I'm a "resting" Catholic, who has found little in the Catholic church's recent statements to tempt me back. While I don't expect centuries of tradition to bow to my views, nothing I have seen of Ratzinger feels like it will be calling me back in the near future.
On the tasteless/old person/will he die soon front, I think I excelled myself last night. PIL's are staying for a couple of days. They were interested in the news in a non-Catholic world affairs way. Even they (not exactly liberal, but have recently learned not to say in public "Its such a shame" about their friends son who married a foreigner) thought he might not be wholly good news. Looking for a bright side I said, well, he's really old, so he's more of a stopgap hopefully. He probably won't be around for more than 5-7 years. I certainly can't imagine him being here, let alone compos mentis in 10 years time. He'll definitely be dead by then. Only when I went to bed I realised they were exactly the same age as him (79) . Think it would have been more tactful to have said something about as assassin's bullet, in the circumstances