Word: flocking
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Catholics have for their church may never again be unconditional. It has to be earned, and simply wearing a collar or a habit won't do the trick anymore. Pope Benedict XVI took some positive steps toward earning it last week. But he needs to realize that his American flock, as good Catholics like Boccaccio did before us, follows a religion more than it follows a church...
...perhaps the most notable comfort that this cerebral pontiff offered his flock is his ever more pastoral persona. Entering a morning mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral, Benedict beamed as several thousand priests and nuns welcomed him with thunderous applause. As the mass ended, he spoke off-the-cuff, saying that the love expressed by the clergy helps him to overcome his own "spiritual poverty...
...funny thing to have hanging under the branches of stately old Harvard trees. The tire swing has become the pagan totem of our spring rite, and we—its fanatics—flock to it out of simple glee or hipster irony. Like a hypnotic pendulum lulling away the vulgarities of everyday stress, the tire swing beckons us to Yardfest in a more complex way than the food monopoly and in a more subtle way than the rap stars. One can imagine Yardfest without the dining services’ cornucopia, without the spectacle of saccharine country and ironic...
...been "sometimes very badly handled"--the first real admission of the church's culpability--but still found enough blame to lay on America's "wider context of sexual mores" as well. The Pope's political reflexes will be tested again and again as he seeks to shepherd a flock that does not always share the certainties of its leaders, sacred and secular alike...
SALT FOR THE FLOCK Benedict is at his best when he's thinking spiritually and strategically at once. He has clear ideas about how his Church can renew itself in the face of modern secularism. He told the American bishops to preach the ancient traditions of the faith in clear and inspirational terms, shrewdly noting that "if this seems counter-cultural, that is simply further evidence of the urgent need for a renewed evangelization of culture." In light of secularism on one hand and competing religions on the other, Benedict urged his lieutenants to preach the Gospel "as an integral...