Then I think you've never been "out in the world," as I have been, for a good part of my life. Roman Catholicism is a FAR different religion in the 3rd World from what it is here--far more concerned with establishing the "City of God," and its social and economic justice in the world than is ANY OTHER Christian denomination. This is so marked, so plain to anybody who knows anything about the Church OUTSIDE of America that when we hear that the Pope has condemned something like Bush's immoral, unjust "preventive war" in Iraq, we're NOT surprised, as the whole rest of America, including Catholic America, is. I'm telling you right now--and you can take it to the bank--that the Roman Catholic Church will become, inevitably, as this century wears on, the LEADING OPPONENT OF NOT ONLY AMERICAN GEO-POLITICAL INTERESTS--because they are MARRIED to an unjust, radical capitalist "world order"--but also to the pagan, nihilist culture (Protestant Christianity "gone"--inevitably--"bad")of America. It's not just Islam that America is going to have Church-State conflicts with. And, at the heart of it, contributing most to this ideological conflict, is one that really does start out being "soteriological"--over whether works avail as much as faith, because if it's only faith, there is NOTHING but an "other-worldly" project for Christians. You are SO mistaken in seeing orthodox Christianity through the lense of the radical "Paulinism" that passes for it, here in this culturally decadent backwater of "Christendom."