No Fall Back Position.

Most people believe that if Catholic priests were allowed to marry, the profession would attract a lot fewer homosexual pedophiles, Catholic children would be a lot safer and families would feel better about sending a son off into the priesthood. Most American Catholics would like to see women have equal participation in the Church with men, it hasn't happened. They would like to see a more democratic church structure instituted, it hasn't happened. In the past, the Catholic church tried to hold the line against divorce within it's membership, and failed. They tried to hold the line against premarital sex and cohabitation within it's membership, and failed. They tried to hold the line on birth control, and failed. They tried to ignore the feminist movement and that hasn't worked out well for them either. Catholics don't go to mass, they don't feel like they need communion. They don't confess. They aren't contrite.

The Catholic church has watched as other Christian groups have tried to liberalize with the mainstream of culture and then fade into irrelevance. They don't know what to do. They've been around too long to just give up. The current fights in the culture wars that the Catholics have been forced into are destigmatization of abortion and homosexuality. They are losing both, badly. Young Catholic women are more likely to have abortions than their secular or Protestant counterparts. Pro life activists are reduced to thuggish demonstrations in front of clinics and cowardly apologetics over the murder of physicians, while mainstream Catholics recoil in revulsion and disgust at their behavior. Gays are increasingly demanding to live openly within the Catholic communities that they grew up in and those communities are letting them. When these fights are lost, as so many others have been, where is the next fallback position? What can the Church then point to, as the dividing line between the faithful and the fallen?

The Church has to have some reason for being, some relevance in the life of the people. What is it? Where is it?