[Mrs. Don-o]

"If the high officials of the church would concentrate more on helping their church’s Christians be more Christian, they wouldn’t need to be advising the world on what to do. Their laypeople would be advising the world and making it credible because Christ’s spirit would be rendering the advice through them... THEY would in turn show the real stuff to the world."

This is exactly, precisely right. Exactly, precisely right. Even "canonically" right. I mean right all the way through.

That's why, for example, the USCCB should be disbanded. The "political policy" part has largely cannibalized the rest of it, and it's a particularly irksome form of clericalism.

[HiTech RedNeck]

There shouldn’t be anything wrong with a group of bishops dealing with challenges to Christian faith that pop up in their country. But I agree, the political pronouncements almost turn it into a circus. And it would irk me as much if, say, the SBC got topheavy about this. I’d take that as a sign that there was too little activity at the lay level.

Let the church do Christianity well, and the salt and light will pour out. Like a hymn (which I don’t know whether it’s current in Catholic circles, but they do borrow from evangelical Christendom) goes — let the lower lights be burning, send a gleam across the wave, some poor fainting, sinking sailor you may rescue, you may save.