Thank you, yolland, for your well-researched response.
It should stop the bashing (anti-catholocism?) that we've experienced in this thread.
I am no big person, but I have done volunteer work with several organizations involved with Global AIDS and extreme poverty for years, including those that Bono is involved in.
I have followed EVERY speech that Bono has ever made on the AIDS pandemic and have seen him on three separate occasions (actually saw 5 separate talks that he has given on the AIDS pandemic) and he has NEVER criticized the Catholic church - in fact he has praised the Pope for his continued stance for debt cancellation and greater attention to the needs of the poor.
What Bono was criticizing in "Crumbs" was the incredible wall of resistance that he found in the more conservative branches of Christianity (yes - evangelicals) when he started his AIDS campaign several years ago (at least up to 2002).
THANKS TO GOD AND TO BONO'S PERSISTENCE, that attitude is changing amongst the more conservative branches of Christianity but IT WAS THERE. And that is what prompted Bono to express his original anger and disbelief in this song.
If you followed Bono's Heart of America tour as closely as I did in Dec. 2002, you would remember the quotations of Bono during that tour and his disappointment (ie, disgust) that conservative Christians at that point were resistant to Bono's ideas about helping those affected by that AIDS pandemic.
He actually openly chided a gathering in Louisville who had given Agnes Nyamayarwo a chilly reception due to the fact that her husband had given her the HIV virus.
I encourage everyone to know the facts before they make such broad-brushed comments on Bono as I have seen in this thread and others.
THE GOAL IS SOUL....