Joe O, I consider you a friend in the Lord, bear with me: a big difference between Catholic and Protestant theology comes down to the question of how we view grace and I suspect that our posts do have a little backwash over that basic difference. Briefly stated, many Protestants believe that there is no act or deed a human can do that will effect the salvation of one's soul. We see Christ as having paid the entire bill for all Mankind and the debt with Heaven is forever cancelled (John 3:17-21, John 5:24 and Rom 5:15-21, 8:1-28 among others). That only leaves the question of what you will do with the pardon which is offered to you in the person of Jesus Christ. It is completely personal and one-on-one with Christ himself. Do you surrender your living death and accept the new life in Christ or do you go your own way saying that you are good enough to impress God and gain His favor on your own. Are you saying "Savior? Your Son? We don' neeed no ----Savior!" to paraphrase an old movie.

The Roman Catholic Church has what Protestants see as "works" which garner or warrant merit with God. These are the sacraments which include baptism, confession, marriage and extreem unction among others. And Joe, yes, my bias is a mile wide here, I admit and I am sure I gave you the short end of the deal. I hope you will give a much better picture from your point of view. I welcome your comments.

But regardless of either point of view I think you must admit that the RCC is NOT endorsing any political system over another and especially not socialism. The temporal governments the RCC has historically been involved with are monarchies and indeed the Vatican heirarchy is setup to reflect the divine monarchy of God Himself, is it not? I think the very Church which you represent to us would tend to come down on my side of this argument rather than yours, but then, that is just my opinion. But that does tend to put it all back in the arena of Cristianity and not in the provence of human ideology.