United States: Loss of Church’s moral authority

For Cardinal Francis E. George, archbishop of Chicago, the moral voice of the Church which always made itself heard in modern society on themes such as abortion or war, has lost much of its force. Even if the message is still the same, the voice of the Church has perhaps become more of a murmur than the cry of previous times, he lamented.
During a meeting with priests at the Cardinal Bernardin Early Childhood Center in Chicago, the archbishop of the American metropolis noted that the authority of the Church lost ground when society began to put the personal liberty of individuals before objective moral authority.
The September11 attacks rendered American society skeptical towards religious people, given the claim of the Islamic terrorists to be acting in the name of God. From now on people fear that religious people may slide towards the fanaticism manifested by the terrorists.
The scandal of sexual abuse broke out in the midst of this skepticism over religion, noted the American prelate, which effectively put even further into question the right of the Catholic Church to claim for herself any kind of moral authority.