Church could collapse like the Soviet Union ?

          Reading numerous editorials, columns, and letters in  American

    newspapers, I can now see how the pedophilia scandals in the Catholic

    Church have evolved into something much bigger , something of millennial

    consequences : a crisis of FAITH .

                  Now I wonder if the 2000 year old Church - the ROCK OF AGES -

    will crumble as suddenly and dramatically as the Evil Empire did just

    ten years ago. Church officials  think that Cardinal Law's resignation

    might have a snowball effect . Yes, sounds familiar : Today Poland then

    Berlin. And after the Berlin Wall comes down, the betrayed faithful will

    assemble in fury at the very gates of the Kremlin.

                A parallel with the Church : today Boston, tomorrow Rome !

             Actually I am sad at the prospect of a religious catastrophe.

    The Church lost its hold on my mind in the 60s. But it still has a claim

    on my heart. I do not think the world will be a better place without

    its pompous and sentimental irrelevance.

                And what will fill the spiritual vacuum ? Dialect materialism ?

    Crackpot sects ?  Dark Age superstition ?

                 Perhaps a new Aquinas or St.Augustine will emerge to re-establish

    its once awesome intellectual and moral authority.

                Oddly enough, I - a radical liberal - believe that Vatican II

    was the beginning of the END for the Catholic Church, its self-destruction.

                   When I do visit a church, I miss the ancient Latin, the

    old mystique. And I HATE having to shake anybody's hand.  I can shake

    hands with swindlers on Wall Street too !

                     Time for Jesus to come back ! But for now I'll get

    back to my Carl Sagan and my Isaac Asimov. Thank God for smart Jews !