I've just returned from the "most Catholic of countries," the Republic of Ireland.

Vocations there are down, way way down. So much so that Ireland now has priests from Africa in some parishes.

Church attendance by the "young" is also down.

This was brought on by the Irish church itself, by pedophilia and the Magdalene laundries and the Bishop of Galway and the rest of it (as far as I can see).

But the basic religious tenets of the Church there, and the beliefs of the people, have not changed. And the hierarchy IS doing a heroic job of changing generations of "the way it is."

This is not to introduce a discussion of the abuses (I'm still trying to sort that out for myself and I bought several books there about it) but simply to point out that the RC church in the US is not alone in reinventing itself yet again.

As I've said before, most Catholics don't let their church get in the way of their religion.