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Article: ABSOLUTE TRUTH: THE STRUGGLE FOR MEANING IN TODAY'S CATHOLIC CHURCH.(Review)
- Article from:
- National Catholic Reporter
- Article date:
- May 11, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 National Catholic Reporter. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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ABSOLUTE TRUTH: THE STRUGGLE FOR MEANING IN TODAY'S CATHOLIC CHURCH By Edward Stourton TV Books, 270 pages, $26
Modern Catholicism's struggle with "absolute truth" began somewhere around 1860 in the wondrous new sewer systems of London and Paris. Industrialization had brought peasants into the cities and transformed them into a proletariat. Overcrowded slums bred rampant cholera. In response, "great water works" -- the management of both sewage and drinking water -- extended life spans beyond imagination.
As infant mortality rates declined, urban children were transformed from economic units (potential labor as farmhands) to emotional units. The ...