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That is an awesome post. You have obviously thought deeply on the subjects you have raised. I may not be able in one post to respond to all of the many natters you have raised. Some are easy for me. Others are going to really stimulate thought. It will be apparent that my mind is less disciplined than yours appears to be. You may get the better of me on some points. I seldom concede that to others here. I will usually defer to some few of my fellow Catholics whom I regard as more scholarly or more informed than I. I also tend to be a bit wordy. I may have to write a book.

First, I am a Roman Catholic since my baptism as an infant. I attended a parish parochial school where the nuns who taught me were simply high school alumnae until 8th grade when the nun had a master's degree and was working on her doctorate. She was vastly more liberal than the rest but I and two other boys were not required, indeed were not allowed to attend her classes but had to be in the school building unsupervised. We were required to complete the basic curriculum on our own and also to read a complete list of about thirty academically or religiously relevant books. As the nun told us, your reputation precedes you, you pay no attention in class and keep one textbook after another open in your desks. The year's work takes you about three weeks then you are bored and disrupt classes for the other students. Not in my classroom and you will be working hard for a change and be tested on that expanded curriculum.

Many of the nuns told us about a great Catholic Senator in Washington who would probably become the first great Catholic president. These nuns were registered as hereditary Democrats when you could be moral and a patriot and a Democrat all at once. But they were not talking about JFK. They were talking about Senator Joseph McCarthy and asking us to tell this good news to our mommies and daddies.

Of the three of us, I and another were admitted to and graduated a Jesuit prep school. That was so long ago that our Jebbies were still quite Catholic. God's Marines is what they were called. The third guy was from a disreputable project family but he was the smartest of the three of us. He dropped out of a public high school in freshman or sophomore year and I discovered him hustling for substantial winnings in a pool hall. I have not seen him since. When we were at the end of 8th grade, his mother was arrested for prostitution.

The Jesuit order had started to change drastically for the worse when the reprehensible Pedro Arrupe was elected Superior General (1965-1983) and proceeded to ruin the order and turn it into the equivalent of Satan's Marines. There are a few truly Catholic Jesuits but very few. Arrupe was terminated by St. John Paul II. In the US, the first province to go bad (I think) was the New York province centered on Fordham University.

I then went to Fairfield University for about three semesters but the Church and the Jebbies were going nuts at that point because of the evils at Vatican II. John XXIII and Paul VI were unworthy successors to Pius XII and unworthy predecessors to St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI. We have to some extent reverted to the bad old days of 1958 to 1978 under Francis or so it seems.

I do regard the Eastern Orthodox as part of the Church although they have been in schism for about 1,000 years now since the days of Michael Celarius at Constantinople. Our differences, as I understand it, are verrry few. The Orthodox have Apostolic Succession to validate their Holy Orders. They have a legitimate and quite impressive and very reverent liturgy and, IIRC, Catholics may meet their Mass obligations by attending Orthodox Masses. I believe that the Orthodox do not regard the Roman Catholic Church as being in communion with them and I believe they do not therefore welcome us to receive the Holy Eucharist. I believe that we Catholics have no problem with the Orthodox receiving the Eucharist in our Churches. If any Catholic knows otherwise, I will defer to him or her.

IIRC, we Catholics regard only the Catholic and Orthodox clergy as capable of consecrating bread and wine and making present on the altar the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ. Holy Rollers had more dignity than some Novus Ordo priests and congregants.

Then there was the degeneracy in preaching and theology, each liberal priest acting as his own pope. The seminaries emptied. The pews emptied. Catholics who had confessed their sins weekly no longer felt moved to confess to Fr. Feelgood. They were told that their sins were not really sins, particularly in the area of birth control. This subject of post-Vatican II deforms requires major book length treatment and the books are out there if you are interested.

I tend to deny the title of Catholic to what amount to public heretics posing as Catholic. If John Kerr wants to act like a Unitarian, he should formalize it and stop calling himself Catholic. Nancy Pelosi, ditto. The late Ted Kennedy likewise. I won't repeat the entire roster of those "Catholics" whose pro-abortion actions in public life public life excommunicate them latae sententiae (automatically without further ado). We don't do any more the traditional cathedral ceremony of bell, book and candle to excommunicate people anymore. On extremely rare occasions, a bishop will excommunicate an individual and send the individual a letter so informing him or her. The only example I remember in recent years was a woman who ran Planned Parenthood and its abortion mill tried to enroll her child in a Catholic grammar school. The child was expelled because of the identity of his/her mother and the fact that the child might try to convince fellow students that the mother and Planned Barrenhood were a good person and organization respectively. The mother was excommunicated by the bishop of Providence. All too rare.

The Te+aching Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church is a gold mine of wisdom and Faith. As to "social issues," such as labor, our obligations to the poor, the sick. the elderly, etc., I would look to Pope Leo XIII's distinguished encyclical Rerum Novarum written in about 1893 which rocked the entire world with 40 tightly written pages. He was denounced as a communist and as a tool of greedy capitalists and everything in between. Many encyclicals by later popes were written by several subsequent popes to expand upon and update the teachings of Leo XIII. They include Quadragesimo Anno of Pius XI and Centissimus Anno of St. John Paul II, respectively on Rerum Novarum's 25th and 100th anniversary. That line of encyclicals is part of what makes Catholics truly Catholic if they heed them.

As to the hijinks of Vatican Ii and afterward, I would look to two documents by Pope St. Pius X (1903-1914) both published in 1907: the syllabus of errors called Lamentabile Sane and the encyclical Pascendi Domenici Gregis, generally rendered in English as On the Errors of the Modernists. He specifically excommunicated the ring leaders including Fr. George Tyrell, SJ. Th34 encyclical is an extremely worthwhile compendium of Catholic beliefs and the attack on them by the Modernist heretics. He called Modernism "the synthesis of all heresies." There was an anti-Modernist Oath and a requirement that each diocese root out the Modernist heresy ASAP and formally report to the Vatican on the progress achieved at least every three years. Much of Pius X's laudable work was gutted by his successor Benedict XV of less than happy memory. Vatican II witnessed the return of Modernism but we lacked a St. Pius X to to crack down on the heretics when they returned. The Church has beset by bitter division in the clergy and in the pews ever since.

As you will see, my response is going to be very lengthy and will have to be broken up into several or many posts. daniel1212:

I am not as young or healthy as once I was. I have been at this now for five hours and I must attend to other posts and matters. Hold your response for now because I will want to respond to whatever you post to me and that will make it hard for me to finish this response. Please be patient with this old fellow, afflicted by medical issues galore. I won't be able to continue until tomorrow evening because tomorrow is a dialysis day and I have to pick up a pair of orthopedic shoes before dialysis. Friday will be rather free other than grocery shopping and my wife will be in Michigan on an academic errand until Saturday evening. I have dialysis again on Saturday.

One more thing that I will address at greater length in a later post. My Church has taught since at least Trent that Indians in, say Nebraska, in the tenth century before there were missionaries or Bibles or sacraments available to them were not created by God to inevitably go to hell for not being baptized by water. Such an Indian who was a righteous man or woman, dying after a long and virtuous good life and believing in a Supreme Being whom they called the Great Spirit might enter heaven.

Believing that, I would be astounded to find only Catholics in heaven, if I am fortunate enough to find myself in heaven. I cannot imagine that.

I may be suffering a senior moment but I am failing to grasp the meaning of the last sentence of the first paragraph of your post. Please explain.

Vatican II was a pastoral council and not a doctrinal council. No declaration of infallibility either papal or conciliar with the public agreement of the pope was attached to the documents of that council. I am sure that I would agree with a lot of the verbiage in those documents, not all, I am not required to believe much of what the documents say. OTOH, the documents tend to repeat a lot of pr4eviously defined dogma. That is the style of such documents. They are very similar stylistically to legal briefs.

In traditionalist circles we tell each other:

Q. What was the Third Secret given by Our Lady to the three children Francisco, Jacinta and Lucia at Fatima in 1917?

A. Whatever you do, don't hold a council!

Please pray for the further restoration of my health as I will pray for whatever is important to you consistent with the will of God whom both of us serve. May God bless you and yours.

You may get the better of me on some points. I seldom concede that to others here. I will usually defer to some few of my fellow Catholics whom I regard as more scholarly or more informed than I. I also tend to be a bit wordy.

Neither you or your fellow Catholics have successfully defended the errors of Rome in the light of Scripture, but must resort to sophistry and ad hominid attacks.

I also tend to be a bit wordy.

Likewise, with substance, despite my arthritic fingers.

First, I am a Roman Catholic since my baptism as an infant.

I also was "baptized" RC as an infant by my uncle Frank, a priest. But go find one record of infants being baptized in Scripture, including by sprinkling. Considering the critical weight Catholicism places on this, surely the Holy Spirit would provide at least one clear example of infants being baptized, or a command to do so.

But instead the Spirit clearly teaches that repentance and wholehearted faith is required for baptism, (Acts 2:38; 8:36,37) which infants are incapable of doing, nor it is needed since one is not accountable for simply having a sinful nature, which does not enter heaven.

In addition, out of the many accounts of baptism the closest you can get is simply a few brief statements of whole households being baptized. Which Caths must insist had to include infants, yet where more details are provided in baptism accounts then it testifies to the subjects of baptism being able to hear and respond.

Rather, they are many and include substantial conflicts, and the hope of full reconciliation without serious compromise is a fantasy . Thus you have those from both sides warning of the dangers of communion with each other.

Then there was the degeneracy in preaching and theology, each liberal priest acting as his own pope....I tend to deny the title of Catholic to what amount to public heretics posing as Catholic....The late Ted Kennedy likewise.

Then since the pope even courteously treated Teddy K as a member in good standing, then it seems you also are acting as your own pope.

The Te+aching Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church is a gold mine of wisdom and Faith.

And heresy, and what constitutes magisterial teaching is subject dispute and interpretation, and contradiction .

My Church has taught since at least Trent that Indians in, say Nebraska, in the tenth century before there were missionaries or Bibles or sacraments available to them were not created by God to inevitably go to hell for not being baptized by water.

It just teaches both that all it considers "heretics" shall end up in the lake of fire, and that such are separated brethren. In the past this could mean being separated by the sword of men. Unlike unchanging Scripture under the New Covenant, obedience to the pope can mean different things in different centuries.

Believing that, I would be astounded to find only Catholics in heaven, if I am fortunate enough to find myself in heaven. I cannot imagine that.

Turn to the Lord Jesus as a damned and destitute sinner, with nothing to merit eternal life but only meriting Hell, + trust Him to save you on His account, by His sinless shed blood, which faith decision is showed by being baptized under water and following Him according to Scripture as being supreme, which premise the NT church began under, contra Catholicism.

That is Francisology, but Christians also held to a shared morality with the Jews of the 1st c., yet those who preach a false gospel are accused, which Rome does and is, though some within of simply faith know God, and if I care about souls and Truth then i must seek their salvation and contend for the Truth, for the glory of God, and by His grace.

I may be suffering a senior moment but I am failing to grasp the meaning of the last sentence of the first paragraph of your post. Please explain.

I was responding to your priority goal of standing "shoulder to shoulder fighting the good fight against our actual common enemies for the wide cornucopia of beliefs that we DO share." We can oppose sodomite marriage as do Mormons, but not as forsaking contending for the Truth of Scripture which divides us, and warns of unholy alliances. Roosevelt was even wrong in helping the Russians fight Germany. Short term gain, long term loss. Give them humanitarian aid and enough help for self-defense but not as an advancing army. Linking up with the devil's disciples to fight Hell's angels with you does not work for good.

Vatican II was a pastoral council and not a doctrinal council... I am not required to believe much of what the documents say

Once more it seems you are playing pope.

You have no right any more to bring up the distinction between the doctrinal and the pastoral that you use to support your acceptance of certain texts of Vatican Council II and your rejection of others. It is true that the matters decided in any Council do not all call for an assent of the same quality; only what the Council affirms in its 'definitions' as a truth of faith or as bound up with faith requires the assent of faith. Nevertheless, the rest also form a part of the SOLEMN MAGISTERIUM of the Church, to be trustingly accepted and sincerely put into practice by every Catholic." (Paul VI, Epistle Cum te to Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, 11 Oct, 1976, published in Notitiae, No. 12, 1976.)

Hold your response for now because I will want to respond to whatever you post to me and that will make it hard for me to finish this response.... Friday will be rather free

I will wait until late Friday.