Let me make this really, really simple. The nifty neat "Evangelical Christian" crowd blather on about infant baptism and point out, "there's no example in the New Testament of an infant being baptized. Fine, now we apply the exact same criteria the the question ignored in that long list intended to change the subject away from my basic point. Where in the New Testament is there an example of any Christian using contraception?
You see, it's always the same. Either change the subject or apply a completly different standard to others than to yourself. Thanks for the statistics about how much American Catholics have become exactly like the rest of American society, though, it helps prove exactly the points I've made and does not one thing to prove anything the "Evangelical" crowd says is correct.
It does show that your typical Protestant will do anything they can to try and avoid the basic fact that their behavior is not based on the Bible but instead is based on what sells to their target market. It's always funny to see how people end up talking about how horrible Americans in general and a significant percentage of American Catholics are after someone starts a thread about, "Rome, Rome, Rome". Avoiding what The Church teaches and focusing on the behavior of Americans is exactly that, a way to avoid the fundamental questions.
The only way the Truth the Catholic Church has been teaching for two thousand years can be countered is by changing the subject, applying a different standard for yourself than you apply to what the Church teaches, or falling back on the Protestant favorite, "that's what the Bible says but that's not what it means". In the US, Brazil, and everywhere else Western "culture" gets a grip people put more value on an unencumbered sex life than on the lives of infants which means they're instantly attracted to the Protestant groups who all approve of contraception. Evangelicals target one market segment, other Protestants another segment, but none of them are anything other than vaguely or sometimes partially teaching Christianity. They're teaching the gospel of how to be a guilt free American hedonist. As I've said before, SBC churches are more likely to be struggling against going down the same road as everyone else, but they still don't teach the entire Truth as does The One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.
Thanks again for the statistics, but I'm really looking forward to that verse I asked about, the New Testament example of a Christian using contraception. I'd also like one that shows Christ or the Apostles explaining why portions of the Septuagint are just fine for the next fifteen hundred years but should be thrown out by Luther, but that's another example of the double standard for another time.
Again, all these words will not explain away the obvious, which is that what Rome overall effectually teaches and fosters is liberalism, which was the general subject, thus you must major on the single, if valid, issue of contraceptives, while Catholics also engage in this as well as having more abortions.
As for the apocrypha, Luther has scholarly company in Rome right into Trent, which finally provided the first indisputable canon, in the year Luther died: http://peacebyjesus.tripod.com//Ancients_on_Scripture.html#2
And which other FR RCs have tried to counter, such as here (with links to more) ,
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2891087/posts?page=974#974
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2891087/posts?page=990#990
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2901137/posts?page=126#126