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In may 2021, a time when public gatherings in England were strictly limited because of the coronavirus pandemic, the British tabloids were caught off guard by a stealth celebrity wedding in London. [qh]
2021年5月，英国公众集会因新冠疫情受到严格限制，但一场在伦敦秘密举行的名人婚礼却让英国各大小报措手不及。[qh]
Westminster Cathedral—the “mother church” of Roman Catholics in England and Wales—was abruptly closed on a Saturday afternoon. [qh]
威斯敏斯特大教堂——英格兰和威尔士罗马天主教徒的“母教堂”——在周六下午突然关闭。[qh]
Soon the groom and bride arrived: Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds, a Catholic and a former Conservative Party press officer with whom he had fathered a child the previous year. [qh]
不久，新郎与新娘抵达教堂：英国首相鲍里斯·约翰逊与前保守党新闻官员凯莉·西蒙兹。西蒙兹是天主教徒，前一年和约翰逊育有一子。[qh]
A priest duly presided over the marriage, despite the fact that the Catholic Church opposes divorce and sex outside marriage, and that Johnson had been married twice before and had taken up with Symonds before securing a divorce.[qh]
尽管天主教会反对离婚和婚外性行为，尽管约翰逊之前结过两次婚，并在离婚前就与西蒙兹好上了，但牧师还是如期地主持了这场婚礼。[qh]
It was an inadvertently vivid display of the Church’s efforts to accommodate its teachings to worldly circumstances.[qh]
在不经意中，生动地展示了教会为使其教义适应世俗环境所作的努力。[qh]
That same month, Church-state relations in the United States took a fresh turn when the Supreme Court decided to hear a case from Mississippi that challenged the legal right to abortion recognized in Roe v. Wade. [qh]
同月，美国的政教关系发生了新的转折，最高法院决定审理密西西比州的一起案件，该案件挑战了罗伊诉韦德案中承认的堕胎合法权利。[qh]
The Court’s decision reflected the power of its conservative majority, whose six members include five traditionalist Catholics. [qh]
最高法院的裁决反映了占多数的保守派的力量，六名成员中有五名是传统的天主教徒。[qh]
And it augured an eventual victory in a 50-year campaign against legal abortion, a movement anchored from the start in the Church teaching that life begins at conception—an absolute position on an issue that ordinary Catholics, like most other Americans, disagree about. [qh]
这预示着一场长达五十年的反合法堕胎运动的最终胜利，这场运动从一开始就根植于生命始于受孕的教会教义————立场绝对，但普通天主教徒和大多数其他美国人在这一问题上存在分歧。[qh]
The victory came this past June, when the Court struck down the constitutional right to abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.[qh]
去年6月，最高法院在多布斯诉杰克逊妇女健康组织一案中推翻了宪法赋予的堕胎权，取得了胜利。[qh]
Together, these episodes point up an incongruous recent development: the Catholic Church’s assertive presence in public life even as Catholic faith and practice recede in families, schools, and neighborhoods in America and across Europe. [qh]
总之，这些事件表明教会近期发展的不协调：即使天主教信仰和活动在美国和欧洲各地的家庭、学校和社区中逐渐衰退，但天主教会在公共生活中仍强势存在。[qh]
As John T. McGreevy observes in Catholicism: A Global History From the French Revolution to Pope Francis, signs that the Church has lost vitality are abundant. [qh]
正如约翰·麦克格里维在《天主教: 从法国大革命到教皇方济各的全球史》一书中所评论的那样，教会失去活力的迹象比比皆是。[qh]
Europe has seen parish closures, shrinking numbers of priests, dwindling attendance at weekly Mass, and steady departures from the faith.[qh]
已经看到，欧洲出现了教区关闭、牧师人数减少、每周弥撒出席人数缩减，以及逐渐背离信仰的情况。[qh]
In the U.S., more than a third of people raised Catholic “no longer identify as such.” [qh]
在美国，超过三分之一的从小就信天主教的人“不再认同天主教徒了”。[qh]
The clerical sexual-abuse scandals have ravaged the Church’s credibility, cost it billions of dollars, and put some of its leaders under criminal investigation.[qh]
神职人员的性侵丑闻破坏了教会的信誉，使教会损失了数十亿美元，并使一些教会领袖受到刑事调查。[qh]
