Ranee Mueller wrote:
> Why is it that non-Catholics (and Catholics who don't attend
> church or actually believe in the doctrines of their church) care so
> much about the direction of the Roman Catholic church?
>
1. Matters Roman have saturated the media for a number of days now.
People tend to talk about whatever is before them.

2. Speaking only for myself, for many years I have found what William
James called "the will to believe" fascinating. The impulse is so
strong that it leads vast numbers of people into trying as hard as they
can to believe things that are obviously untrue, let alone those things
that cannot be observed or tested. (I'm not talking here just about
the Roman church, obviously.) The permutations and combinations are
endlessly entertaining to me, from the pointy hats they wear in Rome to
the south sea islanders who worship the airplane god, to the Roswell
conspiracy theorists, to fad dieters, etc. without end.

3. It might actually matter who the Pope is and what he tells his
followers to believe. For example, if he says only Roman Catholics can
go to heaven and everyone else will perish, then those folks will be
arrayed directly against the radical fundamentalists of Islam. That
caused a rather important series of conflicts a few centuries ago, and
now the weapons at their disposal are a lot more powerful.