A Thought

I'm becoming more and more convinced that the gay issue is the rock that will sink historic institutional Christianity in the West (and a few other places too).

The women issue is the rock that will sink historic institutional religion world wide.

Here's an interesting interview with Diarmaid MacCulloch on the Catholic Church and so much more. 
"Women are a problem for traditional religion, and yet I suspect that women will be the salvation of religion."


Another thought:
  Rome and right wing Anglicans are pinning so much of their hopes on Africa and Latin America and their rapidly expanding (and largely very conservative) Christian populations.  I wonder if this would still be the case if Africa was stable, secure, and above all, prosperous (and it might be all of those things some day).  Latin America has the world's largest Catholic population, and yet, none of those countries are the impoverished military dictatorships that they once were.  Brazil already has an economy that is larger than all of Eastern Europe including Russia.  Poverty and income inequality are still huge issues in Latin America, but not as huge as they used to be.  I wonder what will be the future of the Catholic Church as the educated middle classes in Latin American countries expand.  I also wonder what will happen as competition increases with Evangelical Christianity, especially among the poorest of the poor.  Prosperity Gospel may be a pernicious heresy, but it's one that says to the poor tenant farmer that he was not necessarily destined to be a peasant.  The Catholic hierarchy tells that same tenant farmer that he will always be a dependent peasant in spiritual matters, no matter what his outward circumstances.  What happens when the peasants decide that they or their children do not want to be peasants anymore?