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“Someone facing down the embarrassing and the tawdry, and clearly stating that some actions were wrong.”

But the wrong was obvious. Dante was excoriating the evil behavior of Pope and cardinals in late Medieval Italy in his Inferno. There’s an ancient Catholic saying that the roads in hell are paved with the skulls of bishops.

Bishops, priests, cardinals and Popes can and do err and sin and commit abominable crimes to precisely the same extent as any other human being. The only thing the Pope cannot do is err materially when he speaks ex cathedra on a matter of faith and morals. The last time a Pope did that was 1950. The time before that was 1835. There is nothing else that any Pope has said ex cathedra that was not already part of Catholic doctrine from the earliest times, and ratified at Councils of the Church. The Pope is not sinless, flawless. He errs on everything, if he’s a bad guy. God won’t let him take the Seat of Peter and pronounce ex cathedra on a matter of faith and morals in a way that is in error. It never has happened. Even the Borgia Popes never approached the Seat of Peter to do that thing. They could not even if it had occurred to them. The Holy Spirit foreclosed the idea to them. Catholic DOCTRINE, the dogmatic heart of the Church, is as pure as the Bible, because it comes directly from the Holy Spirit, who is God. God dwells in the Catholic Church. And God doesn’t let the Church err on those things that will lead the inner spirits of men into error and away from God. Follow the doctrine, and you cannot err. Follow the MEN, and you absolutely will err, and sin, and do bad things, because they’re men, the Pope included.

Catholics don’t hide the evils of the Borgia’s, the Inquisition, the rape of children by pedophile priests in the present, and the coverup by cardinals. Of course men sin. And what does that have to do with the faith and morals of the Church? The reason they are exposed as sinners and rebuked and defrocked is precisely because the faith and morals do not change, and cannot change, and cannot BE changed, ever, because they come from God. Popes, Cardinals, Bishops and Priests can BREAK the rules, but the rules are still the rules. The faithful hold them accountable for it, if they find out about it. God does in any case. The only thing that the Pope is Infallible on is faith and morals doctrines, and only under extremely specific circumstances. That’s it. The Pope is not infallible otherwise, and no Pope in 67 years has pronounced an infallible doctrine. In 1950 a Pope did, reminding the Church of the ancient and infallible doctrine of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into Heaven. He didn’t make it up. This is ancient doctrine. It was challenged. The Pope redressed the challenge, ex cathedra, from the See of Peter. Note that this particular doctrine is not in the Bible, as the dormition and Assumption of Mary, and the celebration of the feast of her Assumption, and very ancient late First or early Second Century events, so the knowledge of those events came to be at their happening, which was after all of the books of the Bible had already been written, and all of the apostles were dead. So of course the dormition and assumption of Mary into heaven isn’t recorded in the Bible. Who was there to record it. And yet the Church remembered it and celebrated it. It happened. You know it happened because the Church has said it happened for 1900 years. The Pope, in 1950, merely reminded the world that it DID happen, and rebuked those who said that maybe it didn’t, by taking the See of Peter and speaking ex cathedra with the power of God the Holy Spirit.
Similarly, the time before that that a Pope did that, was in 1832, concerning the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. Once again, the doctrine was challenged specifically because it doesn’t happen to be in the canon of the Bible (it IS in the proto-evangelium of the Apostle James, but that is not in the Bible). Those who claim that the Bible Alone contains all revelation asserted the falsehood of the Immaculate Conception. And God moved the Pope to the Seat of Peter, in full array, and spoke through the Pope a rebuke to those strange doctrines and a reminder of the truth. And before that? Before that you can’t find a Pope taking the Seat of Peter to pronounce infallible doctrines unless you call the way back to the Council of Trent, and there, the Pope merely pronounced what the Council had also agreed to.

Infallibility is necessary for there to be proper faith. If the Church is fallible, then the Bible may be flawed. And if the Bible is flawed, what do YOU believe in?

“He went to Mass every Sunday, and yet he was never taught anything.”

This is simply not so. He says it, but it is not so. Was he confirmed? If he was attending Mass and taking the faith seriously he was, and in order to be confirmed he was taught plenty. He had classes. Did he pay attention at Mass during those 20 years of Sundays? If he did, he was taught plenty. Remember, he converted to Mormonism, so apparently he rejected his birth religion and moved to a new one, and therefore doesn’t have kind words to say about it. But it is objectively untrue that he was not taught anything. If he really was raised a Catholic and really did attend mass every Sunday for 24 years, he had the whole Bible spoonfed to him 8 times, and explained to him from the pulpit 8 times. And when he went to be confirmed, he had long classes and had everything explained to him. Perhaps the fact that he was a teenager and wasn’t INTERESTED in what was being said, and had other things on his mind, is why he didn’t learn what the Church taught him, but the Church read the bible to him eight times and - if he was confirmed - taught him the faith in great detail. It’s a Catholic Church. It doesn’t vary regionally on the Lectionary or the Confirmation Rite.

So, your uncle either didn’t really attend mass “every week” and wasn’t really a practicing Catholic, in the sense that he did not go through the study for Confirmation, or he did and he completely blew off what he was taught. If he didn’t go, the Church couldn’t teach him could it? If he DID go and didn’t learn anything, it isn’t because the Church didn’t teach him anything, it is because he didn’t listen. It’s just a fact that Catholic Mass and confirmation works a certain way and follows a certain pattern, everywhere it is the same, and it has been the same for two thousand years. If he paid attention and attended, he learned. If he had other things on his mind, it isn’t that the Catholic Church didn’t teach him anything. It’s that he blew off what the Catholic Church was trying to teach him. When he became older and settled down and was able to listen, he did so in the cadre of another religion.

So no, it does NOT happen in the Catholic Church that one attends mass and doesn’t learn anything. The Lectionary is mandatory, not optional. The Bible is read, four portions of it, every Sunday, and explained in the homily. Bad priests botch the homily, but everybody who sits in a mass hears the Old Testament, a Psalm, a New Testament Epistle and a reading from the Gospels, every time. Perhaps the faithful didn’t understand the Latin of the prayers back then, and couldn’t read English (or Spanish) to be able to follow along in the missal. But the homily has been given in the vernacular since the time of Christ. If one attends mass and learns nothing, it is not because the Church didn’t teach anything. It cannot be. The Church reads the Bible every time, and explains it. It’s because the person attending has shut his ears and decided to think about something else. I can say this with certitude, because the Church is like the Post Office: the same things are there, everywhere around the whole world, and the same basic things are done. He may have been bored out of his skull, but the Church DID teach anybody who would listen.

As far as asking him about Salvation, I cannot answer that. Go ask a priest. Honestly, I expect that the priest would simply ask you to pray for him, and include a mention of the man in the prayers of the Church. The priest MIGHT decide to go by the hospital to see if the man would like to talk to him, receive extreme unction, etc. He might not, because there is nothing served by troubling and upsetting an old man. Ask a priest your question. He has the authority and knowledge to answer. I don’t. You can ask your uncle, I suppose, but if you think he would be offended and agitated by the question - he made his choice to leave Catholicism long ago, after all, and he probably had his reasons - then I would be careful. His soul is in God’s hands. It would be good for him to reconcile with God through the Church, but if the mere mention of it is going to drive him into deep anger at the Church, at God, etc., then I wouldn’t do it. The Sacraments are efficacious for Salvation, but nobody can be forced to take the Sacraments. Ask a priest. Just call up your local parish and ask to speak to a priest on a family matter, perhaps set up a time or just talk on the phone. Explain to him the circumstance and see what he says. He may go visit your uncle. I don’t know.

“Catholics are not very good at taking the message of the Gospel to the ends of the Earth.”

That’s why a religion that started in Roman Palestine and is centered in Rome is the religion of Latin America, Mexico, the American and Candian Indians, the Filipinos, 60 million Indians, the Chinese of Macau, the Tahitian islanders, a third of sub-Saharan Africa, and was once the religion of the entirety of Europe and Russia.

Go take a look at the hospice, AIDS hospice, immigrant services, soup kitchen, homeless shelter and rehabilitation systems in your area. Go look up the adoption agencies. That is where you will find the Catholics working on the Gospel. There is only a limited number of laborers in the field. Go look across Africa, in the wildest outback, and who runs the schools and the hospitals. Think about Mother Theresa’s orphanage sitting in the bowels of Hindu Calcutta.

Physicians treat the sick, not the healthy. Jesus came for sinners, not the righteous. Where you look at the least and the poorest of society, there you will find the institutions of the Catholic Church as the primary safety net the whole world over, feeding them, clothing them, healing them, and giving them the Gospel by example. Why you don’t find very much of is Catholics priests in nice suits knocking on the doors of the well-heeled to come in and read the Bible with them. No. The Church stands open, and all are welcome. The Church preaches to all, but her servants, her missionaries in American cities, are running orphanages and battered womens’ shelters and hospice care for people with AIDS. There are only a limited number of servants of God, and they have to focus on the people who need the most help. Literate, well off, well fed, healthy adult Americans know about the Catholic Church, and are perfectly capable of making their way into the doors of the Church themselves. The Church speaks publicly on many issues: abortion, gay marriage, the death penalty, the treatment of immigrants, battered women, AIDS care, care for the sick, raising children. Everyone hears these things. Jesus stood in the public square and preached to those who would listen, and healed those who came to him. He did not go knocking at the doors of the well-off and the righteous and beg them to hear. They knew he was out there, and if they chose to open their eyes, they could see what he was doing it. It was up to them to come to him. He did not withhold himself from them. He was present, and teaching. He was in their midst. But the laborers are few and there is much to be harvested, and when he walked the Earth God never had the time nor the interest in going and expending any effort whatever trying to go knock on the doors of the well-off, the comfortable and the (self) righteous. In fact, he ignored them. He devoted his and the Apostles efforts to actually helping the poor, weak and sick directly. And they preached to everybody, in public. Whoever came and heard and believed, that was good. Whoever didn’t bother to come, or came and found it boring and left, to Hell with them. Literally. Notice that when Peter baptized Cornelius and his family (women, children, relatives), he only went there because he was invited. He didn’t go bang on the door and ask to come in and assert his doctrines. Invited, he came and shared, and baptized.

All are welcome, but the needy need the attention. They cannot get up off their mat and walk. The healthy and comfortable and self-indulgent can.

I think that one of the reasons the Catholic Church does not do very well at converting up-and-coming non-Catholic yuppies, first generation college types and pillars of their society is pretty basic: because they’re nothing special to the Church, and when they go into the Catholic Church, they’re just in anonymity with the rest of the laity. They confess their sins like everyone else. There’s no prominent position for them. They can put money in the plate, but it’s all anonymous. The priests don’t show them any deference, generally. There’s not much of a coffee klatch, and there’s no vestryman position where they, as laity, can have any decision-taking power in the Church. It’s just a place of uniform ritual, anonymous sacraments, laying one’s self bare in personal degradation at confession (which the self-righteous hate, claiming that they don’t NEED to confess their sins to a priest, that they just have to pray internally), etc. The Catholic Church is a bad place for people who need to have a lot of attention, unless its the sort of attention that desperately sick and poor people need to stay alive, or children need to learn to read. Adults are adults. They’re expected to take care of themselves if they have the means, and to attend Church and confess their sins and be introspective, give money, and try to be better people. There isn’t a lot of gladhanding. Catholic priests are never going to walk around middle class neighborhoods urging people to come to Church. The Church is there, everybody can see it, everybody knows what the Church does, generally. It’s up to the healthy to get their own butts down there to listen to Jesus. He stands in the marketplace and teaches. He doesn’t follow anybody home to beg them to save their own souls.

Catholic proselytization has always been predominantly through baptism of infants, education of children, and the accretions through marriage. There are substantial number of converts every year, lately lots of Episcopalians battered to tears by the apostacy of their own Church, weary of the politics, and finally willing to go and sit and be absolute nobodies in a congregation praying the Catholic Mass.

In the end, humility is required to be a Catholic. The Church is open. It does charity. It raises up children. Jesus is in the marketplace. You go listen to him. He is not going to come directly to you as an individual and ask you to hear him. He preaches to everyone, and those who chose to hear, hear. Those who don’t, go their separate ways. If they decide to repent and turn back, the Church is there for them. If they decide not to, well, the Church is there for them, but there are real sick people and real children who need to be taken care of now. Adults have to be responsible for themselves. All are welcome.