[AndyTheBear]

You are not "contracted" for this obligation. Every human person owes God gratitude and worship simply because they exist: in consideration of the inescapable fact that He is our Creator and we are His creatures.

I was taking "contract" as broadly as possible to be as generous as I could to the notion I was criticizing.

This is important in critical analysis. If I evaluated her arguments with only my own definition of her terms then how do I know if what I find objection to is not simply about using terms differently. Alas, I am not sure what she might have meant by "contract", but even in the broadest possible sense I could give it, there is no way I could see it applying until confirmation.

[Mrs. Don-o]

I think I understand what you're saying, as you were trying to engage with what Mary McAleese meant when she was referencing some quasi-contractual obligations of Catholics.

I agree that it's hard to tell what the halogen she was talking about.

It seems (and this is only a guess) that she thinks of a Catholic as primarily a juridical subject of the Roman See, i.e. as a contracting individual with a relationship with an administration, so to speak, rather than a relationship with God. If this is her notion, that despite all her academic credentials, she doesn't know the first thing about Catholic sacramental belief or practice.

I'm sorry. What a loon.

As I said before, she sound like not so much a "practicing Catholic" as a practical atheist.