I think there is at least one more group and that is the one I belong to...we liked the old traditions and music and Latin etc. We ..me at least..do not see improvements that came out of Vatican II. The old cruel policies about birth control and divorce still exist officially, although people are more and more ignoring them. Except for ugly architecture and music I can't see differences before and after but it was like someone threw a switch and said poof you will all not be Catholics any more but you still have all the same rigid laws. I never could figure out who the people were who came up with some of these changes..I never met any...did they have secret meetings in the 60s? Let's get together and write ugly music? I never in my life heard anyone complain about the Latin Mass or the music when I was growing up..we liked it.

I want things to change..I want anything that hurts people to be not a part of church doctrine. I will believe in virgin births etc. I want people to be able to remarry if they are divorced. I want them to be able to have children they want and can afford and I think some people should be forbidden from having children.

I won't stop being a Catholic. I will continue to eat fish on Friday. And take a bath on Saturday. And go to Mass on Sunday. But I want it to be a church where people and societies can be healthy in all ways.

I think good people doing good deeds are wonderful...but all sorts of religions do that..some way better than us...

What makes us Catholic? The links to the past are pretty much broken. I still sing the Latin songs I know just in case I am the last living person who remembers them...and that will soon be the case I am afraid. I think we need a religion that makes us good people without going so far we become perverted, neurotic etc., which we are truly seeing now.

Not sure what the answer is, but I probably have a warped view of the church. On the other hand I don't crave an authoritarian religion and I think it still obviously is. Oh dear. I am in a quandary. mg