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Okay. A few hours have passed, let's look at this. You made a sincere statement of regret and sincerely advanced an opinion.

Instead of acknowledging your generous statement or dealing with your assertions reasonably, I said "Hogwash," in capital letters. I "yelled" it.

Did you feel loved? Did you think you were taken seriously?

I was pretending. (I put in the "sound familiar?" as a clue that I didn't mean it.) I'm sorry, but I thought it best. The point needs to be made. You will find that St. Peter says that if called to make a defense of the faith in us we should do so with gentleness and reverence. I'd suggest that saying, "Is NOT!," would not be the best way to follow his advice. And I'd suggest further that something's being permitted by the rules does not make it morally acceptable.

The implausible claim is made that catholics are abused for the protection of the lurkers. My guess would be that most lurkers, if they are not Christians, come away from these threads thinking seriously about NEVER becoming a Christian. Most of our threads are good advertisements for Buddhism, or maybe Quakerism.