VI

I don't disagree with you, Amy, unless you are asserting -- as John Paul II was not -- that the teaching authority of the Church is located elsewhere than in the college of bishops with the Holy Father at its head.  Teaching, ruling, and santifying are the threefold munera of those in communion with the Holy See in the apostolic succession.  Those who would teach need to listen, else they won't know what their hearers' questions are.  Yes, it's arguable that the Magisterium in recent years hasn't always been good at listening.  But, I would suggest, the heart of the problem, which I wouldn't want to write off as mere skeleton, is the growing denial that the Church through the Pope can speak definitively.  "Dissent" from what is defined by the Church to be believed by the faithful includes an element of tragedy; if it doesn't, then we cannot affirm that the Holy Spirit prevents, at this level, the Church's slipping into error.  If I had to climb out on a limb and say which is the greater problem for Catholics today, the Magisterium's failure to listen or the faithful's relativizing even of the Church's power authentically to communicate the deposit of faith, I think you'd know where to find me.  But, unlike the Church on matters de fide, I could be wrong.