I think it’s a low class inaccurate slam at MetMom to accuse her of having been Catechised poorly.
That is such a hollow nauseating straw dog to us Proddys. I’d have thought it beneath the Mad Dawg I respect and love.
Happens all the time.
I got used to it from the crevo threads.
The mentality seems to be that if you really understood ________, of course you’d agree with them about it and believe as they do. It’s apparently just beyond some people’s comprehension that someone could really know what a belief system is and still reject it.
I know what the Catholic churches I attended taught. I know what the relatives who were priests and a nun believed to be Catholic doctrine. I know what the Catholics I grew up with, went to school with, and worked with believed to be true about Catholicism as THEY were also taught. Even the convert to Catholicism believed the same things those raised Catholic did- the very things that I keep getting told I’m wrong about being the official Catholic church doctrine.
That kind of attitude about those who reject Catholicism being very poorly catechized, is a very condescending, smug attitude, an attitude which I have found to be incredibly consistent in the most faithful, practicing Catholics I’ve known in my life.
However, the accusation just rolls off my back. I know the truth about how much I know about Catholicism as it is taught, practiced and lived amongst the aforementioned Catholics, and FRoman Catholics constant comments about that don’t faze me. I expect no less, and so am not disappointed.
I sleep well at night regardless.
We are told repeatedly that someone knows about the Catholic Church because he was a Catholic.
This opinion is maintained with such strength that when I say that the Catholic Church has permitted married priests for hundreds of years, my facts are challenged -- on what other basis than superior knowledge? But the facts are on my side.
Further, the Church has taught for hundreds of years that the very quality of the change in the 'sacred species' is imperceptible. Aquinas (1225 - 1274) not only says this in his theological writings but in his famous hymns. Before Aquinas was even born the fourth Lateran Council declared the doctrine of transubstantiation to be the real deal, implying by the phrase "under the forms of bread and wine" that there is no perceptible change.
Whether one agrees or disagrees with the teaching, it is NO argument against it that "There isn't any visible change," BECAUSE that's precisely what the teaching says.
It's like saying that Pentecostalism is no good because it doesn't proclaim the Holy Spirit. If someone claimed to know ALL about Pentecostalism and said that, what would YOU say about their instruction?
A person claims to know all about something, and gets the first things wrong out of the box. When the error in fact is pointed out, the person claims that the disagreement is wrong and that he knows. It seems to me generous to say that the person was cheated in his instruction as well as mistaken in his estimation of his own knowledge.
Suppose I attack your profession thus: You psychologists are wrong and stupidly wrong. I know, I used to be a psychologist. Heck, you guys think hysteria is caused by displacement of the womb, just because only women suffer from it!
Would you hesitate to challenge my training?
If an opponent brings his training into the discussion to support his authority, it seems to me that that's an invitation to the other side to examine what the opponent brought to the discussion. One can't stop a discussion by saying "I know better, period!" it seems to me.