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The United States sees the catholic church as irrelevent, and I suspect the feeling is mutual.
And yet they still scream: BUT WITHOUT RELIGION HOW CAN WE HAVE A MORAL COMPASS?
I must now infer that Religion is showing us what NOT to do...
And yet, while the Church mostly turns a blind eye to its members' use of birth control, the members also put NO PRESSURE on the leadership to change.
NONE.
As Dan points out in his NALT posts, its long past time for the everyday catholic churchgoers to stop hiding behind their flaming hypocracy and SPEAK THE FUCK UP about this.
Is this because people think enough is being done, or the problem isn't that bad, or they're in denial? Whatever it is, it disgusts me that doing something about sexual abuse isn't the number 1 thing on the list. Alas, religion will always be about expanding the in-group. Wish ethics came first instead.
Calm down -- you have as much chance of becoming pope as Dolan does. They just throw his name around to pretend that there's an American in contention.
It's so Amerocentric that all American media seem to view the Papal election the same as an American election, and can't conceive of cultures outside America having influence or mattering. They also don't seem to understand that no matter who is elected the next pope the teachings of the church won't change, no matter how hard they wish or how many words they write. Something something about absolute truth and no moral relativism or whatnot.
You are aware, as Catholics generally are, that the Pope isn't infallible on a day to day basis, but only in those statements where he invokes it?
For instance, no pope has proclaimed the Church's teaching on abortion in a specific ex cathedra statement declaring it as an essential matter of faith and infallibly true, so in so far as American Catholics disagree they are not butting against papal infallibility.
Further, your argument whole argument is somewhat specious, as the Catholic Church has always held to the primacy of conscience and taught that individuals must follow their consciences even when they are wrong. So, in so far as American Catholics trust their conscience, informed by church teaching, over specific church teaching, that is actually in line with an essential part of church teaching.
Certainly, there are real problems with the Catholic Church and with many religious urges in human beings, but your specific critique seems flawed.
And it boggles the mind that anybody continues to believe that the world's largest international child-rapist protection racket has any moral credibility on any topic — and especially that a bunch of creepy unmarried "celibate" boy-raping priests should be taken seriously when they dispense advice about sexual morality.
And the 1950 declaration was the one proclaiming that the Virgin Mary did not have a physical death, but was, instead, assumed bodily into Heaven.
So it must be true.
That's not a way to grow your church or keep it relevant in a secular country.
What I got out of the article was that US Catholics are more interested in keeping their church but bending it to their will than they are of simply leaving.
I'd be interested in reading an article about Central & South American Catholics, how they've handled this. They have their own unique history, and have already experienced what the US is getting now: A very pro-human priesthood against a very authoritarian hierarchy (and in the past, often in bed w/ the current dictator).