My reasons for returning are different from his reasons. I have noticed that people who are not moving up in the world tend cycle downwards in the protestant denominations until they land in sects like the Jehovah's Witnesses or some other weird religion. Usually the poor people want protection from their oppressors ,but most churches try to protect the reputation of their members. So those who do not fit in with the image the protestant church is trying to cast of itself face pressure to leave or become more conservative in an effort to fit in. It’s sad to see poor people driven to such extremes when a wealthy person need just walk in with a fat wallet and he or she will be instantly accepted.
I’m sure this man loves the rational scientific minds of the Jesuits. I must admit they tend to excite fear and envy in their protestant counterparts. I on the other hand think the babushcaked old ladies are underrated. Those women are connected to God in a primitive and mysterious way. They remind me of the Tibetan mystics who meditate on the Dharma for years. Maybe they seem superstitious because it is hard to explain the spiritual aspects of Christianity. The fact that the Catholic church tolerates and even encourages them speaks well of Catholicism.
I also disagree with the notion that the Catholic church is not populist. No other church as far I can see has opened itself to so much attack by defending the right of less than perfect people to be on this Earth. The Catholic church is spear heading the movement to protect the disabled from those who want to spare them the misery of life without regard for whether they are miserable or happy.
- Catholic pieties, for example, Marian devotions, are nothing to apologize about. While individual Catholics may fall into superstition over that (less and less so, under the drumbeat of our critics), a far greater proportion fall to theological falsehoods such as Calvinism because they don't embrace Catholic mysticism enough. Sola Scriptura is a false superstition than any medieval peasant fearing an evil eye.
- Rejection of clubby donatism and the clear vision of the Church as hospital for sinners is fundamentally Catholic.
I think that what Kresta means in that paragraph is not that folk pieties are bad but that they need to be compared with (so-called) speaking in tongues and snake handling that goes on in Protestant denominations; and that the popes never act like politicians who would say anything to get elected.