[Notwithstanding]

The Church does not force its lay members to do or believe anything. If a person likes to say "I am Catholic" and then go pray like a Buddhist, then they are wrong and not living up to their baptismal promises. People are always free to sin.

[Rubber Duckie]

I'm not telling you how to run your church and I'm certainly not advocating a return to the days of Bloody Mary when heretics were burned at the stake or had their heads chopped off, but haven't you gone a little overboard on tolerance of sin?

When a person not only violates a basic teaching of the church but used their position of public authority to undermine the position, shouldn't you at least consider suspending their church membership (i.e. their claim to wrap themselves in the cloth of Catholicism while opposing the the moral teachings of the church) . . . or, in extreme cases, excommunication?

Continued tolerance for this sort of behavior will eventually lead the Catholic church down the same path as Liberal Mainline sects-- i.e. Christianity becomes nothing more than a cover to do whatever one's "social conscience" tells them to-- including handouts for winos while making no attempt to reach their soul because Christianity "might" offend them, performing homosexual marriages and all the other garbarge.

I say this not to be critical of your church (I think your Pope is a hell of a good moral influence on Christiandom and its refreshing to have someone come out foursquare against this feel-good do-it-yourself social gospel nonsense), but maybe so you could ask your priest. I'd be interested in what he has to say.