Once again, why must the Church seem opposed to "open debate," "balance," and "free thinking"? Simple: because Church teaching condemns what is opposed to its teaching--including homosexuality, contraception, abortion, as well as the dissent and confusion promoted by the liberal editorial bias of Reese in a publication ostensibly representing a religious order of the Church. Since the Church stands for something (orthodoxy and orthopraxy), it can't help opposing something (whatever is opposed to orthodoxy and orthopraxy).

Would it make sense for Orthodox Judaism to promote Buddhism? Would it make sense for the Unitarian Universalist Association to promite belief in the divinity of Christ? Would it make sense for the Japanese Shinto religion to promote the Muslim belief in the Prophet Mohammed? Of course not. Neither does it make sense to expect the Catholic Church to promote views inimical to her own traditional doctrines. Granted, what self-styled liberal Catholics want is to promote a revisionist re-interpretation of what "Catholicism" means. But of course they should hardly be surprised, then, when the Church resists their efforts to denature her teaching.

Associating the holocost with a Christian ethic is exactly backwards. The extermination of the Jews by the Third Reich did not flow out of Christianity, but out of a philosophy directly opposed to Christianity and all that it stands for, one introduced by Darwimism and epitomized in our country by Planned Parenthood and Margaret Sanger. The holocost owed nothing to the principles of "Christianity"; it owed everything to the principles of Margaret Sanger and "Planned Parenthood".

"We don't hate Christians," said David Fitzgerald, 40, an insurance broker and member of San Francisco Atheists. "People in this country are free to believe in whatever they want."

Nonetheless, during the Saturday night movie, the crowd booed and hissed when a photo of Pat Robertson was displayed on the screen.

(from the previous blog entry) there was a time when all of the couples sat in the round and a couple of questions were asked. The questions were about cohabitation and sex before marriage. The responses included

"I'll call you a liar if you say that you are not sleeping together before you get married"
"After all, you wouldn't buy a car without a test drive, I don't see why getting married is any different"
"We would be living together but my future father-in-law threatened to kill me if that happened"
"The everyday difficulties of life require us to live in sin"
and the gem of the evening.
"We are all sinning and know it but we know Jesus is going to forgive us anyway so what is the point"

The parable of the wheat and weeds (cf. Matt. 13:24–30, 36–43) and wheat and chaff (cf. Matt. 3:12; Luke 3:17)
Matthew 7:21–23 implies that there are many counterfeit believers
‘Strive to enter by the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able’" (Luke 13:23–24).
Jesus himself rebukes six of the seven churches of Asia he addresses. Most scholars think that the book of Revelation was written no later than A.D. 100. Yet look at all the serious problems we already observe in these apostolic churches even before the last apostle (John) died

The Church then, as now, was riddled with problems: hypocrisy, lukewarmness, heterodoxy, fornication, idolatry

“To be any more Trad, you’d have to be Jewish”

The valid material of the Eucharistic host is unadulterated wheat reduced to flour, diluted with natural water, and baked with fire.

Matt 3:12 - "His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire."

Meanwhile, many American Catholics have told the new pope in no uncertain terms that he'd better snap to it.
"All I know is, something better give," said Mark Venkman, spokesman for Lighten Up, Catholics!, an organization of sort-of Catholic laypeople who have grown disenchanted with the church the more it gets on their case. "If they're not careful, we'll stop going to church.
"Um ... I mean, on Easter and Christmas Eve, too."

Thou hast seen the measure of obedience, hear also the measure of love. Wouldest thou have thy wife obedient unto thee, as the Church is to Christ? Take then thyself the same provident care for her, as Christ takes for the Church. Yea, even if it shall be needful for thee to give thy life for her, yea, and to be cut into pieces ten thousand times, yea, and to endure and undergo any suffering whatever,-refuse it not.

Though thou shouldest undergo all this, yet wilt thou not, no, not even then, have done anything like Christ. For thou indeed art doing it for one to whom thou art already knit; but He for one who turned her back on Him and hated Him. In the same way then as He laid at His feet her who turned her back on Him, who hated, and spurned, and disdained Him, not by menaces, nor by violence, nor by terror, nor by anything else of the kind, but by his unwearied affection; so also do thou behave thyself toward thy wife.

Yea, though thou see her looking down upon thee, and disdaining, and scorning thee, yet by thy great thoughtfulness for her, by affection, by kindness, thou wilt be able to lay her at thy feet. For there is nothing more powerful to sway than these bonds, and especially for husband and wife. A servant, indeed, one will be able, perhaps, to bind down by fear; nay not even him, for he will soon start away and be gone.

But the partner of one's life, the mother of one's children, the foundation of one's every joy, one ought never to chain down by fear and menaces, but with love and good temper. For what sort of union is that, where the wife trembles at her husband? And what sort of pleasure will the husband himself enjoy, if he dwells with his wife as with a slave, and not as with a free-woman? Yea, though thou shouldest suffer anything on her account, do not upbraid her; for neither did Christ do this. (link)

That is a vital key to understanding Marian dogmas: They're always about some vital truth concerning Jesus, the nature of the Church, or the nature of the human person.

"It's a minor sin,"