In what is billed as a showdown between the US Catholic nuns and the Vatican, the nuns will meet this week to determine their response to the Vatican’s reprimand. Starting Wednesday (NZ time) the religious women will meet for three days in Washington and intend to plan their move slowly, not rushing to judgment. “The board will Read more
The proportion of homes in America with husband-wife couples has now fallen below 50 percent, the lowest since the Census Bureau began tabulating this family data in 1940. New census 2010 figures, released today, reveal that 48 percent of all households include a married husband and wife, compared with 52 percent in 2000. That’s down Read more
Newt Gingrich sat beneath the soaring dome in the largest Roman Catholic church in North America, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, and listened as a choir that included his wife sang at an evening vespers service for Pope Benedict XVI and 300 American bishops.
That is the moment, three years ago, that Mr. Gingrich says he decided to become a Roman Catholic, after having been born a Lutheran and joining the Southern Baptist Church in college. In 2009, Mr. Gingrich was baptized in the same Catholic parish church on Capitol Hill where Senator Robert F. Kennedy once attended noonday Mass and sometimes assisted the priest as an altar server.
But Mr. Gingrich represents a new kind of Catholic, one very different from the Kennedys, who were Democrats, political liberals and cradle Catholics shaped by the Irish immigrant church.
Read the article...The fact that the number of Americans getting married is at a record low is due to changes in society’s values, public policy decisions and economic factors, says sociologist Dr. W. Bradford Wilcox.
He was responding to a Dec. 14 Pew Research analysis that indicates marriage rates in the U.S. are at a record low, as young couples are delaying marriage longer than ever before.
According to Pew Research Center’s analysis of U.S. Census data, only 51 percent of adults in the U.S. are currently married, compared to 72 percent in 1960. In addition, new marriages in America dropped by five percent between 2009 and 2010.
While the decline in marriage is taking place among all age groups, it is most drastic among young adults. The analysis observed that only 20 percent of adults between the ages of 18 and 29 are married, a drop from 59 percent in 1960.
Part of the decrease in currently married individuals may be tied to young adults delaying marriage, the report said. Both men and women are about six years older when they enter into their first marriage than couples 50 years ago were.
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