[heyheyhey]

Another great article by Joe Sobran is "My Two Conversions"

[Zipporah]

I like Joseph Sobran but he needs to take a truthful honest look at the problems in the Catholic church and quit attempting to give it a pass ..

Trying to point the finger at others as some have done saying things like 'they clergy in other churches have just as many _______ (fill in the blank with: pedophiles, gays, etc. etc.) is just as bad as those Bishops who covered up their 'sins' for years. Thousands of children have been at the mercy of those who were supposed to protect them and they failed their parishoners and God miserably.

[NetValue]

It's proof the Devil is alive and strong, waging war for souls as he has done throughout human history. This time on the battlegounds of contraception, abortion, homosexuality in the priesthood, same-sex marriage, and man-boy love, he has pushed the Catholic Church nearest to the abyss. The Devil now sees the light at the end of the tunnel - the end game, to bring down the final obstacle to his total domination of humanity through evil. Only goodness can save us if the Church falls.

[JZoback]

Yes, we know the Catholic Church is a great insitution with a long history of moral authority.Bah, bah, bah

BUT, it needs to deal with it's current moral failures.

This article reminds me of the story about the 1,000 attaboys, one screw up and there all gone.

Moral authority is based on being moral, the Catholic Church is quickly loses it's ability to sing that tune.

[Unam Sanctam]

Excellent article.

[Cicero]

Beautifully written. Some nice zingers.

Nobody demands that the Church "change its outdated teachings against sloth."

[INSENSITIVE GUY]

This whole thing with the catholic church is just an excuse to attack organized religion.

[Drango]

At any rate, the Church can’t change.

SNORT...How many Catholics still don't eat meat on Friday?

The Church had better change its postion on how to deal with pedophiles within its ranks before it becomes a modern Sodom & Gomorrah.

[Fzob]

At any rate, the Church can’t change. She can no more change her teaching about lust than her equally emphatic teachings about pride, gluttony, and sloth, because God has made the world as it is and no human will can repeal its moral order. These aren’t the Pope’s personal opinions; they are objective truths.

The RC church must change. If homosexuality is a sin and there is punishment for committing a crime than the RC Church doesn't believe in objective truth. It knowingly has a huge contingent of homosexual priests. Far too many of these priest prey on adolesents and then the crime is covered up in the name of forgiveness.

The objective truth of this matter is that the RC Church has lost much of the moral authority it claimed to have.

[VOYAGER]

Many state laws banning the sale of contraceptive devices in this country were passed by Protestant majorities while Catholics were politically weak.

My, my, do I detect a bit of Protestant bashing?

[Neenah]

A few weeks ago I tried, in my feeble way, to express why I fell in love with the Catholic Church

First, fall in love with Christ.

[Diago]

What is startling is the perpetual passion of anti-Catholicism. You’d think that by now people who reject Catholicism would calmly ignore its teachings as old and irrelevant superstitions. After all, the Church has none of her old political power, adherence is now totally voluntary, and she has enough trouble getting her own children to listen to her.

But Catholicism still has a strange moral authority, and many people are unable to achieve a calm and assured disbelief. They are still driven to discredit the Church - perhaps for the same reason so many of us believe in her.

A gem from Joe Sobran.

[Notwithstanding]

Sobran's take is beyond rational criticism. Not one of the points he makes is refutable.

Yet an orgy of the Church's enemies is always bound to arrive at a thread that highlights the reality that the Church is perennially the moral beacon of the world. Somehow the orgy always involves spitting on an institution whose earthly leaders are men because these men are somehow "exposed" as sinners. Gasp. Horror. Shocking. As if that were some sort of surprise.

[helmsman]

You’d think that by now people who reject Catholicism would calmly ignore its teachings as old and irrelevant superstitions. After all, the Church has none of her old political power, adherence is now totally voluntary, and she has enough trouble getting her own children to listen to her.

I think Sobran has unwittingly admitted here the problem that exists concerning the Catholic Church's moral authority, or lack thereof. The fact that adherence to the Church's teachings once was not voluntary serves to validate the argument of those who claim that the Church cannot possibly be of God. When murder, torture and other barbarities are employed to produce conversions, albeit in the distant past, by an institution claiming to represent a loving God on Earth, the public skepticism that will meet it is more than understandable. This current sex scandal is only the latest, and not even the worst, of the stains the Catholic Church carries. If people no longer look to the Church for moral guidance, perhaps it's because the Church has not been very moral itself throughout history. And if it claims to be the divinely guided true Church of God, then it shouldn't complain when people bring up it's past (or current) actions and demand that those actions be reconciled with this claimed divine guidance. To do so is only reasonable, after all.

[Proud2BAmerican]

Satan knows the right address, that's for sure.

[Brian Kopp DPM]

Excellent article by the way. (I must admit, I feel vindicated when someone like Sobran says what I've been saying here on Free Republic regarding contraception. And when other folks also are starting to notice that we've indeed been exiled to the Religion Forum ghetto.)

[Gophack]

Great article. Thanks.