Video Meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor

Innerestin'

From Times review of John Cornwell's "The Pontiff in Winter", on Pope John Paul's difficulty in reconciling freedom and order:

Cornwell's view of the conflict between top-down ''fundamentalism'' and bottom-up ''pluralism'' is unduly Manichaean. But he is right to see that the church now faces a choice between schism (if it goes too liberal) and a '' 'remnant' catacomb church'' (if it goes too conservative). That this tension worsened during the papacy of John Paul II does not necessarily prove the pope was at fault. It may mean only that Christianity has proved a much harder faith to practice ''moderately'' than both its defenders and its detractors used to assume.