[Blzbba]

You last paragraph is a stew of paradoxes.

As is your first sentence, BlackElk. Let's take a look at it: If a woman is sooooo wedded to the standards of the world that equality (or what passes for equality) or ANYTHING else is more important that the Mass, the sacraments and the truth, then she has already apostasized ...

Well, if a person is soooo wedded to the man-made-and-oft-edited standards of the Church that seeing Altar Girls instead of Altar Boys is more important than the Mass, Sacraments, and Truth, than the person has already apostasized... Do you really think God is so highly offended by the actions of an innocent little girl helping the priest? If so, then you & I share a faith, but not a deity, for my God couldn't care less about such trivialities, as long as one's heart is pure.

[BlackElk]

You and I evidently do not share a Faith. My Faith is Roman Catholicism. Yours appears to be the trend of the week club ("harmless modernization"). We certainly do not share a deity either as you point out. The God of Moses, the God of Abraham, the God of the entire Scripture and of the Catholic Faith is the God Who always was, always will be and always REMAINS THE SAME. The world may change but God does not change, not even to suit your search for poltical correctness to overcome His Church. Some, not you, have posted here that they were in such a feminist snit over perceived inequality of the sexes in the Roman Catholic Church that they have walked away from it. In your #33, you have expressed views not exactl on point but effectively quite similar in tone in support of the eternal liberal itch that can never be scratched.

The line about nothing mattering so long as one's heart is pure has a name, not a very good name. It is religious indifferentism. Further, one who appears to create God in his own image and likeness has forgotten that it was God Who created each of us in HIS own image and likeness. See the First Commandment. Repeat, as often as necessary until you get the picture.

God is not offended by altar girls but they are hardly a necessity. Novelty for its own sake, much less for the sake of some phony notion of "equality", is no friend of Catholicism or Catholics.

When women walk away from the Church over "equality", they walk away from the Church. Each has that civil right but none will be justified in claiming that the Church walked away from them.

Your post is yet another proof of the deep need of the American Catholic Church's to be thoroughly purged and purified by the Vatican of its Kumbaya elements, particularly in diocesan or parish authority.