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You dismissed some religious ideas as being "medieval." "Medieval" isn't a category pertaining to truth/falsity or value/disvalue. One could as well derogate geometry by saying it is ancient and hellenistic, or disparage roast meat as paleolithic.

Well, okay, let me be more precise. For medieval, substitute "uninformed" or "bordering on superstition" if you like.

Well, then I'll respond with precision. That's an opinion, not anything you've derived from facts or logic.

Do you really want to categorize Augustine, Aquinas, Newman, and John Paul II as "uninformed" or "superstitious"? Would I be correct in supposing that you're completely unfamiliar with their writings?

Tell me, why do you think men like Louis Pasteur or Robert George or J. Budziszewski or Peter Kreeft embraced this "uniformed" and "superstitious" belief system? Don't know who Robert George, J. Budziszewski, or Peter Kreeft are? Maybe you need to be better informed ...

"Well, okay, let me be more precise. For medieval, substitute "uninformed" or "bordering on superstition" if you like."

A good choice on your part. Precision will better serve your purposes.

Now on to the substance of the argument. I believe you were making the point that only an ignorant person would tremble at the malediction of a voodoo shaman or a Catholic priest. But I think this point implies an assumption that is not true: that a Catholic priest has the power to send somebody to hell, or that Catholics believe such.

This is not what the Church teaches or asks us to believe. Nobody can send another person to hell. No priest, no pope, no council, now or in the past or future. That's why the Catholic church does not "demonize." We recognize that God alone judges souls and determines their eternal state of happiness or woe.

Excommunication is not damnation. A priests can wisely and truly say: "You are cooperating with an abominable crime. If you do this knowingly and intentionally, you are in mortal sin. If you are in mortal sin, reception of Holy Communion will plunge you into further sacrilege. For your own good, you must desist and repent."

I am sure you are aware that the warning against receiving the Body and Blood of the Lord unworthily is Scriptural (1 Corinthians 11:27) and any Christian has the obligation to correct a brother who is in error.

If I were cooperating with murder, I hope to God sombody would correct me. And in a way that arrested me and got my attention.