Dante and religion

Develop of the following topics in your response paper: In Cantos 7 and 19 in particular (but also disseminated in other Cantos) we see Dante's condemnation of the sins of Avarice and Simony, and the strong connection he draws between those particular sins and the role he expects the Church to have in the moral, social, and political order of his times. Draw a parallel, either by analogy or by contrast between the idea of the established church we can glimpse in the Cantos studied so far and the idea of institutionalized religion in the United States, bringing some positive and negative examples as proof of your argumentation, also in the form of published sources.