It still seems to me that a reasonable case can be made that in WESTERN Europe the public as a whole has more freedom in practice than in the US as a whole. State churches and archaic laws on the books don't do anything in and of themselves if no one cares what you do or don't do regarding religion and religiously based behavioral strictures. I don't think there are any Muslim countries where this is the case. I don't think anyone would claim that there aren't ethnic and racial problems.

for AT LEAST the woman's mental health if not for social reasons or (mostly) on request. Mental health could easily mean she thinks being a parent would be bad for her. So does this mean that everywhere except Ireland that any woman who wants an abortion can get one (up to 12 weeks). In the US there is only a constituional right to an abortion in the first trimester (12 weeks). So what's the difference other than national health care paying for it and no harrassment and interference with access by an anti abortion movement.

It still seems to me that a reasonable case can be made that in WESTERN Europe the public as a whole has more freedom in practice than in the US as a whole. State churches and archaic laws on the books don't do anything in and of themselves if no one cares what you do or don't do regarding religion and religiously based behavioral strictures.

That's what i thought too, until i went to live there, and learned more about it. "Liberal Europe" with all its nudity on TV is much complex on this issue than american liberals using it as an example want to admit. I used to this too, but once you really live there, and i lived in France, which is quite liberal, the complexity becomes very clear, and biases against non-native non-christian things are also very clear, all the way up to the very top of the government.

First of all, state churches are state churches. that means one chuch takes supremacy over another. the poster who talked about the lutheran church tax in finland being quite small, and then the finns can rent out the church for weddings, did this poster think about catholics or jews or non-lutherans? would they even WANT to get married in a lutheran church? why should their money go to support the church?

Blasphemy laws ARE sometimes enforced -- there was talk about enforcing it in Denmark against the cartoon people. In England, there is now a law against "inciting racial hatred," and a play critical of Islam quickly became the testcase for this poorly conceived law.

In much of Europe, nudity may be on TV, but the whole player/slut dichotomy is alive and well. No, it may not matter much in Germany or Scandinavia, but in the Mediterranean countries and France, it's still important, especially outside of the big cities, or among the large communities of north african (both jewish and muslim) immigrants, and portuguese immigrants.

Xenophobia is rampant, against pretty much all immigrants, in western Europe.

In Switzerland, porn is on tv all the time, but women didn't get to vote until the 1970's.

Europe is full of these kinds of contradictions.

I don't think there are any Muslim countries where this is the case.

Bosnia, Albania.

for AT LEAST the woman's mental health if not for social reasons or (mostly) on request. Mental health could easily mean she thinks being a parent would be bad for her. So does this mean that everywhere except Ireland that any woman who wants an abortion can get one (up to 12 weeks). In the US there is only a constituional right to an abortion in the first trimester (12 weeks). So what's the difference other than national health care paying for it and no harrassment and interference with access by an anti abortion movement.

"only a constitutional right"?! haha, that's an amazing phrase. First of all, according to Roe v. WAde, your constitutional rights goes to 24 weeks, not twelve. Up to 24 weeks, states can do only very limited things, so that is why spousal concent in PA was struck down in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In europe, however, the parliament could prohibit abortion, like it did in germany, just by passing a law, because it's not in the constitution.

between 3 and 6 months the states are free to restrict it and after 6 months they can prohibit it entirely if it doesn't kill the moher. In practice it it viritually impossible for a woman who isn't sick enough to be in a hospital to legally get rid of a pregnancy after 12 weeks in the US.

is at risk of abuse by the legislature more than a country which has those things; since that is always a risk in any public policy matter it seems pointless to cite it in a specific case.

although I think that what really happened is that one guy, Madison, invented a system which limited the govts. power while still allowing it to do things. Other countries didn't have the benefit of such a system and a lot of what Americans attribute to a broad cultural reality is really the benefits of one man's invention of a superior way to organize govt (obviously the political reality influences the culture too).

There are two things I find fascinating in the tenor of responses to this article. The first is the deafness to political realities. Apart from being the leader of a major religion, the pope is also a political figure (with embassies around the world to testify to this) and his every even marginally public utterance is both public and significant. No stranger to the office, Benedict is also a severe conservative who seeks something beyond the previous officeholder: not merely to make peace with other religious groups but to seek dominance among same. His comments therefore, resonate ominously to other religionists and not simply those specifically targeted.

The deafness I refer to is that many here do not seem to understand how this appears to religious people who have been on the underside of the West's boot for living memory. A violent response to the Pope's comments is not so much a reflection of their religion as it is a reflection of their resentment of our direct repression (through maintaining dictatorships and economic hegemony over their resources) and of our cultural dominance, however conscious or unconscious, benevolent or otherwise. When you have been an underdog with no other means of demonstrating your outrage, violence will result whatever your religion. In fact, the constant allegations by Christians that it is they who are oppressed (a strategy about 1800 years old) goes unremarked.

But, for me, the most fascinating thing has been the one most overlooked so I restate it below:

"Greek philosophy, Benedict told the scientists, had already matured as a body of thought even as the Hebrew bible “developed.” Christianity, he explained, represented a "rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry." By Benedict's telling, however, the contest between faith and philosophy appears to have resulted less in rapprochement than the triumph of the Greek philosophers over the faith of a desert people. In fact, Jesus the Jew seems barely present, if at all, in the pontiff's version of the Christian faith. But Plato is everywhere. "

While this is well understood to scholars and many of those outside the faith, it has been largely ignored or glossed over by the faithful. Yet is of fundamental importance to Catholics now that this observation has been stated publicly and with papal approval. I wonder if this portends a further reduction in the already diminished stress on Christ and would welcome their thoughts.