[Sans-Culotte]

I like your viewpoint. I've seen many Catholic threads about some Catholic belief, or saint, or Mary, etc, and I get a little annoyed when my Protestant bretheren "crash" the thread, and make it go off-topic as it becomes a Prot v RC debate when it was not meant to be.

As you have noted, there are threads in which these healthy debates seem to be invited, but IMO, when they go off topic, they become a waste of FR's bandwidth.

It's kind of like another FR pet peeve of mine. Whenever a topic of the French is brought up, and Napoleon is mentioned as a French Emperor, someone always feels compelled to butt in with the fairly well-known fact that Napoleon was by birth a Corsican. It always makes the thread go off on a "was Napoleon French or Corsican?" tangent when that was not the object of the thread.

You stated it all so well that I fear I am not adding anything to you post, other than a "hear, hear!".

[xzins]

But.....

Napolean WAS a Corsican.

:>)