Greg B and MtheGM have it exactly right.

As has been explained to Joe many times, and I'm sure he understands, millions of Catholics worldwide, if not on the US west coast, still take papal pronouncements to heart. Indeed for many Catholics even the parish priest is a figure of authority beyond challenge. The Catholic church relies more on clerical authority than any other Christian church, and by a wide margin. And the factor that more than any other has kept priests elevated above their flocks is the sacrament of confession, whereby they take on themselves the power of Jesus.

Joe bemoans the fact that many in the laity are uneducated in their faith. But that is exactly how the church has wanted it. This is the church, remember, that burnt the bible when it was translated into languages that people could understand; and in some cases burnt the translators. Such methods rendered the rank and file more exploitable, more easily manipulated, to the extent at one time that even the wretchedly poor were coerced into paying the church to reduce the length of time they had been conned into believing they were destined to spend in purgatory.

Latter-day apologists will say that such abuses are all in the distant past. But I can't think of any abuse that this church has relinquished except at metaphorical gunpoint. Thanks to scams like that simony racket, the Holy See to this day basks in obscene wealth, with squillions stashed away in obscure bank accounts. When one of the Vatican's arch racketeers, Bishop Marcinkus, sought refuge in Vatican City to avoid answering for his alleged crimes, the Pope willingly obliged him. And that minority of Catholics on the west coast and elsewhere who can think for themselves raised barely a murmur.

Indeed the really shaming thing is that intellectuals, thinkers, educated people who in their hearts of hearts know better, lend credence to this rotten church by their acquiescence and continued membership. In many cases, and I include Joe in this, that continued membership owes more to nostalgia and the comfort of sticking to what has become a familiar habit than to any real identity with their church's doctrines and teachings. And then they have the gall to claim credit for their inertia by saying: "I'm a cherry-picking Catholic, I choose which bits to go along with" - ignoring the reality that for many of the most vulnerable, the most abused, the most exploited, there is no possibility of such choice.

It's high time those Catholics who have the mental capacity and who have been brought up in relatively enlightened traditions, found their voice and openly protested the Pope's more imbecile utterances. Until they do, the church's shame must be theirs too.