It also ignores that even Catholics are commissioned and charged to be evangelists. Children are more likely to stay in the religious faith of their parents, but Christianity is an evangelistic faith in which members sin by failing to communicate the gospel to the lost. The church grows by evangelism to both family members and to the unsaved.
Your Paragraph 2 hardly cites something that is "ignored" - in fact, it is used as evidence to support the assertion you try to dismiss in your Paragraph 1
And this next statement is more apropos of the fact that I'm about to leave work for my personal evangelism class at church and is not related to my above critique, but do you consider yourself to be a good person? If God were to judge you for how you've lived your life, do you think you'd be innocent or guilty?
Your question is an insult to all Christianity. You've conflated the insidious and utterly dishonest tactic of using an emotional attack to prevent cogent rebuttal of a spurious claim, with Jesus' command to spread His teachings.
Is there anyone on this planet - except for yourself, of course - who you would judge as innocent enough to take a position contrary to your own, without you judging them as too shamefully impure to have am independent personal opinion?
Tellya what - instead of going to evangelism class, why don't you go serve food at a homeless shelter for about twenty years - in silence - and learn some humility. Because all you're doing with your mouth is making Catholicism seem abhorrent.
I’m sorry you feel that way. My observations and questions were honestly meant and in good faith. Since it’s important to you, I do spend substantial time serving at the homeless shelter.
Moreover, your later attack on my evangelistic questions doesn’t really follow. I’d be the last person to claim innocence — my own life is a pretty regular story of sin and opposition to God. In fact there is no one in the world who can truthfully answer the first question by claiming that they are “good” people. If judged by God’s standard — moral perfection — then we are all guilty of sin and the punishment for sin is death and hell. That’s me as well as you as well as every other person on the planet. The only person in all of human history who did not sin and who fully fulfilled God’s law was Christ, and yet he willingly accepted the punishment for sin as if he were guilty. That sacrifice opened the door for those who accept it to receive forgiveness from sins and a right relationship with God. This is the basic doctrine and plan of salvation laid out in the New Testament.
Your critique of the structure of my argument as conflating logic and emotion is also unfounded. As a matter of fact, logic and reason, the Catholic church’s position against contraception is deeply-held, is philosophically sound, and is theologically sound. I personally disagree with it for reasons based on differing interpretations of basic facts, but there is no question that some truly great minds have wrestled with the question of whether human beings should interfere with the intended purpose of the sex act. The comment I was responding to that treated this position as a callow business decision was offensive and simply wrong.
Nor is the fact that Catholics have children (presumably more than those who practice contraception) logically inconsistent with the fact that they (along with all other Christians) are called to evangelize the world. If people insist on characterizing the growth of the church as a business plan, then speaking in that language Christ’s command to spread the gospel to all the nations and other New Testament passages regarding the duty of Christians to spread the gospel to the lost and unsaved shows that the “business plan” of the church is primarily to expand by reaching the unsaved. Children are not saved merely because their parents are, and every Christian parent has a duty to share the gospel with their children. But we also have a duty to reach out to the world.
I believe you read motives and intents into my post that simply were not there and definitely were not intended. I find it hard sometimes to write a post in connection with a religious topic without including at least an outline of the question and plan of salvation. If you think that I’m just making this up and being self-righteous, read the book of Romans which is the basis for what I’ve been saying.