At the end of the second thousand years of Christianity Pope John Paul II urged the Catholic Church to look candidly at the “sinfulness of her children, recalling all those times in history when they departed from the spirit of Christ and his Gospel and, instead offering to the world the witness of life inspired by the value of faith, indulged in ways of thinking and acting which were truly forms of counter-witness and scandal.” This essay explores some of the moments in history to which the Pope points, for the purpose of better understanding where we find ourselves today as the result of those past failures and then to try to discern what needs to be done now.