Whilst I agree with the sentiments expressed by Drahill (especially the ones about why you would stay in a particular branch of faith) I also get why people stay and work.

Same thing. You try to purge the people/ideology that opposes you and your ideology. If you didn’t see them as potential obstacle to the success of your ideology, you wouldn’t bother.

True, but Benedict and most of his hardcore ideologues will not be around in 20 years. It only takes one reform-minded Pope to make changes, as John XXIII did. When Benedict was elected there was a huge skirmish between the hardcores and the progressives and the hardcores won out. But they can’t count on having the majority forever.

And practically speaking, the Church’s continuing inability to fill jobs—their seminaries are practically empty in this country and even emptier in Europe—is ultimately what’s going to force institutional change. That and the fact that those envelopes have been getting scarcer and scarcer thanks to child abuse scandals and general disenchantment. The Church will act to save itself, even if that means having to soften on some issues that they previously refused to soften on.

To question Papal teachings on morality is heresy and sinful. The second problem is that, in Catholicism, as in many other faiths, there is no line between the theological teachings and social morality.

Except that everyone’s already doing exactly that. American and European Catholics simply don’t care anymore about Vatican-approved morality on social issues like divorce, contraception, or even abortion. Practically speaking, that battle was lost a long time ago. Benedict’s made a special crusade of trying to get European Catholics to toe the line and utterly failed. You can’t put that toothpaste back in the tube, and he knows it.

Clearly, if the Church feels the need to send in the Inquisition, they’re feeling threatened. A lot of Catholic progressives I know are biding their time, waiting for Benedict and his generation to die, and preparing for a Vatican III at some point in our lifetimes. I think it will happen. The Catholic Church being what it is, change will not happen quickly, but I think the current crackdown is evidence that today’s ideologically conservative Pope sees it happening in many ways right now.

The primary reason is because the Church itself was set up, from the beginning, to be a top-down type of church. It has that whole rule about how when the Pope speaks on matters of faith, he cannot be wrong. Part of Catholic dogma is blind alliegance to the Pope in matters of faith. To question Papal teachings on morality is heresy and sinful. The second problem is that, in Catholicism, as in many other faiths, there is no line between the theological teachings and social morality. The one informs the other. So under that standard, a lack of ferocity on social or moral issues could actually be taken to be a lack of ferocity towards the underlying moral issues as well.

In reality, the Pope and the highest up members of the Church have no incentive to do what the general populace of Catholics want. As long as one goes to church and puts the envelopes in, they are pleased. And because the theological structure of the Church is set up to stifle dissent, any dissenter can simply be written off as a sinner, a heretic and be excommunicated. It is an institution that, at least in my opinion, is completely designed to be impervious to reform. I just cannot see how, in knowing this, one could in good faith stay in such a faith.

I do think that there’s value in working to improve the institution, and I think that a lot of what progressives within conservative religions do is done in order to better serve and help their co-religionists. In essence, the nuns are often doing for their fellow Catholics what the institutional Church will not do.