Joe, if you and all sincere Catholics were to rise like lions after slumber/In unvanquishable number and slay your capitalist bosses, the world would be a better place. Ye are many, they are few.

For the evil influence of the cardinals to prevail (and there are parts of the world where their writ DOES still run) it requires only that sincere Catholics do nothing. I think that's what the guy said.

What's the big deal about running a church without a CEO? Plenty of churches manage that way, except that they're maybe out-performed a bit on the wealth-creating side. (But all that wealth is slipping away fast, so what the hell?)

OK I admit citing Ratzinger was going to extremes. I was just pointing up the absurd sweep of FoF's generalisation. But I'm not convinced by your theory that Ratzinger's the baddie and the Pope's the goodie. Jean-Paul has allowed his favourite cardinal to speak with the authority of the Vatican on some fairly major and divisive issues, not least the one I quoted in my earlier post. So at best he's George W to Ratzinger's Cheney.