The Vatican, for its part, said the accusations came from "anti-clerical, leftwing elements that are used to attacking the church".
The National Front party that led the nationalization effort was actually a coalition of liberal reformers, the intelligentsia, elements of the clerical class, socialist activists and middle class professionals.
An element of contemporary clerical culture continues to excuse and nurture this preposterous and outdated understanding of sexual abuse.
It pits the forces critical of the post-election violence (including elements of the all important Shiite clerical establishment) against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the shadow government of Iran led by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Force.
Given the widespread protests and growing clerical opposition, at least within Iran, the missing element is a wholesale bazaar strike.
The parliament, alongside elements of the judiciary, armed forces and clerical establishment, strongly opposed making any meaningful concessions in the marathon negotiations, and is expected to seize on any perceived abuses by U.N. inspectors or Western powers in the coming months.
Although Ayatollah Yazdi was believed to be speaking on behalf of many of Iran's conservative clerical leaders, there may also have been a personal element in his remarks.
The Vatican has made proselytism in Africa and Asia its top priority for the new century, and in those places, clerical leaders sympathetic to Candomble note, Catholicism will encounter other religions with animist elements.
After keeping a careful distance for the last year, the Obama administration has concluded that the Iranian opposition movement has staying power and has embraced it as a central element in the U.S.-led campaign to pressure the country's clerical government.
The elements of this scenario closely resemble those of the Protestant Reformation: mass literacy, the democratization of clerical authority, and methodological literalism.
