"one would have thought that an organisation claiming to be benevolent would by now have had ample incentive and opportunity to create a showcase of a 'state' the envy of the 'Catholic world'. A model of how socially successful Catholicism can be, given the chance.."

Excellent post Smokey. I've alway's had mixed feelings about the Catholic Church as I'm quite a spiritual type person and I have Irish Catholic family. My own Catholic Mother never had me Baptised, and at one time I considered being Baptised as an adult. But the sheer weight of the Church's documented violation of power worldwide and throughout history - including the aiding and abetting of the Nazi's attempted genocide of Jewish people in the WWII - led me away from that path and to Gnosticism (the Catholic Church burned the original Gnostics of course). Even so, I still gave it the benifit of the doubt - those crimes were in the past. The modern Church wasn't what it once was....

I'm afraid despite my family associations and prior attraction to Catholicism, the subterfuge and systemic corruption which led to repression of public knowledge, and collusion with evil Priestly paedophile rings, has utterly shattered any sympathy I ever had for the Catholic Church. It's certainly helped me shed any illusion that it's no longer the monstrous organisation that it was 'once upon a time' in the past.

It's rotten, through and through - to this day. It's never changed, it's the same corrupt power-hungry self-serving institution it was any any era. I have no shred of sympathy whatever remaining for it as an institution.

I hope it finally utterly crumbles and burns upon it's own corrupt foundations!