>So for all those who see the Catholic Church as so fundamentally
>anti-socialist, does that mean that Leftists should not build coalitions
>with institutionally-based Catholic organizations?
Not me. I was objecting to your characterization of the pope's thinking as "socialist," when the Church's teaching has long been emphatically anti-socialist. But even a hardbitten anticlericalist like me has to admit that there are Catholics and other religious people working in very admirable ways to make life in this world better. In the 1980s, religious people were at the heart of the debt crisis movement, and in the 1990s, they're at the heart of the debt forgiveness movement. Ditto antiwar movements. I'm all for working with them.
I won't swallow objections to their stance on abortion, though, even if Max considers such a position more "serious."
Doug