An unnecessarily long article in Time Magazine, (2010, May 27) actually hints that the RCC may have seen its final days.

Opinion is finally swinging away from the defeatist assumption that Joe the Rat is teflon-coated.

Speaking to TIME, a senior Vatican official foresees immense consequences for the entire church. “History comes down to certain key episodes,” he says. “We’re facing one of those moments now.“

Their final quote is of especial interest:

A conservative website is circulating a prophecy uttered by a 42-year-old Catholic theologian in 1969, amid the turmoil of that year of radicalism and barricades. The priest envisioned a post-imperial papacy, shorn of wealth and pretenses of earthly power. “From today’s crisis, a church will emerge tomorrow that will have lost a great deal,” he said on German radio. “She will be small and, to a large extent, will have to start from the beginning. She will no longer be able to fill many of the buildings created in her period of great splendor. Because of the smaller number of her followers, she will lose many of her privileges in society. Contrary to what has happened until now, she will present herself much more as a community of volunteers … As a small community, she will demand much more from the initiative of each of her members and she will certainly also acknowledge new forms of ministry and will raise up to the priesthood proven Christians who have other jobs … It will make her poor and a church of the little people … All this will require time. The process will be slow and painful.“

Guess who said that in 1969?

Believe it or not, it was the current Pope, predicting his own, and the RCC’s, demise! So, he is infallible after all!