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Penn.

I have never met an Ivy Leaguer that did not think he/she was very superior to us Flyover Folks. But it took a long contentious campaign to finally draw it out of Mr. Cruz.

Donald Trump went to an Ivy League school, as he himself has touted. It is why he has "all the best words."

It makes me laugh to watch. For so long I saw mockery of Ron Paul’s supposedly loony, fawning followers who always argued that he won every debate even though he would have only answered two or three questions. But, at least he did answer some questions. Trump didn’t even show up, and yet here are his own devotees on this very site arguing that he won. It really is quite risible.

It's quite true that the priest or other distributor of communion has no idea of the state of the soul of someone who presents himself in the communion line. Unless it's a (very rare) case of a notorious public sinner (and even they may have gone to confession recently), the distributor has to assume that the person presenting himself is in the state of grace.

As far as I can recall from recent or semi-recent events, i.e. the lesbian Buddhist incident comes to mind, priests are basically not to refuse communion regardless of what they know or how public the sin is. From what I have read priests are expected to give communion to any who come up to receive, and that makes these arguments a bit semantic, at best. I mean, the Church officially "admits" all to communion, and so how can that concept be raised now in terms of divorced people. Encourage, as you say, maybe, but that is really not much of a theological concept.

the Church reaffirms her practice, which is based upon Sacred Scripture, of not admitting to Eucharistic Communion divorced persons who have remarried.

I had to smile reading this phrase from 1980. Maybe then it meant something, but does this kind of thing have any relevance today? It isn't like the Church controls admittance to communion in any way. The default approach is that the sin is on the person receiving, and so it is up to them to decide if they can or cannot come up for communion. From what I read priests are generally constrained from saying no, which really makes this whole argument moot. It also, I think, reveals the real attitude the Church has towards the sacraments.

No it isn't. It's calling this guy who somehow made it to pope out for what he really is. Would you consider our criticism of Obama "president bashing"?

Actually, given that the pope is the head of the Church, and the president is the head of America (at least in a sense), I think a better analogy would be to suggest criticism of Obama is "America bashing."

Heterosexual marriage is the ONLY marriage recognized by God, and reaffirmed by Jesus as God’s original intention for male-female union.

Excuse me, but that sounds very un-secular. How can one support the notion that secular marriage trumps religious definitions, and then at the same time argue that religious definitions supersede secular ones? Sorry, but that just doesn't work for me.

At issue is Catholic annulment of THAT God-ordained union, not unions which are but fantasies in the mind of perverse men and women.

You know what seems funny to me? That when somebody brings up Catholic annulments around a Protestant they suddenly get real big on the indissolubility of marriage. It is all about "What God has joined" and so on. But, I never hear about that regarding divorce courts. Where is all the horror about secular courts ending marriages? Where is the all the defensiveness about "that God-ordained union" when people decide to just end it and go their separate ways? I don't hear any outrage that courts, and even spouses themselves, think they can sever what God joined, but let the Church define what constitutes her own sacraments, and then it is all about indissolubility. That is amusing to me.

The RC church, through its annulment process (avg. $500-$1000), declares secular and non-RC Christian marriages BETWEEN A MAN AND A WOMAN illegitimate.

A marriage is either a legal marriage or it is not, and it is either a sacramental marriage or not. It can be "legitimate" in either case depending on what you are talking about, or what your priorities are. Are you really trying to tell me that if the Catholic Church says your marriage is not a sacrament in the Catholic Church that you feel threatened by that? And, as an American, are you really arguing that the Catholic Church should be required to define any legal marriage as also being a sacrament? Is your position actually that your own church's rites and definitions should be bound to civil law as well?

Your introduction of gay perversion is a not the issue.

No, I merely responded to what you argued. You stated "...a secular or non-RC marriage is a legitimate marriage. The first institution was marriage - not the church, RC or otherwise." Secular marriage is gay marriage. There is no avoiding that. If you argue that secular marriage supersedes church marriage, and you have, then you must support the legitimacy, to use your phrase, of gay marriage. There is no getting around it.

If I understood JesusIsLord correctly, yes. He was speaking of that instituted by God the Father and reaffirmed by Jesus: “For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

That doesn't sound like "secular marriage" to me.

What the RC church fails to acknowledge is that a secular or non-RC marriage is a legitimate marriage. The first institution was marriage - not the church, RC or otherwise. That's the point that's missed!

Okay, so secular marriage is legitimate and church definitions are not. And that would mean, in this secular country, that gay marriage is the legitimate definition of marriage, and that traditional definitions such as those espoused by various churches would be illegitimate. And, therefore if a church says that a gay couple are not married, they are then attempting to nullify a legal marriage, which is evil. Correct? Am I missing something in this secular marriage is legitimate argument?

Paglia is not a candidate, and I am not saying that I would vote for her. But I did like reading her opinions in this because I think they reveal things that other people won’t let you in on. And, when not talking directly about political opinions she does bring forward some very sound criticisms and ideas about the issues and candidates. Even when she is talking ideologically, or saying something tinged strongly with such, she is still interesting and entertaining. At least she was in this interview. But, no, I would not vote for her.

Paglia gets some things right and many things wrong... In her favor is she's no totalitarian leftist like most Democrats today. And she was fair-minded describing Scott Walker. But I won't take her pronouncements on politics too seriously.

Personally, I enjoyed reading this, and the other parts of the interview, because I do think she gives some valuable insights and commentary. Her ideas about Hillary are a bit surprising, and very direct, and even her criticisms of the Republicans are worth reading because they can show some of what the other side is seeing in them. Good to know. And unlike many on the Left she seems less intent on giving a "politicised" point of view, with a view to flattering her own perspective. She may be very wrong on a lot, but I do get a sense of intellectual honesty in her answers, and that makes her interesting.

There was evil and inexcusable acts done by both sides and it’s always a power and control thing. And frequently, religion is used for the justification of it.

Yes, always very human motives, e.g. power, politics, etc, and when something can be used to support the action, especially religion, then it will be used. But, as we can see in the person of Henry VIII himself, when religion gets in the way, it is thrown aside and remade in a way which will no longer be a problem. Religion may matter to this or that person, but politics usually matters more.

And it’s WRONG when done by both sides, and both sides need to admit their own culpability in it.

Well, for me personally, I think everybody who did these things has been dead for ages, and their culpability went to the grave with them. I don't really care about culpability in things like the Inquisition, or Elizabeth I's actions, or whoever. They did nothing to me, and so that is that. I really only care about historical accuracy, and that usually means not looking to blame churches, since they rarely really do these things or drive them directly. Politics is the problem, then and now.

It is like the IRA. A while back, when that was all over the news, reporters and people would go on and on about the Catholics vs the Protestants. Complete crap. That had nothing to do with anything. It was Irish vs the English. The republican movement was, from very early on, multi-faith. Many significant Protestants were involved from the start. They wanted the English rulers out just as the Catholics did. Anyone remember Parnell?

If the tired old Catholic/Protestant hatred trope were really the truth then there would have been no wars between countries before the Reformation. Oops. Not quite. Plenty of Catholic kings have fought other Catholics, and some even fought on the side of Protestants later on. People go to war because they will get something out of it, and people persecute other people for the same reason. Governments, and other similar human organizations, just honestly have never been that pious, ever. Catholic kings and queens have been corrupt and warlike, and so have Protestants. As much as we want to think our churches just turn people around and make them perfect saints, and so any future conflict can only be some other group's fault, it just isn't true.

It is all political. That is what motivates kings and parliaments, not religion. And when it looks like religion that usually means some politician is using faith to justify what he wanted to do politically. So, we should stop blaming each other, and our mutual churches, and start blaming the politicians.

So many Catholics don’t recall the Spanish Inquisition.

I’m okay with the deaths of those Catholics because Catholics were okay with the deaths of those in Spain.

These kinds of discussions always strike me as a bit off. I am not saying that this side or that side did not do something wrong, or that Galileo wasn't mistreated, or that the Inquisition wasn't bad (perhaps horrible), or that Henry VIII wasn't a lecherous murderer, but it all misses the point a bit. People want so badly to see everything as a religious issue, and in so doing completely forget that they are also just people. History is not moved entirely by faith, or even largely in all honesty. In most events like these politics is the real mover rather than religious belief itself, and this is applicable to both sides. People kill people because they feel threatened by them, and when your religion is also part of the state apparatus, as it was most often back then, that means people will die for preaching "heresy." It happens, and religion is involved, but it hardly means that Protestantism teaches people to kill Catholics, or vice versa. It is just people doing what people do, and we really should keep that in mind. After all, all those Protestants who were killing Catholics in England under Henry VIII and his children were often born and raised as Catholics, and the Catholics returned the favour at the earliest opportunity.

I find it amusing that under this pope who wants mercy for all habitual public sinners none can be shown for a journalist who prints a document early. And it is also quite interesting that the Vatican is able to react so quickly to correct this action, unlike clarifying repeated heretical quotes attributed to the pope by a journalist who is not only not punished, but is given more interviews to print instead. Very strange that.

As for the binding force of these documents [Encyclicals] it is generally admitted that the mere fact that the pope should have given to any of his utterances the form of an encyclical does not necessarily constitute it an ex-cathedra pronouncement and invest it with infallible authority.

That is speaking of infallibility, not magisterium. The Ordinary Magisterium is not itself necessarily infallible, and it would be to this authority which most such encyclicals would belong.

Nowhere does the Catholic Church use Official WORSHIP OF Saints or Mary.

Actually, the problem with this is that words have changed meaning, or at least been adjusted, and the Church is very, very old. At one time one could have said that we worshiped saints, but at that time the word did not mean quite what most use it for today. That is why we still speak of a saint having a cult, another word which has shifted some. We adore God, and worship (which would be to say revere using more modern words) saints. Adoration is much higher than worship. What is strange, to me, is that most people today will quail at saying they worship their children, but will tell everyone how they adore them. Talk about reversing the meanings entirely.

Whenever we go to a departed saint for something instead of directly to Jesus we violate Scriptures like 2 Timothy 2:5 and John 14:6, since we only have one designated mediator . . .

This was a very interesting quote too, as it entirely misunderstands what a mediator is, scripturally speaking. The word 'mediator' refers to one who mediates a covenant between God and man, which no Catholic has ever thought any saint has done. If this were the real meaning of the word then asking your friends to pray for you would also be forbidden as it would still be looking for a mediator. Fortunately, the Bible tells us again and again to pray for one another, and therefore is fully in support of intercession, which is what prayers to the saints are about. Not mediation.

This is why so many people flow out of the Church every year. Churchmen are so busy trying to make her relevant that she is increasingly becoming anything but.

Stewart demonstrates a basic wisdom in his statement that "It was not because this was a gay couple they objected, it was not because they were going to be celebrating some kind of marriage, it was the actual words on the cake they objected to, they found them offensive." He recognized that discrimination, as applied legally, is about persons, not ideas, which is how I have argued businesses should operate here in America. People cannot refuse to sell cakes to white supremacists just because of who they are, but they could refuse to write something bigoted on a cake, and I think any court would defend that principle. Focus on the words and not on the people and you may stand a chance. Sadly, though, that did not hold true in N. Ireland, but I would like to think we have still not managed to fall as far as they have over there, at least not yet.

The majority of Eastern Catholic Churches administer the sacraments of initiation at the same time. Only the Latin Church has doled them out over a period of years. . The "don't understand" argument is quite ridiculous. We all remember that question in our Baltimore Catechism: "What is a Sacrament?" R: A Sacrament is an outward sign instituted by Christ to give grace. (although mine said 'conveys grace'). We need those graces to stay on course throughout our life.

I believe that the Eastern method in this case is a very good indicator of the validity and ancientness of this practice. The Latin practice is obviously the aberrant one and so needs to be amended. There simply isn't any good reason to continue with it, beyond making sure many people are deprived of God's graces just when they are confronted by many obstacles which create a need for it.

I must admit, though, that I have no memory of the Baltimore Catechism, having been reared in the Anglican tradition. The phrase which always returns to my ear is, therefore, the standard one there, along the lines of "an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace." If parsed carefully it might betray its anti-Catholic bias just a bit, but it flows rather nicely, doesn't it? That is one thing that was always good in the older Anglican rites and services, the English. I still pine for the last response of the Sursum Corda as used in the traditional Anglican Mass. After the priest's call to lift up our hearts our reply was "It is meet and right so to do." You just can't improve on that. We have never come close in the English of the Catholic liturgy. I think we should have just lifted the entire section from the BCP, including the "And with thy spirit" and the priest's continuation which speaks of "our bounden duty." It is all so really good, but, oh well . . .