[BelegStrongbow]

Dear Rob:

It was failure to teach the young, who eventually grew up and became the 'elders', now unable and eventually unwilling to defend their Faith. Also, we had no centrifugal force, but only centripetal ones, thus bits fly off in all directions under the rubric of tolerance. As has been said elsewhere, when orthodoxy is optional it quickly becomes proscribed.

In Christ,
Deacon Paul+

[wagglebee]

I agree. And the left has accomplished much of the same within Roman Catholicism. The generation I grew up in (I'm 38) has generally either never learned or has rejected much of Catholic tradition. What today passes for a "church" looks more like a community rec. center, and often times that's what they once were.

With the onset of secularism, I think that Catholicism's greatest strength may be in absolute papal authority. Were it left to the individual members to decide, most everything would become "optional" because people have become convinced that Biblical morality and tradition is somehow outdated and unnecessary.

God Bless
Rob