Today people are free to pray at the western wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, al-Aqsa mosque, or anywhere else they decide.
He has failed to halt the steady haemorrhage of believers in many Western countries, although the Catholic Church continues to grow in numbers in parts of Africa and Asia.
Today such view is heretical and actually undermines the role of women in the Church, particularly in the Western World.
At the heart of Bakan's argument is the idea that, since its legal personification during the mid-1800s, the corporation has risen relentlessly to become the dominant institution in western society -- the equivalent of the church, the monarchy or the Communist Party during other historical eras.
John Paul once compared the Western and Eastern Rites of the Church to left and right lungs and that for the Church to thrive it must breathe with both.
Calls to protect the family are met with the enthusiastic approval of the Orthodox Church and theories that Western Europe is infecting Russia with alien liberal ideas appeal to patriotic thinkers.
And Cesar Sotolongo, originally from Florida but currently in Lima, Peru, explains that the Latin American way of doing things in a more accommodating manner, rather than the Western-driven methods of leadership, would prove positive for the church, and its followers.
All of this, obviously, flies in the face of the American and more broadly Western ideals of religious freedom and the separation of church and state.
In turn, most of them quietly sometimes not so quietly support the church in its struggle against Western evangelisers.
Salem and many of the western townships beyond are characterised by pretty church steeples and ancient oak trees that give them a stateliness that belies the drama that occurred centuries ago.
But what is particularly disturbing about Inspire is its carefully manipulated arguments distinguishing Islam from all other religions--and thus its immunity from the separation of church and state, a principle that stands at the very foundation of Western democracy.
Had the church abandoned priestly celibacy as trendy Western opinion now demands, or dispensed with loyalty to the pope as Beijing wishes, those Japanese believers never would have recognized the "same-heartedness" of a surprised French priest.
WSJ: Meghan Clyne: A Japanese Lesson About China for the Pope
The Kabul church's origins date back to 1921, when Italy became one of the first Western nations to recognize Afghanistan as a sovereign country independent from Britain.
Critics point to a decline in the number of people going to Mass in many Western nations as evidence of a Church out of touch with a large section of its congregation.
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