Because the TITLE of the article was about Spirituality. Gracious merciful heavenly DAYS here! It wasn't about the atonement wrought in and by Christ, but about our spiritual lives, our askesis, our living into the gifts we have gotten from God in Christ. It was NOT about what Christ did so that we would have something to try to live into.
To the best of my knowledge, which in this case ain't much, and in accordance with what I just heard a few weeks ago at an "enquirer's class", AND what I read in my (protestant) seminary, we don't prescribe a particular one of the 4 or 5 different explanations of the atonement, though we tend to lean towards "sacrifice" as opposed to "satisfaction".
It SEEMS you are trying to say, "The RC Church teaches this and denies that," But I can read the same article and see it pointing out the different aspects of this great thing and some of the related questions.
Lots of people describe us RC's as walking in lockstep with a complete theological manual which tells us exactly what we must think about everything. And here we have a topic where the church does NOT do that. There isn't even an index entry for Atonement in the Catechism (at least, not in mine) Not because we don't it's important but because, evidently, while we think Christ's sacrifice on the Cross wrought the reconciliation of Man and God, we're not ready to say just exactly how one ought to think and what one ought to b elieve about it.
And about mystery in general: it's not that a mystery is totally opaque. It's that one can't go very far into it, we think. With the Trinity and the hypostatic union, there are a few things one can say with confidence and a few generally accepted images and analogies, but after that you just have to go, "it's kinda like this, it's kinda like that." With the Atonement there are several well developed conjectures, and we know enough to say that, for example (heh heh) the exemplary doctrine is thorougly inadequate. But we still haven't found one that we can say, "Oh Yeah. THAT's it. We've found a winner. Stop calling in."
YOu can't get a hold of what we teach becasue WE can't get a hold of it.
You, on the flipahdeedoodah side, seem to have gone with "blood atonement", and I'd like to hear more. I'm assuming it's like Anselm?
Mad Dawg, I just wanted to let you know how grateful I am that you are involved in this thread and seem to have the time to respond as much as you can. You are doing a fabulous job and I hope to jump back in at some point. I have lots of good excuses for why I'm not helping but I will spare you! :o)