AP-NORC poll details rift between lay Catholics and bishops

[regnaD kciN]

8. Did your "Catholic upbringing" occur before JPII?

I wouldn’t be surprised, because I attended church at a Dominican Priory in the mid-‘70s, and they were quite progressive and social justice-oriented. It was once John Paul II took over that there was a drastic change, both as he issued encyclicals that took the Church back to the pre-Vatican II days and, possibly more importantly, made a point of appointing hardline conservatives as bishops in any place deemed “too liberal.” What we see now in the U.S. hierarchy, and even at the parish leadership level in many cases, is the result of decades of ultratraditionalist leadership from JPII and Benedict XVI.