in my mind, I was preparing a letter to my bishop.
this will probably never get written, but it did make me consider more objectively my feeling about the role of the roman church and my place in it:
its fundamental inadequacy to the task allotted to it and the ways in which it fails on a daily basis; the way in which God cannot be restricted by church etiquette and law; the way in which the spirit of God has exploded beyond the 'boundaries' of the church in ways that it can still scarcely bear to recognise; the way in which it's own attempts at integrity are gradually destroying it because it fails to grasp the one essential:
the need to let go (?)
having said all that I know that the roman church has an essential part to play and does act in good faith because of all those good people in it who give themselves to God on a daily basis and I will always be, myself, a member of this roman church because it is the closest that I can get to the 'original' one, although I also know that its own ever-lengthening history tends to carry it further and further away from that 'original' understanding of itself.
all around it churches spring up in attempts to mirror back at the roman church its own fatal flaws and sometimes it listens and mostly it doesnt.
the one essential gift of the roman church to the world, I believe, is its simplicity, which even centuries of encyclicals, theology and deeply flawed leaders have not erased: the mass. this is the great gift of the roman church to the world and it is one that has become my treasure.
to me, all the talk about the 'real presence' is irrelevant because I know what it means anyway. jeshua (I know this sounds eccentric, but it's somehow important*) said take and eat and that's what we do.

*it just seems more and more important for us in the west to recognise the jewishness of jesus.