TIME AND THE LORD WILL TELL
where the facts are and are not.
And it's very painful.
But it persists.
Now,it seems to me we can just sit around and throw rocks at each other, or we could try patiently not only to understand what the other guy is saying, but why what we say bounces right off.
I mean, the Vatican Edifice. It's kind of an embarrassment to me but it has just never been a theological problem. Borgia popes? Popes appointing their bastards to be bishop of Kalamazoo? Embarrassing, funny, irrelevant.
And the rubber dictionary: As I said the other day, the simplicity of God is too much for our language. And precisely BECAUSE the matter under consideration is objective, and not a fignewton of our imagination,we struggle, and we misstate stuff we've all (all us edifice-lovers) agreed on, and we differ among ourselves.
Melian said something about "new doctrines", I think. For ME, that is a FATAL misstatement. There are new developments, new unfoldings, but whatever somebody doesn't like the Catholic Church may say, to us, in our view, the Marian dogmata of the 19th and 20th centuries developed from the controversies of Ephesus and Chalcedon, and they developed and were resolved, under the guidance of the Spirit, from the archaic witness.
So I mention that as one example of how a careless expression (as I see it -- no offense, Melian) can lead to the appearance of a rubber dictionary.
There are also the problems of "sampling". One reasons Zen Buddhism enjoyed such a vogue in the US was that the literature was exotic and featured all the heroes over the centuries of Buddhism. The alcoholic Roshi who sleeps with his students generally does not make it into the annals of the great ones.
And the general impression one gets of Catholicism from the outside is hordes of people showing excited devotion or engaging in strange cultic acts. And the media are full of stories of "recovering Catholics", while the genial learned piety and rich good works of many Catholics is unnoticed.
MOST of the non-Catholics here are no more representative of their denominations than most of the Catholics are of ours. So I think there's a little comparing the more learned and committed non-Catholics to the hordes as presented by TV or as encountered among peasants who haven't had the best of educations and are not really concerned about articulating their faith correctly.
And finally, on the Mary thing,I think there is a real confusion between affection and love. Kids may shower more enthusiastic affection on grandma when she visits. But it would be wrong to think they prefer her to their mother. Mutatis mutandis with Mary and Jesus.