Catholic Taste

One reason I quit subscribing to National Review was that it seemed to conflate conservatism with Roman Catholicism. I don't see it as a calamity that Catholic attendance at Mass is down. What is a tragedy is that the church was in denial for so many years regarding its pedophilia problem. No matter, Roman Catholicism is growing like gangbusters in the Third World.

For some reason, the History Channel is running documentaries tonight about the Apocalypse. Earlier it had a history of the Papacy that made me wonder how people could honestly believe that Roman Popes were Christ's vicars throughout the middle ages. Pope John Paul II was a saintly man, but his office has nothing to do with the authority held by Peter and his fellow apostles. I've been reading a compelling argument that the claim that bishops were the successors to the apostles is fraught with problems.