Robert,

Thanks for your articulate account regarding the RCC, and I am basically in accord with your views.

The following recent Harvard Magazine article further analyzes the science vs religion issue. E. O. Wilson doesn't want rapprochement; he divides the arena into Abrahamic monotheistic religion / political behaviorism / scientific humanism:

Darwin, Etc.

It seems to me that spiritual matters, aside from salon chatter, institutional monologic, and poetic efflorescence, are destined to take on the character of exact science, in the sense of the original impulses of Gautama Buddha. No, I am not espousing historic Buddhism as the "true" religion, but I am looking at the essentially experimental method.