Why Stay Catholic?

Gary Wills appeared on The Colbert Report last week, promoting his book, Why Priests?: A Failed Tradition. I agreed with everything he said, and it made me wonder, Why is he still Catholic?

In fact, I wonder that a lot. I met someone recently who said she wept when Ratzinger was elected pope — wept tears of sorrow. She now hopes the next pope will be more progressive. And all I wanted to say was, “You know, you can switch denominations.”

I get that there’s more to being Catholic than the doctrine and the hierarchy — for a lot of people there’s family and even ethnic ties involved. So I’m wondering if some of you readers can enlighten me: If you disagree with just about everything the Vatican does and says, why stay Catholic?