Wojtek Sokolowski wrote: So it makes no sense to discuss Christianity or for that matter any religion in abstraction - this is a specific institutional and political force and as such, it is very reactionary. ---- I agree, but it would be wrong to make a blanket statement about Catholics. One need only remember Liberation Theology. Many Catholics disagree strongly with the Pope and the Catholic hierarchy.
Wojtek can't seem to make up his mind whether he is talking about Christianity (a religion with hundreds of variations) or the Roman Catholic Church (and that not as a religion but as an institution). It is a complete jumble, but if he can make up his mind what he wants to talk about, then one might respond.
Even the institution, of course, is too complex for much to be said about it in abstraction from particular contexts. I wonder if he has ever heard of Archbishop Romero. And anti-imperialist activity in Bloomington Normal would have been completely instead of onlyh mostly non-existent for three decades had it not been for Father Kelly, the Newman Center priest at ISU. (The prick of a Bishop in Peoria finally succeeded in exiling him during the last years of his life to some forlorn cranny in rural western Illinois. But as I said, the institution is more complex than Wojtek allows.)
Carrol