[1] Although some priests have since been exposed as collaborators,[2][3] both the Church's official resistance and the leadership of Pope John Paul II are credited with helping to bring about the downfall of communist governments across Europe in 1991.
His encyclicals, Evangelii praecones and Fidei donum, issued on June 2, 1951 and April 21, 1957, respectively, increased the local decision-making of Catholic missions, many of which became independent dioceses.
Pius XII invoked ex cathedra papal infallibility by defining the dogma of the Assumption of Mary, as proclaimed in the Apostolic constitution Munificentissimus Deus.
[13] The latter formed the basis of today's Traditionalist Catholic groups, which believe that the reforms of Vatican II have gone too far in departing from traditional church norms, particularly with regard to changes made to the Mass.
The most famous liberal theologian of recent times has been Hans Küng, whose unorthodox views of the incarnation, and his denials of infallibility led to Church withdrawal of his authorization to teach as a Catholic in 1979.
[16] A meeting of Latin American bishops in 1968, charged with the implementation of Vatican II, led to the new movement growing increasingly influential.
[21] 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.
Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae 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.
Explaining that execution was appropriate when it was the only way to defend society, the pope noted that the modern penal system made this option rare or nonexistent.
[36] 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 that four percent of all priests who served in the US from 1950 to 2002 faced some sort of sexual accusation.
[38] Further, the Church was widely criticized when it emerged that some bishops had known about abuse allegations, and reassigned many of the accused after first sending them to psychiatric counseling, instead of removing them.
[43][45] In 2008, Cardinal Cláudio Hummes, head of the Vatican Congregation for the Clergy, affirmed that the scandal was an "exceptionally serious" problem, but estimated that it was "probably caused by 'no more than 1 per cent'" of the over 400,000 Catholic priests worldwide.
[38] Some commentators, such as journalist Jon Dougherty, have argued that media coverage of the issue has been excessive, given that the same problems plague other institutions such as the US public school system with much greater frequency.
[48] In an address at the University of Regensburg, Germany,[49] Benedict maintained that in the Western world, to a large degree, only positivistic reason and philosophy are valid.
A May 2008 declaration agreed on between Benedict and Muslims, led by Mahdi Mostafavi, stressed that religion is essentially non-violent and that violence can be justified neither by reason nor by faith.
[56] Important ethical decisions during the pontificate of Benedict XVI involved continued nutrition and hydration for persons in a vegetative status.