While there are plenty of self-identified Catholics on FR who buy into evolution, I don't really know of any who see it as a defining issue: i.e. "if you don't believe this silly notion then you cannot be considered a Christian."
And there are plenty of Protestants on FR who buy into it as well.
Or (say again) by calling them "Cletus," "Billy Bob's Glory Barn," and "brain dead bibliolators" while swooning at the "simple childlike faith" of illiterate peasants who believe some saint lives in a local well.
I rarely see a thread that begins with such epithets - what I see are threads that begin as an insulting challenge to Catholicism and then some Catholic posters, forgetting their obligation under Matthew 5:44, indulging in equally disedifying stupid taunts of the kind you mention.
And I know that you've definitely noticed that there is a mutual contempt here between urban FReepers and rural FReepers that goes beyond religion.
So . . . condemning Protestantism from the Right is a no-no for Catholics? It can only be condemned in the vocabulary of an Ivy League liberal?
Catholics should not be in the business of condemning Protestantism - for the reasons that (1) it's not a particularly Christian attitude to adopt and (2) there is much of value to be found in Protestantism despite its fatal flaws - no matter how much FR Protestants tempt us to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
They don't make it a necessity of chr*stianity, but they most certainly do make at least an openness to evolution a distinguishing (and therefore mandatory) aspect of Catholicism, as you and I know right well. How many Catholic articles, publications, or Bishops' statements insist that "we Catholics do not interpret the Bible literally," or that total Biblical inerrancy is a concept with no roots in the chr*stian past that was invented out of whole cloth by "certain Protestant traditions?" You're my hero, but you and I both know that on this issue I am right. And at least two FReepers criticize me for my "mania" of defending the Bible, implying that it's not a Catholic thing to do so--therefore a distinguishing mark of Catholicism.
I rarely see a thread that begins with such epithets - what I see are threads that begin as an insulting challenge to Catholicism and then some Catholic posters, forgetting their obligation under Matthew 5:44, indulging in equally disedifying stupid taunts of the kind you mention.
My friend--I see them. And every time I do I think of my mother and my beloved deceased relatives who did not have the "good fortune" to be born Irish or Italian or Aztec. And it makes my blood boil.
Catholics should not be in the business of condemning Protestantism - for the reasons that (1) it's not a particularly Christian attitude to adopt and (2) there is much of value to be found in Protestantism despite its fatal flaws - no matter how much FR Protestants tempt us to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I'm sorry, but you're wrong. Protestantism has no more in common with Catholicism or Orthodoxy than either does with mormonism. Protestantism and Catholicism can both be false, but they cannot both be true.
Catholics say "Protestants are chr*stians" because of certain creedal commonalities. Yet as you know Fundamentalist Protestantism is not a creedal religion at all. What FPism calls "salvation" is what Catholicism condemns as "presumption." In fact, this "presumption" is the whole point of Fundamentalist Protestant chr*stianity and why Catholics are not and cannot be chr*stians in its view. No assurance? No presumption? Why did J*sus die, then? Apparently only to but an end to the Torah, because under the "new covenant" one's life is as much a tightrope walk over the "pits of hell" as it ever was under the "old covenant"--indeed, it is more so. This is the "good news?" I'm sorry, there's nothing "good" about it. Either a means was created to insure salvation or else nothing happened and the Torah (and Noachide Law) is still in full force for its original purpose.
Furthermore, you are missing my point that Catholics condemn Protestantism (or at least Protestants) all the time--only they do so in leftist liberal terms. Is this the unchanging attitude of the unchanging Church? Did the Spanish inquisition condemn "heretics" as "intolerant bigots?" Anyone who can condemn Protestantism from the Left can condemn it from the Right--unless one is a Leftist.
And yet again, there is absolutely no difference between the Catholic double standard that sees Fundamentalist devotion to Genesis as ignorance and Mexican peasant devotion to Juan Diego as beautiful and the liberal double standard that condemns Genesis while exalting the aboriginal "dream time" (or the qur'an). No difference whatsoever.
I don't believe you can understand this. I have come to believe only someone who has experienced it can understand it, and that pretty much makes any attempt to explain it useless.
Wideawake, I love you dearly, but on this matter you are wrong.
Why not? Past popes did just that.