I wrote the two previous posts before listening to Ross Douthat's excellent lecture on the Crisis of Conservative Catholicism.
He makes a good case against naive hope in the "biological solution," based on the assumed sterility of liberal Catholicism. Liberal Catholicism has well-established institutions and a large constituency among involved, mass-going Catholics. The movement to reconcile the Church to modernity has been around for a while and is likely to continue to appeal to large numbers of Catholics for the foreseeable future.
The truth is that the Church is enormous and, at least as measured by adherence to Humanae Vitae, which is the main instrument driving the biological solution, conservative Catholicism is actually negligible--practically a rounding error. We're large enough to make an impact on the priesthood, because priests come from a small number of the most devout families, we're still almost non-existent among laity. I don't think we yet have the critical mass to reverse the trend toward increasing liberalism among Catholics driven by the dying off of Catholics formed before the Council.
