A different perspective

The Churches perspective of the world is vastly different than our own nation. It can speak of how it dealt with the Emperors of Rome. It watched the Huns ravage Europe and then recede back to Asia. It's perspective on Islam is as an institution that was already 600 years old when Mohammed walked the earth as a child. From it's point of view Western Civilization is not a class to take, but what it forged with the Bible and a sword. It held Europe as a state and viewed kings as vassels. And it gave birth to the University system of higher education.
In 1945 Stalin was asked what he thought the role of the Pope would be after WWII. Stalin said mockingly, "The Pope? How many divisions does he have?" Yet the Church helped destroy Stalin's conquests without lifting a single gun. So when we get frusterated at the Church as an institution that is inflexable and dogmatic, we need to remember that it is the ultinmate survivalist. Empires have come and gone, whole cultures have been born, lived, and died, while the Church went merrily onward.
I am not trying to paint a utopian picture of the Church. It has been responsible for all sorts of not-at-all nice things. And it has splintered, and cracked, and convulsed throught the millenia. It will probably continue to do so on into the future; like a dividing cell, growing the organism by replication and evolutionary variation.
I have all sorts of advice for a new Pope. Let the clergy marry, birth control is a good thing for the third world (don't worry there'll still be loads of Catholics). Counter Evangelical Protestantism by combining the antiquity of the Mass in all its incence, and chanting, with modernity of music and speach. Use the Cathedral as a guide. Remember it was the first multimedia religious extravaganza. There was nothing else like them anywhere in the world.
But of course the Church will do what it is going to do. To us its actions may seem foolhardy. Like when the decided to send monks into lands ruled by bloodthirsty pegan warriors. Or even before that when, after having their Savior executed by Rome, deciding to go to Rome itself to preach. Or even before that when James and John gave up a perfectly good fishing careers to follow a homeless man. Some how I have faith that the Church will survive.