mac_d wrote:
The issue with the Catholic church is that to progress, you pretty much have to conform to what the people above you want to hear you preach.
So the people at the top will nearly always be old-fashioned and frankly out of date on their opinions (which is my own opinion on a great many issues of Catholicism). To get reform, someone would need to actively chose to lie about their views for several decades. Even then, as a Cardinal you'd probably still have to lie until you were Pope. And it's not like being Pope is certain. In all honesty, that is the travesty in the Catholic church. The old ways should be replaced with the new ways. Stop covering shit up, sort it out. Stop telling people condoms and contraception is bad - AIDS is worse than someone having some fun before marriage. Stop moaning about Gays, if nothing else you should try to recruit them to the church - gay people generally have higher amounts of disposable income as they tend not to have children (which may change).
I'm Catholic, but I don't really consider myself Catholic (I know). I don't really believe in God and find the concept rather insulting as a whole (especially when you do well and someone says to thank god... what about the hours of time I put in to whatever event?). The Catholic church is looking toward a downward spiral imo. They need change. They need to modernise. And most of all, absolutely most of all they need to sort out their priests and the lack of trust the world has in them. Come down hard and fast on paedo-priests. Investigate, inform the police and try to financially compensate as best you can those who have been wronged. Do this and in 25 years the Catholic church could be seen as a forward thinking, modern organisation. Keep going the way it is going... in 25 years the Catholic church will be close to death. The empire might finally fall.
I think the position the Catholic church finds itself in now is very similar to the position it was in during the buildup to
the reformation. Now, just as 400 years ago, the perceived corruption, injustice and disconnect at the highest levels of the church are alienating large swathes of its congregation. Whether it be the attitude towards homsexuals, women, paedophile priests, AIDS & condoms, or any of the many other issues on which the church seems so out of step with western society as a whole. I suspect that now, as then, the answer will (eventually) be a violent schism rather than a gradual modernisation. I just don't see how an institution so entrenched in dark ages thinking can dispose of the dogma required to modernise, or how it could convince its flock to come along for the journey. It will be fascinating to see whether the new pope picks up John Paul's baton of sympathetic, gentle modernising, or Benedict's strict conservatism. I wonder whether it might be better for the church to stick with the latter. Look at the CofE to see what happens when you try and gently modernise a church, and I'd argue their essentially protestant tenets are more flexible than those of catholicism.
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