Catholic Bishops Fluff Piece Blog for Papal Visit to USA

In my wanders around various news articles on religion I found a blog set up by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (http://usccb.wordpress.com/) where readers are invited "to join in on the discussion of Pope Benedict XVI’s trip to the United States, April 15-20, 2008." A brief review of the posts to date revealed a large number of sappy fluff comments, all pandering to the Vatican and - to use blunt language - kissing Benedict XVI's ass. Comments are being moderated and I strongly suspect that only those that are suffieciently obsequious will be published on the blog. To test my theory, I submitted the following comment and I will report back on whether or not the Bishops want a true exchange of opinions or are instead merely using the blog as a propaganda vehicle:

I for one do not see Benedict XVI as a rock to uphold the Church. Rather, I view him as one who is trying to drag the Church backwards several centuries in its thinking and one who is clinging to old dogmas and refusing to face new medical and mental health knowledge and other advances in learning that must be accommodated if the Church is going to be accepted by an educated and literate laity. I believe it is no coincidence that the Church’s growth is most evident in ignorant and uneducated areas of the world while attendance lags in the more educated and enlightened western nations.

Worse yet, Benedict XVI has failed to undertake a full house cleaning of the Church hierarchy to dismiss bishops and cardinals who were complicit in the sexual abuse cover up. In short, he is a hypocritical fraud. Thus, having been raised Catholic, served as an altar boy for 10 years, attended daily mass faithfully for over a 9 year period during college and my 20’s, and become a 4th Degree Knight of Columbus, I voted with my feet as they say and am now a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America – a very Catholic service and beliefs system without the corruption and hypocrisy of the Catholic Church under Benedict XVI and his less than saintly predecessor. Hopefully, Americans will see Benedict XVI as the fraud and anachronism that he truly is.