[Conservative til I die]

Or is the real concern that the Catholic laity may begin to accept these doctrines?

Of course that's the concern. It's not like it's some sort of secret that we view opposing, yet popular doctrines to be a danger to the Church. The Catholic Church doesn't exist in a vaccuum, and we are exposed everyday to gutter theology like the Rapture, the Prayer of Jabez, etc.

[Heartbreak of Psoriasis]

This is a great discussion.

The thing that concerns me about the Rapture theology is not so much that it threatens Catholics like me with a new "heresy virus" (any Catholic with even the rudiments of the Faith dismisses such enormous departures from Holy Tradition out of hand), but rather that millions of Americans are willing to base very concrete and vital questions of American foreign policy on something as tenuous and speculative as the Rapture narrative.

This is exceedingly dangerous. I believe that the world's only superpower should proceed from a more sober assessment of the world situation than that.

I understand that Protestants reject absolutely the authority of Holy Tradition in favor of Sola Scriptura, and so I accept that an appeal to Tradition is by definition uavailing to them.

Referring only to Scripture, then, I gently ask my Dispensationalist brothers and sisters in Christ how this endless (and very remunerative) speculation on the Eschaton squares with St. Peter's admonition (2 Peter 1:19-20)not to engage in the private interpretation of prophecy:

We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts: 20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.

I ask this in all respect and from a sincere desire to understand.

[jboot]

I think Catholics (especially American Catholics) are being exposed to many things more dangerous than "gutter theology" (wow, could you possibly come up with a more abrasive and condescending term?) After all, most of these doctrines are not even truly heterodox, much less heretical.