This gets a little muddy because Little Hawk is responding to Bill who is responding to me, and I'm responding to Peter, but I guess that's OK. We just have to do a little gear-changing to follow the parallel discussions.

Peter, there's another logical error that develops if you view an institution from the top down. Here in this Forum, I have often seen the Catholic Church condemned for having taken over older Pagan traditions and celebrations. From a top-heavy perspective, that seems to be true. I think there's another possibility: when people converted to Christianity from Pagan religions, they continued to practice the traditions and rituals they had treasured for generations, adapting them to their new beliefs in a process very similar to the "folk process" of the development of folk songs. The authorities in the Catholic Church simply confirmed this process, rather than imposing it. Change in the Catholic Church often takes place by grass-roots processes, processes that often aren't even understood or recognized by Church authorities for centuries. Eventually, the authorities confirm the process as doctrine because it's something that has always been done - failing to see the evolutionary process that has taken place. That's the usual process of doctrine - it evolves over centuries, and then is confirmed - it is rarely imposed.

I see the Catholic Church as an organic body that has changed mostly by evolution. Relatively little in the Church has happened through imposition of authority, although the authority is certainly a very visible aspect of the organization. Evolution is a much stronger force, but it is much slower and much less visible. Much of the time, authority only confirms what has already taken place by evolution.

-Joe Offer-