text: Why does Protestant North America so consistently and so overwhelmingly outperform Catholic Central and South America? Because we inherited a lot of good ideas and habits from the Puritans: direct accountability of the individual human to God, mistrust of pomp and pageantry, and insistence on honesty, modesty and accountability in civil authorities.
  
  The Catholic Church needs immigrants who accept its ideas and habits: belief that God appoints certain people his representatives and everybody else is ontologically obliged to obey them; that He is indifferent to the prayers of people who don't wear lace and velvet; that He forgives sins only if the lace and velvet are pacified with flattery and donations; that He is content that lace and velvet should be corrupt, self-serving and debauched; and that He is irate when ordinary people object to it.
  
  It is not the Church that needs immigrants from Latin America. It's the lace and velvet.