an excellent theologian

He is my favoured modern theologian and he is doing a great job restoring the centrality of Christianity and the Catholic faith in Western culture.

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According to the U.S. News & World Report his recent visit to the Unites States was a great success, specially among the youth who, according to a Georgetown University poll, is more devout than their parents and even grandparents.

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Interestingly, in this land of freedom of choice and taste for innovation what chiefly attracts the youth to the Pope seems to be his orthodoxy and traditionalism: "What I really love about the Catholic Church is the dogma doesn't change", said Ellen Kolf, 18, who attended the Washington mass given by the Pope.

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"'I talk to a lot of young people who are very interested in the Catholic Church now', says Patricia Phallen of George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs. She finds that what these young people are most intrigued by is how 'this 2,000- year- old institution sticks with all these principles the larger culture rejects'. And many of those curious seekers are finding the answer, Phalen believes, in the clarity and power of this Pope's teaching".

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New trends in social thinking tend to arrive in Portugal about 20 years after they started in the United States. This has happened, for example, with current liberal Portuguese thinking (liberal authors such as Hayek were quite popular in the US in the mid-eighties, not so much anymore) and social trends, such as divorce rates which are peaking now in Portugal whereas in the US they have been falling for the last two decades after peaking in the early eighties.

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If this can be used as a reliable rule, then Pope Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church will be popular in Portugal by 2030. And the Church deserves an acclaim, even among disbelievers, because she clearly passed the Darwinian test for the survival of the fittest.