"Finally, to claim that the Church is "a sign and instrument" of the "unity of the whole human race" does not deny Church teaching on any of the issues you list."
Sure - and there is no evidence whatsoever that homosexuals in the priesthhod are a significant cause of the sex abuse scandals!!!
However, I believe your complacency is misplaced as even Paul VI felt the need to address this problem on 24th December 1965:
"The Church with its demanding and precise attitude to dogma, impedes free conversation and harmony among men; it is a principle of DIVISION in the world rather than of union. How are division, disagreement and dispute compatible with its catholicity and its sanctity?"
He tries to address this problem by saying that Catholicism is a principle of DISTINCTION among men rather than DIVISION. And he does this by reducing distinction to the level of that "natural unity" which I discussed above. He says that distinction is "of the same sort as that involved in the case of language, culture, art or profession." He goes on:
"It is true that Christianity can be a cause of separation and contrast, deriving from the good it bestows upon humanity: the light shines in the darkness and thus diversifies the zones of human space. But it is not of its nature to struggle against men, if it struggles at all, it is for them."
This is what I would call a tortured exegesis to try and reconcile two opposing worldviews.
Gone are the Scriptural principles of Christ being a "sign of contradiction", a "stumbling stone", a "sword that brings division" and warfare between the Church and the world.
So, if the Church is indeed an "instrument of unity" for all humanity, perhaps you can explain how this is so without negating the doctrines of predestination, hell, opposition between the Church and the world etc.?
Maybe you will make a better job of it than Paul VI did.
"The Church with its demanding and precise attitude to dogma, impedes free conversation and harmony among men; it is a principle of DIVISION in the world rather than of union. How are division, disagreement and dispute compatible with its catholicity and its sanctity?"
To me, he's saying elimination of division, disagreement and dispute make for sactity and catholicity. Talk about a path of least resistance!
He tries to address this problem by saying that Catholicism is a principle of DISTINCTION among men rather than DIVISION. And he does this by reducing distinction to the level of that "natural unity" which I discussed above. He says that distinction is "of the same sort as that involved in the case of language, culture, art or profession."
I recently read that Pope John Paul II wrote a thesis in which he tried to defend the construction of Catholicism based on a german philosopher who was big on the idea that cultural sentiment is the road to understanding different peoples, and using that sentiment to bring them into the fold. I don't fully know what to make of it. I can see the up side of it, but I'm not sure I see how from that point Christ will reign. Christ always seems to be in the background.
That whole Assisi thing puzzled and distrubed me the most because of the removal of the Crucifix and other symbols of Christ (if all of that is true). Why, in His own Church was He treated as an impediment to coming to it? To me, it is the most bizarre realty of the whole Assisi thing.
He goes on:
"It is true that Christianity can be a cause of separation and contrast, deriving from the good it bestows upon humanity: the light shines in the darkness and thus diversifies the zones of human space. But it is not of its nature to struggle against men, if it struggles at all, it is for them."
Where is the Incarnation in all of this?