Replies

I suppose one question to pose, is what should be the mission of your Church? Is it to try to reach into and enhance the spiritual and human lives of the bulk of its flock, and expose them to the tools and message which will tend to assist them to be better and happier persons while on this moral coil, as a more enobling precursor to the heaven in which your Church believes, inspired by the example of the essential Christ, or to become a much more exclusive club, with the bar set so high, that it becomes more like the Marines, where only a few "good men" need apply, with the rest encouraged to take a hike? It is a choice for each to make, and that choice I think animates much of what divides around here when it comes to matters of your Church. The grand thing is that each are free to choose.

I suppose one question to pose, is what should be the mission of your Church? Is it to try to reach into and enhance the spiritual and human lives of the bulk of its flock, and expose them to the tools and message which will tend to assist them to be better and happier persons while on this moral coil,...

No, it is not.

The only mission of the Church is to save souls, to get them to heaven. There never was any other mission. That's the only promise it ever makes, that if you are faithful and avail yourself of the means of grace which Our Lord has provided to His Church, you can die in a state of sanctifying grace and your soul will not go to hell.

"I suppose one question to pose, is what should be the mission of your Church? Is it to try to reach into and enhance the spiritual and human lives of the bulk of its flock, and expose them to the tools and message which will tend to assist them to be better and happier persons..."

Your post is mush. The Church should do what it can to get its members into heaven, and that necessarily entails telling to avoid sins which will send them to hell. Contraception is one of those sins. So is cutting heads off babies.

The really grand thing is that the POPES get to define Catholicism and not the chronic malcontents outside the walls or theose allegedly inside the walls. Exclusion of pro-aborts (including users of the abortifacient pill), practicing homosexuals, pederasts and other perverts is part of papal authority. The more often used the better.

You have promised not to be Catholic which is a good thing unless you massively modify your ideological commitments. The Catholic Church has enough of a need to cleanse the stables of dissident trash without recruiting more of them.

The Roman Catholic Church is not and never has been and never will be some sort of brainless and unprincipled club of feel-good Kumbaya sob sisters.

As to the Roman Catholic Church and an appropriate attitude toward its enemies, yes, by all means, take a hike. And, of course, MYOB.

Lest we have to repeat the usual ritual: You are, of course, free to display the abysmal manners of rooting around in the underwear drawer of a Catholic Church thankfully not your own and Catholics are free to respond to your lack of knowledge. Catholics are not Libertoonians.