Quo vadis, Catholics?

What a misfortune that the Catholic Church is hamstrung by its own conservative doctrines on women, gays and birth control. This organization run by a priestly class of cross-dressers happens to be the biggest charitable institution on the planet, but how much charity can it dispense when it's against condoms, the greatest defense against the spread of AIDS?
4 out of every 10 Catholics are South American, and with those countries moving sharply to the left, perhaps Liberation Theology might revive itself again after the late Pope stamped it out. "One question that the leadership of the church has to ask itself," said Christopher M. Bellitto, academic editor at Paulist Press, a large Catholic publishing house, "is will it invest most of its time and money and energy in what we used to call the third world, or will it try to pull Europe and North America back from the materialism that John Paul II said was the curse of capitalism?" In the U.S. the Catholic Church is going to campaign against the death penalty, which will fly in the face of the Bush "culture of life." As the Pope has said: "A sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil." Read the Catholic nun and author of "Dead Man Walking," Helen Prejean, on this. Thank God for that. The NY Times has a good article on the challenges facing a new Pope.