I have also come across a very interesting paper on evolutionary neurotheology that might also be interesting to readers here. It is titled Evolutionary Neurotheology and The Varieties of Religious Experience. It basically integrates neuroscience with Jungian psychology and behavioral anthropology. Here is a link to it http://www.cs.utk.edu/~mclennan/papers/EvolutionaryNeurotheology-long.htm

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/b4377580-15cd-11da-8085-00000e2511c8.html

Of course, there will be consumers who don't like the taste of "Catholic Classic", but the loyal core who remain with the company are likely to be energized by the focus on core values ("that ol' time religion"). Thus, the company may be more profitable with a smaller market share.

If one believes (some moderns don't) that holiness, as ultimate sanity, is both desirable and not always self-evident in its means, then engaging robust tradition on the subject is as indispensable as a good teacher in studying tap-dance or calculus. The Deposit of Faith can seem rigid because it is a practice-and-instruction course of transformation, not a set of condo bylaws. As they say of Anglo-American law, it's mostly a seamless web. The metaphor suggests caution in pulling threads or reweighting the system.

And there are continuing arguments, of course, as to what rips the web, and what is an indifferent dew drop or dust speck. And what, being clumsily explained or evilly practiced — "infallibility," "indulgences," "inquisition" — causes people to stumble badly enough to tear the web.

Incidentally, regarding "choice," that modern-and-beyond touchstone, the idea of the religious life is to reach and share robust happiness and real freedom of choice beyond conditioned and evolved instincts, red-at-some-level in tooth and claw, and the tyranny of pervasive fear and trivial-if-insistent desire.

Post-Marxist analysis would hold it's all about power. But regarding DIY religion, the Pope seems to me like Hermes or Cartier confronting sidewalk-vendor knockoffs. He is convinced his product holds up, and is worth what it costs. He suspects theirs doesn't.

I'd also like to make a point on: "I understand that in matters of religious belief and doctrine, the correct interpretation is whatever authorities say it is". While orthodoxy might tow this party line it is quite wrong on many fronts. Christianity is based on a text. Islam is based on a text. Judiasm is based on a text. For each respective religion the text is the baseline. I think in all the above cases the accepted orthodoxy has drastically shifted from the historical orthodoxy of those who wrote the texts (Christianity perhaps the most deviant).

I'll share with you one of my favorite quotes to show just how far it has come:
"Moreover, I pointed out to you that some who are called Christians, but are godless, impious heretics, teach doctrines that are in every way blasphemous, atheistical, and foolish. But that you may know that I do not say this before you alone, I shall draw up a statement, so far as I can, of all the arguments which have passed between us; in which I shall record myself as admitting the very same things which I admit to you. For I choose to follow not men or men's doctrines, but God and the doctrines[delivered] by Him. For if you have fallen in with some who are called Christians, but who do not admit this[truth], and venture to blaspheme the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; who say there is no resurrection of the dead, and that their souls, when they die, are taken to heaven; do not imagine that they are Christians,…" – Justin Martyr Dialouge With Trypho a Jew 2nd Century AD.

While Justin was quite correct, based on the text of the Bible, concerning the destination fo the deceased, he was, however, misled on his ideas of the divinity of Jesus – mostly based on his former Greek philosophical underpinnings.