Catechism deals primarily church doctrine, not church history. It teaches that priests take a vow of celibacy and does not dwell on historical cases of priests being allowed to be married. The statement is challenged by some simply on the basis that the church has been so adamant about the celibacy of priests that it's met with incredulity. So, yeah, I can see why that could be challenged and it shouldn't really come as that much of a surprise.
As far as communion, FRoman Catholics insist, and quote Scripture to support it, that the bread and the wine become the LITERAL, ACTUAL body and blood of Christ. That in John 6 Jesus said that one must eat his flesh and drink His blood, and that at the Last Supper that Jesus actually turned the bread and wine into flesh and blood and they partook, in direct violation of the commandments of the Law against eating blood.
And the response is that Jesus can do anything He wants and that He changed the covenant. But that could not have happened BEFORE He was crucified or else He could not have possible FULFILLED the requirements of the Law.
So, the Catholics on these threads absolutely insist that the body and blood is real and literal and must be really, literally eaten, and then go on to tell us that the host and cup do not change in physical substance after all, even when they claim on the other hand that they did, the whole purpose of the mass. It simply cannot be both ways. Either it is changed and verified by change in physical and chemical form, or it is symbolic as non-Catholics believe, representing a spiritual reality. Even Jesus said about eating His flesh and blood in John 6:63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.
Claiming that someone is poorly catechized seems to have turned into a catch all to every statement a former Catholic makes which FRoman Catholics disagree with. It's simply not true. Understanding of what Catholicism teaches is often the reason people leave the Catholic church.
ABSOLUTELY INDEED.
The accusation that I was poorly catechized, along with plenty of other former Catholics, is quite widespread. If you are complaining about being attacked for saying that, cannot the constant accusations be construed as an attack as well?
To the extent that I am complaining it is about the manner of the attack.
As I said, if YOU adduce your catechesis, your Catholic experience and education to lend authority to the accuracy of your claims, then it seems you have made it a part of the argument.
Then I may argue against it, and others may argue against my arguments.
But if the sum of those last arguments is that it is beneath me to make my arguments and somehow outrageous for me to do so, then I think that is illegitimate because you brought it up.
You say:
Catechism deals primarily church doctrine, not church history.
Stipulate that, (though I'd say that is one sense, and a limited one, of the term catechesis.) Then it is the responsibility of the one claiming his catechesis as authority for his remarks to confine himself to the area of his catechesis and to know those limits.
How you can say "the church has been so adamant about the celibacy of priests" in the face of so much evidence to the contrary escapes me. I would say the LATIN Church has held pretty firm, (though not with adamantine, or diamond-like, hardness), but in our lifetimes (and longer, and in other rites) exceptions have been made. I certainly understand one's carelessly forming the impression that the Church in every case prohibits married priests, but that opinion simply cannot claim GOOD catechesis as its authority. And if the claim is made, it is legitimately attacked. it's not YOUR fault your teaching was not good. It's not an attack on YOU until you claim authority for your teaching (and even then, it's an attack on the claim, not on your personally.)
You also said, disparagingly, that the Church does not permit religious brothers to be married. This is hard to understand. It is no more exigent than forbidding married people to be single. There are religious associations for married people. But one cannot want to be a monastic or a friar without wanting to be celibate, anymore than one can want to be married without that pesky spouse stuff. It's about the definition.
Moving on ...
You say:
It simply cannot be both ways. Either it is changed and verified by change in physical and chemical form, or it is symbolic as non-Catholics believe, representing a spiritual reality.
That is just a version of philosophy, which your side disparages as "vain wisdom of men." In the history of thought, leaving this question aside, to equate "real" with "physical" is a comparatively recent opinion, as is the equation of "substance" with "matter" or "material."
I have given many arguments to show that your side does not REALLY take so materialistic a view. TO repeat one: What is the physical and chemical change in a gold ring that makes it a wedding ring?
Or here's another: In books and movies, the bad guys say, "Pah! A treaty is just a piece of paper!" Well what physical and chemical difference is there between a "treaty" and "a bunch of ink on a piece of paper?"
Of course these are not conclusive, but even among people who are not Catholic, the idea that the what-it-is-ness of a thing can change without its physical properties changing is widely respected, even by those who do not agree with it.
So to assert one philosophical opinion as though it were unarguable no weight in itself. You can reasonably say, "I do not understand how it can be...." But to say "it simply cannot be ..." in the face of more than 2000 years of smart and good people holding (whether mistakenly or not) that it quite simply CAN be, takes the discussion nowhere.
You say:
Claiming that someone is poorly catechized seems to have turned into a catch all to every statement a former Catholic makes which FRoman Catholics disagree with. It's simply not true. Understanding of what Catholicism teaches is often the reason people leave the Catholic church.
That may be. It is certainly true that a true statement can be made falsely. We've seen lots of that lately in the conversation about 1st Amendment rights and the Ground Zero Mosque and the Koran burning threat. But the false use does not make the statement false any more than the Dear Leaders contradictory opinions about the 1st Amendment make it a bad amendment.
Also, I don't just say "So-and-so was poorly catechized," and stop. I usually go on to show in sometimes tedious detail how the proposition asserted is so clearly not true that only something like poor catechesis could explain it -- especially, as I say, when the person making the proposition cites his own Catholic experience as an argument that his opinion ABOUT what is actually the teaching of the Church is correct.