lateran, a papal residence and several other sites of lasting importance to Christianity.[14] Many standard Christian practices had been established by the end of Constantine's life including the observation of Sunday as the official day of worship, the use of the altar as the focal point of each church, the sign of the cross, and the liturgical calendar.[15] By 380, Christianity had become the official religion of the Empire.[16]
Over subsequent decades a series of ecumenical christological councils formally codified critical elements of the theology of the Church. The Council of Rome in 382 set the Biblical canon, listing the accepted books of the Old and New Testament, and in 391 the Vulgate Latin translation of the Bible was made.[17] The Council of Ephesus in 431 clarified the nature of Jesus' incarnation, declaring that he was both fully man and fully God.[18] However Monophysite disagreements over the precise nature of the incarnation of Jesus led to the first of the various Oriental Orthodox Churches breaking away from the Catholic Church in 451.[8]
[edit] Early Middle Ages
- Further information: Middle Ages and Christian monasticism
After the final fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, the Catholic faith competed with Arianism for the conversion of the barbarian tribes.[19] The conversion of Clovis I, pagan king of the Franks in 496 marked the beginning of the steady rise of the faith in the West.[20] In 530, Saint Benedict wrote his Rule of St Benedict as a practical guide for monastic community life. Its message soon spread to monasteries throughout Europe.[21] Monasteries became major conduits of civilization, preserving craft and artistic skills while maintaining intellectual culture within their schools, scriptoria and libraries. They were also agricultural, economic and production centers as well as a focus for spiritual life.[22] As a result, the Church soon saw the conversion of the Visigoths and Lombards, who were abandoning Arianism for Catholicism.[20] Pope Gregory the Great, who played a notable role in those conversions, dramatically reformed ecclesiastical structure and administration, which then launched a renewed missionary effort.[23] Subsequently, missionaries such as Augustine of Canterbury, Saint Boniface, Willibrord and Ansgar took Christianity into northern Europe, allowing Catholicism to spread among the Germanic peoples, the Irish and the Slavic peoples, reaching the Vikings and other Scandinavians in subsequent centuries.[24]
In the early 700s, iconoclasm became the source of conflict between the Eastern and Western churches. Under the direction of the Byzantine emperors, iconoclasts forbade the creation and veneration of images, claiming this to be a violation of one of the Ten Commandments. Iconodules, backed by the pope and the Western Church, disagreed with this interpretation.[25][26] The dispute was resolved in 787 when the Second Council of Nicaea ruled in favor of icons.[27] Afterward, the pope crowned Charlemagne Holy Roman Emperor in 800, partially in response to the dispute over iconoclasm. During his reign, Charlemagne attempted to create an international unity through the common bond of Christianity. Although this resulted in many reforms including the creation of an improved system of education and unified laws, it also created a problem for the Church when succeeding emperors sought to appoint future popes.[28][29] In 858 disagreements between the Eastern and Western churches arose again when Patriarch Ignatius of Constantinople, favored by the pope, was deposed in favor of the more extreme Photios.[30] The pope refused to recognize Photios, declared his election invalid and excommunicated him. Although Rome eventually approved his election, the dispute added to the growing alienation between the churches.[25][31]
[edit] High Middle Ages
- Further information: High Middle Ages
The Cluniac reform of monasteries that began in 910 placed abbots under the direct control of the pope rather than the secular control of feudal lords, eliminating a major source of corruption. This sparked a great monastic renewal.[32] Monasteries, convents, and cathedrals still operated virtually all schools and libraries and often functioned as credit establishments promoting economic growth.[33][34] After 1100, some older cathedral schools split into lower grammar schools and higher schools for advanced learning. First in Bologna, then at Paris and Oxford, many of these higher schools developed into universities and became the direct ancestors of modern Western institutions of learning.[35] Monastic contributions to western society included the teaching of metallurgy, the introduction of new crops, the invention of musical notation, and the creation and preservation of literature.[35]
During the 11th century Christianity was permanently divided as a result of the East–West schism.[36] A dispute over whether Constantinople or Rome held jurisdiction over the church in Sicily led to mutual excommunications in 1054.[36] The Western (Latin) branch of Christianity has since become known as the Catholic Church, while the Eastern (Greek) branch became known as the Orthodox Church.[10][37] The Second Council of Lyon (1274) and the Council of Florence (1439) each failed to heal the schism.[38] Some Eastern churches have subsequently reunited with the Catholic Church, and others claim never to have been out of communion with the pope.[37][39] Officially, the two churches remain in schism, although excommunications were mutually lifted in 1965.[40]
Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade in 1095 after receiving an appeal from Byzantine emperor Alexius I to help ward off a Turkish invasion.[41] Urban also believed that a Crusade might help bring about reconciliation with Eastern Christianity.[42][43] Fueled by reports of Muslim atrocities against Christians,[44] the series of military campaigns known as the Crusades began in 1096. They were intended to return the Holy Land to Christian control. The goal was not permanently realized, and episodes of brutality committed by the armies of both sides left a legacy of mutual distrust between Muslims and Western and Eastern Christians.[45] The sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade left Eastern Christians embittered, despite the fact that Pope Innocent III had expressly forbidden any such attack.[46] In 2001 Pope John Paul II apologized to the Orthodox Christians for the sins of Catholics including the sacking of Constantinople in 1204.[47]
Two new orders of architecture emerged from the Church of this era. The earlier, Romanesque, style employed massive walls, rounded arches, and ceilings of masonry. To compensate for the absence of large windows, interiors were brightly painted with scenes from the Bible and the lives of the saints. Later, the Basilique Saint-Denis near Paris, marked a new trend in cathedral building that employed Gothic architecture.[48] This style, with its large windows and high, pointed arches, provided improved lighting and geometric harmony that was meant to direct the worshiper's mind to God who "orders all things".[48] In other developements, the 12th century witnessed the founding of eight new monastic orders, many of them functioning as Military Knights after the Crusades began.[49] Cistercian monk Bernard of Clairvaux exerted great influence over the new orders and produced reforms to ensure purity of purpose.[49] His influence led Pope Alexander III to launch reforms that would lead to the establishment of canon law.[50] In the following century, new mendicant orders, including the Franciscans and the Dominicans, were founded to bring consecrated religious life into urban settings.[51]
Twelfth-century France witnessed the widespread growth of Catharism, a dualistic belief in extreme asceticism which taught that all matter was evil, accepted suicide and denied the value of Church sacraments. After a papal legate was murdered by the Cathars in 1208, Pope Innocent III declared the Albigensian Crusade.[52] Abuses committed during the crusade caused Innocent III to informally institute the first papal inquisition to prevent future abuses and to root out the remaining Cathars.[53][54] Formalized under Gregory IX, this Medieval inquisition executed an average of three people per year for heresy at its height.[54][55] Over time, other inquisitions were launched by the Church or secular rulers to prosecute heretics, to respond to the threat of Moorish invasion or for political purposes.[56] The accused were encouraged to recant their heresy and those who did not could be punished by penance, fines, imprisonment, torture or execution by burning.[57][56] In the 14th century, King Philip IV of France created an inquisition for his suppression of the Knights Templar.[55] King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella formed an inquisition in 1480, originally to deal with distrusted ex-Jewish and ex-Muslim converts.[58] Over a 350-year period, the Spanish Inquisition executed between 3,000 and 4,000 people,[59] representing around two percent of those accused.[60] The inquisition played a major role in the final expulsion of Islam from the kingdoms of Sicily and Spain.[61] In 1482 Pope Sixtus IV condemned the excesses of the Spanish Inquisition, but Ferdinand ignored his protests.[62] Historians note that for centuries Protestant propaganda and popular literature exaggerated the horrors of the inquisitions.[63][64][65] According to Edward Norman, this propaganda "identified the entire Catholic Church ... with [the] occasional excesses" wrought by secular rulers.[63] While one percent of those tried in the inquisitions received death penalties, Norman states that in the 16th century "the Inquisitions were regarded as far more enlightened than secular courts", which did not grant more lenient sentences for those who repented their crimes.[55][59]
The 14th century was marked by a growing sense of church-state conflicts. In 1309 Clement V became the first of seven popes to reside in the fortified city of Avignon in southern France to escape instability in Rome,[66] a period known as the Avignon Papacy. The papacy returned to Rome in 1378 at the urging of Catherine of Siena and others who felt the See of Peter should be in the Roman church.[67][68] With the death of Pope Gregory XI later that year, the papal election was disputed between supporters of Italian and French-backed candidates leading to the Western schism. For 38 years, separate claimants to the papal throne sat in Rome and Avignon. Efforts at resolution in 1409 further complicated the issue with the election of a third, compromise pope.[69] The matter was finally resolved in 1417 at the Council of Constance where the cardinals called upon all three claimants to the papal throne to resign, and held a new election naming Martin V pope.[69]
[edit] Late Medieval and Renaissance
- Further information: Roman Catholic Church and colonialism and Catholicism and the wars of religion
Through the late 15th and early 16th centuries European missionaries and explorers spread Catholicism to the Americas, Asia, Africa and Oceania. Pope Alexander VI, in the papal bull Inter caetera, awarded colonial rights over most of the newly discovered lands to Spain and Portugal.[70] Under the patronato system state authorities controlled clerical appointments, and no direct contact was allowed with the Vatican.[71] However in December 1511, Dominican friar Antonio de Montesinos openly rebuked the Spanish authorities governing Hispaniola for their mistreatment of the American natives, telling them "you are in mortal sin ... for the cruelty and tyranny you use in dealing with these innocent people".[72][73][74] King Ferdinand enacted the Laws of Burgos and Valladolid in response. Enforcement was lax, however, and while some blame the Church for not doing enough to liberate the Indians, others point to the Catholic Church as the only voice raised on behalf of indigenous peoples.[75] The issue did rouse a crisis of conscience in 16th-century Spain.[73][74] An outpouring of self-criticism and philosophical reflection among Catholic theologians, most notably Francisco de Vitoria, led to debate on the nature of human rights,[74] and the birth of modern international law.[76]
In 1521, through the leadership and preaching of the Spanish explorer Ferdinand Magellan, the first Catholics were baptized in what became the first Christian nation in Southeast Asia, the Philippines.[77] The following year, Franciscan missionaries arrived in what is now Mexico. They worked hard to convert the Indians and to provide for their well-being by establishing schools and hospitals. They taught the Indians better farming methods, and easier ways of weaving and making pottery. Because some people questioned whether the Indians were truly human and deserved baptism, Pope Paul III in the papal bull Veritas Ipsa or Sublimis Deus (1537) confirmed that the Indians were deserving people.[78][79] Afterward, the conversion effort gained momentum.[80] Over the next 150 years, the missions expanded into southwestern North America.[81] The native people were legally defined as children, and priests took on a paternalistic role, often enforced with corporal punishment.[82] Elsewhere, in India, Portuguese missionaries and the Spanish Jesuit Francis Xavier evangelized among non-Christians and a Christian community which claimed to have been established by Thomas the Apostle.[83]
In Europe, the Renaissance was a period of renewed interest in art, ancient and classical learning. It also brought a re-examination of accepted beliefs. Cathedrals and churches had long served as picture books and art galleries for millions of the uneducated. The stained glass windows, frescoes, statues, paintings and panels retold the stories of the saints and of biblical characters. The Church sponsored great artists like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, who created some of the world's most famous artworks.[84] In 1509, however, the most famous scholar of the age, Erasmus, wrote The Praise of Folly a work which captured a widely held unease about corruption in the Church.[85] Abuses of power, usury, clerical wealth and hypocrisy all contributed to a general feeling among educated people that reform of some sort was necessary.[85] In 1517, Martin Luther included his Ninety-Five Theses in a letter to several bishops, hoping to spark debate.[86][87] His theses protested key points of Catholic doctrine as well as the sale of indulgences.[86][87] Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin, and others further criticized Catholic teachings. These challenges developed into the Protestant Reformation.[88][89] In Germany, the reformation led to war between the Protestant Schmalkaldic League and the Catholic Emperor Charles V. The first nine-year war ended in 1555 but continued tensions produced a far graver conflict, the Thirty Years' War, which broke out in 1618.[90] In France, a series of conflicts termed the French Wars of Religion were fought from 1562 to 1598 between the Huguenots and the forces of the French Catholic League. A series of popes sided with and became financial supporters of the Catholic League.[91] This ended under Pope Clement VIII, who supported King Henry IV's 1598 Edict of Nantes, which granted civil and religious toleration to Protestants.[90][91]
The English Reformation was ostensibly based on Henry VIII's desire for an annulment of his marriage with Catherine of Aragon, and was initially more of a political than a theological dispute. However, growing theological disagreements eventually came to the fore.[92] The Acts of Supremacy made the English monarch head of the English church thereby establishing the Church of England. Then, beginning in 1536, some 825 monasteries throughout England, Wales, and Ireland were dissolved and Catholic churches were confiscated.[93][94] Henry VIII executed those like Thomas More who disagreed with his Act of Supremacy. He later reaffirmed Catholic doctrines such as transubstantiation and the celibacy of the clergy in the Six Articles of 1539, in opposition to the Calvinist and Lutheran views that were dominant among the Protestants of continental Europe.[94][95][96] However this affirmation did not extend to papal authority or the dissolution of monasteries, and when he died in 1547 all monasteries, friaries, convents of nuns and shrines were gone.[94][97] Mary I of England reunited the Church of England with Rome and, against the advice of her Catholic spiritual advisor and others, persecuted Protestants during the Marian Persecutions.[98][99] After some provocation, the following monarch, Elizabeth I enforced the Act of Supremacy. This prevented Catholics from becoming members of professions, holding public office, voting, or educating their children.[98][100] Executions of Catholics under Elizabeth I, who reigned much longer, then surpassed the Marian persecutions[98] and persisted under subsequent English monarchs.[101] Penal laws were also enacted in Ireland[102] but were less effective than in England.[98][103] In part because the Irish people associated Catholicism with nationhood and national identity, they resisted persistent English efforts to eliminate the Catholic Church.[98][103] The Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 and subsequent actions of the English parliament eventually helped to eliminate some of the oppressive anti-Catholic laws throughout the British empire.[103]
The Catholic Church responded to doctrinal challenges and abuses highlighted by the Protestant Reformation at the Council of Trent (1545–1563). The council became the driving-force of the Counter-Reformation, reaffirming central Catholic doctrines like transubstantiation and the requirement for love and hope as well as faith to attain salvation.[104] It also reformed many other areas of importance to the Church, most importantly by improving the education of the clergy and consolidating the central jurisdiction of the Roman Curia.[105][104][106] The criticisms of the Reformation were among factors that sparked new religious orders including the Theatines, Barnabites and Jesuits, some of which became the great missionary orders of later years.[107] Improvement to the education of the laity was another positive effect of the era, with a proliferation of secondary schools reinvigorating higher studies such as history, philosophy and theology.[108] To popularize Counter-Reformation teachings, the Church encouraged the Baroque style in art, music and architecture. Baroque religious expression was stirring and emotional, created to stimulate religious fervor.[109]
Elsewhere, Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier introduced Christianity to Japan. By the end of the 16th century tens of thousands of Japanese followed Roman Catholicism. Church growth came to a halt in 1597 under the Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu who, in an effort to isolate the country from foreign influences, launched a severe persecution of Christians.[110] Japanese were forbidden to leave the country and Europeans were forbidden to enter. Despite this, a minority Christian population survived into the 19th century.[110][111]
[edit] Age of Reason
Toward the latter part of the 17th century, Pope Innocent XI attempted to reform many Church abuses such as simony, nepotism and lavish papal expenditures which had caused him to inherit a papal debt of 50,000,000 scudi.[112] By eliminating certain honorary posts, and introducing sound new fiscal policies, he was able to balance the books.[112] He then proceeded to promote missionary activity all over the world and condemned all religious persecution.[112] Despite the changes, the European religious conflicts of the Reformation era provoked a backlash against Christianity. Outside of Italy secular powers gained control of virtually all major Church appointments and much of the Church's property.[112][113] Matters grew still worse with the violent anti-clericalism of the French Revolution. The Church was outlawed, all monasteries destroyed, 30,000 priests were exiled and hundreds more were killed.[114] When Pope Pius VI took sides against the revolution in the First Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Italy. The pope was imprisoned by French troops the following year and died after six weeks of captivity. After a change of heart, Napoleon then re-established the Catholic Church in France with the signing of the Concordat of 1801.[115] All over Europe, the end of the Napoleonic wars signaled by the Congress of Vienna, brought Catholic revival, renewed enthusiasm, and new respect for the papacy following the depredations of the previous era.[116]
In the Americas, the Church expanded its missions in cooperation with the Spanish government and military. Junípero Serra, the Franciscan priest in charge of this effort, founded a series of missions which quickly became important economic, political, and religious institutions.[117] These missions brought grain, cattle, and a new way of living to the Indian tribes of California. Overland routes were established from New Mexico that resulted in the colonization of San Francisco in 1776 and Los Angeles in 1781. However, by bringing Western civilization to the area, these missions and the Spanish government have been held responsible for wiping out nearly a third of the native population, primarily through disease.[118]
This period also saw the Church faced with the colonial abuses of the Portuguese and Spanish governments. In South America, the Jesuits protected native peoples from enslavement by establishing semi-independent settlements called reductions. Pope Gregory XVI, challenging Spanish and Portuguese sovereignty, appointed his own candidates as bishops in the colonies, condemned slavery and the slave trade in 1839 (papal bull In Supremo Apostolatus), and approved the ordination of native clergy in spite of government racism.[119]
While missionary expansion was occurring in the Americas, the Church in China experienced missionary setbacks in 1721 when the Chinese Rites controversy led the Kangxi Emperor to ban Christian missions in that country.[120] This controversy added fuel to growing criticism of the Jesuits who were held in disdain throughout Europe because they symbolized the strength and independence of the Church. They also defended the rights of native peoples in South America, hindering the efforts of European powers to maintain absolute rule over their domains.[121] In 1773, European rulers united to force Pope Clement XIV to dissolve the order.[121] Several decades later Pius VII restored the Jesuits in the 1814 papal bull Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum.[122]
[edit] Modern era
In 1870, the First Vatican Council affirmed the doctrine of papal infallibility when exercised in specifically defined pronouncements.[123][124] Controversy over this and other issues resulted in a small breakaway movement called the Old Catholic Church.[125]
In Latin America, this era saw anti-clerical regimes come to power from the 1830s onward.[126] The confiscation of Church properties and restrictions on people's religious freedoms generally accompanied secularist, and later, Marxist-leaning, governmental reforms.[127] One such regime was that of Mexico in 1860. Church properties were confiscated and basic civil and political rights were denied to religious orders and the clergy. Harsh enforcement of these measures eventually led to an uprising known as the Cristero War. Between 1926 and 1934 over 3,000 priests were exiled or assassinated.[128][129] Despite persecution, the Church continued to grow in Mexico, and a 2000 census reported that 88 percent of Mexicans identified themselves as Catholic.[130] Another example, Argentina, saw extravagant press denunciations of the clergy, destruction of churches, and confiscation of Catholic schools occur under the regime of General Juan Perón in 1954 as he tried to extend state control over national institutions.[131]
The Industrial Revolution of this era led to increasing concern about the deteriorating conditions of urban workers. Inspired by the German Catholic industrialist Lucien Harmel, Pope Leo XIII published the 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum explaining Catholic social teaching in terms that rejected socialism but advocated the regulation of working conditions, the establishment of a living wage, and the right of workers to form trade unions.[132]
A few decades later, in the 1937 encyclical drafted by the future Pope Pius XII entitled Mit brennender Sorge, Pope Pius XI warned Catholics that antisemitism was incompatible with Christianity.[133][134] Yet World War II presented new challenges for the Catholic Church in this area because even though no Church teachings promote the killing of Jews, some historians accuse Pope Pius XII of not doing enough to stop Nazi atrocities.[135] Although the historical record reveals his words and efforts were clearly against the Nazis, his actions continue to be a source of debate.[136][137] Prominent members of the Jewish community such as Golda Meir, Albert Einstein, Moshe Sharett, and Rabbi Isaac Herzog contradicted the criticisms and spoke highly of Pius' efforts to protect Jews;[138] others like rabbi David G. Dalin noted that "hundreds of thousands" of Jews were saved by the Church.[133] Stating that some 400,000 Jewish lives were saved, one Israeli consul claimed that the Catholic Church saved more Jewish lives during the war than all other churches, religious institutions and rescue organizations combined.[134] By the end of the war, almost 5,000 Catholic priests had been executed by the Nazis and many others imprisoned.[134]
[edit] Vatican II and beyond
In the aftermath of World War II, religious freedoms came under fire from the communist governments of Eastern Europe.[139] Although some priests have since been proven to be collaborators,[140][141] the Church's official resistance and in particular the leadership of Pope John Paul II were credited with helping to bring about the downfall of communist governments across Europe in 1991.[139][142]
The Catholic Church engaged in a comprehensive reform during and immediately after the Second Vatican Council (1962–65).[143] Charged with making the historical teachings of the Church clear to the modern world, the council pronounced on topics such as the nature of the church, the mission of the laity, and religious freedom.[143] It also approved a revision of the liturgy, permitting the Latin liturgical rites to use vernacular languages as well as Latin in the mass and the other sacraments.[144] The Church also embarked on efforts to improve Christian unity.[145] In addition to finding common ground on certain issues with Protestant churches, the Catholic Church has discussed the possibility of unity with the Eastern Orthodox Church.[146]
In the 1960s, growing social awareness and politicization in the Latin American Church gave birth to liberation theology. It re–interpreted the Gospel in radical ways that redefined the Church's mission. Peruvian priest, Gustavo Gutiérrez, became one of the movement's better-known scholars.[147] A meeting of Latin American bishops in 1968, charged with the implementation of Vatican II, led to the new movement growing increasingly influential. In 1979, the subsequent bishops' conference in Mexico officially declared the Latin American Church's "preferential option for the poor".[148] Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero became the region's most famous contemporary martyr in 1980, when he was murdered while saying mass by forces allied with the government.[149] Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have denounced the movement as dangerous and "a fundamental threat to the faith of the church"[150] because, as Edward Norman explains, the Church considers it an attempt to establish a Christian society "through the coercive machinery of political management".[151] The Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff was twice ordered to cease publishing and teaching.[152] While Pope John Paul II was criticized for his severity in dealing with proponents of the movement, he maintained that the Church, in its efforts to champion the poor, should not do so by resorting to violence or partisan politics.[147] The movement is still alive in Latin America today, though the Church now faces the challenge of Pentecostal revival in much of the region.[153]
The sexual revolution of the 1960s brought challenging new issues for the Church to address. Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968 affirmed the sanctity of life from conception to natural death and rejected the use of contraception; both abortion and euthanasia were considered to be murder.[154][155] The Church's rejection of the use of condoms has provoked criticism, especially with respect to countries where AIDS and HIV have attained epidemic proportions. The Church maintains that countries like Kenya, where behavioral changes are endorsed instead of condom use, have experienced greater progress towards controlling the disease than countries solely promoting condoms.[156]
Efforts to lead the Church to consider the ordination of women led Pope John Paul II to issue two documents to explain Church teaching. Mulieris Dignitatem was issued in 1988 to clarify women's equally important and complimentary role in the work of the Church.[157] Then in 1994, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis explained that the Church only extends ordination to men in order to follow the example of Jesus, who chose only men for this specific duty.[158][159][160]
Serious lawsuits emerged in 2001 claiming that deviant priests had sexually abused minors.[161] Some priests resigned, some others were defrocked and jailed,[162] and financial settlements were agreed with many victims.[161] In the US, where the vast majority of sex abuse cases occurred, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops commissioned a comprehensive study that found four percent of all priests who served in the US from 1950 to 2002 faced some sort of sexual accusations.[163][164] This percentage was far surpassed in a 2004 US government investigation of student sexual abuse by US public school teachers.[165] Although public school administrators engaged in exactly the same behavior when dealing with accused teachers,[166] the Church was widely criticized when it was discovered that some bishops knew about allegations and reassigned the accused instead of removing them.[161][167] Some bishops and psychiatrists noted that the prevailing psychology of the times suggested that people could be cured of such behavior with counseling.[167][168] Many of the abusive priests had received counseling before being reassigned.[164][169] Pope John Paul II responded by stating "there is no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young".[170] The Church instituted reforms to prevent future abuse by requiring fingerprinting and background checks for Church employees and, because a significant majority of victims were teenage boys, disallowing ordination of men with "deep–seated homosexual tendencies".[171][168] They also require all dioceses faced with an allegation to alert the authorities, conduct an investigation and remove the accused from duty.[172][173] In 2008, the Church called the scandal "exceptionally serious" and estimated that it was "probably caused by 'no more than 1 per cent' of the 400,000" worldwide Catholic priests.[163]
