[terycarl]

Really? My impression is the opposite. Protestantism -- at least as represented on these threads -- looks like little kids playing house. They mimic the grown-ups without grasping the reality they mimic. Like 10-year olds, they're given to schoolyard taunts, they're literal minded (when it suits them), they have a flat, one-dimensional, linear view of reality, they ridicule what they don't understand, and resist anything that doesn't fit their childish perceptions.

THAT'S A BRILLIANT AND ACCURATE DESCRIPTION OF PROTESTANTISM.

[Elsie]

True... in the mind of a thoroughly indoctrinated Catholic.

[maryz]

I think the thing is they seem (from their posts) to have no understanding of eternity other than "just like time, only longer." Thus trying to explain the Mass to them is like trying to explain a sphere to a Flatlander. (If you recall the book, when a sphere passes though Flatland, all they perceive is a flat circle that grows bigger and then smaller.) This of course means that they necessarily have a straitened, shrunken conception of Divinity. Their God is so small that they think our veneration of Mary is illegitimate latria. They live in a much smaller reality than we do.