Dateline: above the garage in Portsmouth RI, 4 April 2005

Pair of good stories on the choice ahead:

1) "Facing Tough Choices, Church Opens Rites for Pope: A Global Agenda; Concerns Over the Rich and the Poor, Islam and Technology," by Laurie Goodstein, NYT, 4 April 05, p. A1.

2) "In Changing World, Church Faces Choice Over Pope's Role: John Paul's Charisma Made Up For His Hands-Off Style; Insider or Non-European?," by Gabriel Kahn, WSJ, 4 April 05, p. A1.

WSJ story is more about management, while NYT's is more about strategy.

WSJ goes on and on about how to manage a religion that's now so much more southern in orientation (about a 1/4 billion in Europe and North America, about 3/4 billion in Latin America, Africa, and Asia).

Real crux comes in this question posed by NYT piece:

"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 materialismthat John Paul II said was the curse of capitalism?"

That, my friends, is a huge question, because it speaks to whether the church is going to support globalization in a Go Fast mode (thinking of the Gap's crushing needs) or continue to criticize it in a Go Slow manner (more the Core vision and especially Old Core Europe's perspective).