[As a side note: Agca has asked the Vatican’s permission that, upon his release from prison in 2010, he be baptized on the spot in St. Peter’s Square where he shot the pope.]

As far as bad prior church experiences … here’s my sad story. I was deeply involved in the catholic church for several decades (cathedral organist, cantor and all that). When I finally had enough of the hating and hypocrisy, I decided to leave. I’m a slow learner. Several people told me that there are plenty of other churches that are welcoming and I should go to one of them. At the time I wasn’t running TO anything. I was running AWAY from the church. I wasn’t interested in going somewhere else.

Ironically, when I made the decision to leave the church I was seeing a psychotherapist who was also a catholic priest and university professor. When I told him of my decision, he seemed surprised, but then he asked me: do you still consider yourself a christian? My immediate reaction was: of course. But the more I thought about it and considered the idea, the less inclined I was to seek another congregation or even consider myself a christian. Making my decision even more fun was trying to reconcile with my brother with whom I am very close, but who is also a catholic priest.

Every group has good and not so good within it, but the more I thought about the idea of churches voting on whether I was worthy of God’s love and salvation, the more repugnant I found the idea of being part of any church at all. I know many good people who are church goers, but I think they are being very poorly served by their hierarchies. The more I looked at what self-proclaimed followers of Christ were up to, the less I wanted to be associated with any of them.

I guess what I’ve concluded is that God made me just fine the way I am; but, there is no church out there that is worthy of me. They can pretend that I am not worthy of them, but I know the truth.

Wayne–it’s not just “bad prior experiences.” You’ve made your faith clear, and that is yours; at the same time, there are those of us whose experiences and minds leave us not only without much use for religion, but impatient at enabling perpetuation of religion-endorsed inequalities under civil law. When the conservative Episcopals couldn’t force everything to go their way, they’ve had no problem trying to drag the involve the courts as their allies. In the US, the UK and Canada, the conservatives are the minority. They will split from the main Anglican body as it’s known in these three countries, unless Rowan Williams is really so blind that he tries to keep the fractious family together. That’ll become one helluva legal mess in the UK–which Anglicans will be deemed the ones who are the established church?

The Catholics aren’t trolling for new members among the Anglicans? Bullshit. As much as the Vatican is stuck in the past, I fully expect that there are those who view this as a deserved comeuppance for both Henry VIII and those apostate leaders of the Reformation. Benedict is too eager to make exceptions to get some devout homophobes into the flock, and it’s all too likely to generate even more conflict in the US church. The more the Catholic hierarchy focus on adherence to stale doctrine, the more they’re going to start running afoul of US Catholics. As Facebook User said earlier, that door goes both ways. Benedict might want to ask what good it would really do his church to gain perhaps a half-million disaffected Episcopals, if it resulted in the loss of a million or more Catholics tired of unresponsive and irrelevant dogma? Also, Catholic meddling stands a good chance of backfiring much more if it feeds both a defection of disaffected Catholics and a consolidation of liberal mainstream Protestants. If a 10-million member consolidated Protestant church were to emerge, friendly to women and gays, it would suddenly refocus a lot of the political fawning over “religious” voters. That wouldn’t go the way the Catholics or the Baptists want.

Too bad we can’t be honest with ourselves and wake up to read headlines that are true: “largest hate mongering cult reaches out to bigots of more liberal cult in a bid to swell their ranks and spread more hate”.

I feel so sorry for these people that have been brainwashed into doing the dirty work of the cult leaders. Benedict is a disgusting little man. Williams is trying but he leads a group fighting between outright bigotry and subtle brainwashing of cult members.

I was especially surprised to see a woman bemoaning the advance of equality in the ordination of women. Wow how self hating can one be?

Its lose-lose. Humans, please evolve beyond belief!