Thank you for noticing Ellenpoly.

Actually, I often try to start 'civilized' threads. But they are often inundated by members who easily derail them by using the Mudcat membership code talk for calling in the trolls, ie flagging the thread as one where 'anon guest' is engaged in a civilized conversation with Mudcat members which is going well.

I would balk at any that suggestion that Call to Action is a radical Catholic group. Conservatives would love us to think that is the case, but saying that Call to Action is 'too liberal' is talking in the well-known, long established conservative code language of the radical right.

So who/what is Call to Action? It is a Vatican II oriented Catholic social justice lay organization that is also concerned with bringing about much needed church reform. That puts them in opposition to the current pope and Vatican hierarchy, which is a backlash administration attempting to do to the Vatican II reform movement what the radical Republican right is doing to the New Deal reform movement.

Claiming that Call to Action is 'too liberal' and beyond the Catholic mainstream is just plain wrong. It IS the mainstream of the US Catholic church, which IS politically liberal, and which DOES support the Vatican II reforms, and believes that examining, challenging, and prosecuting (as in the clergy sexual abuse scandal) the institutional church is part of the Vatican II reform mission, which calls on the church laity to take action independent of the clergy to create a more just world. Pope Paul VI was behind this movement, so you can't exactly say that it is just a bunch of malcontented Marxist lay people, out to destroy the church.

To claim that Call to Action is too liberal is akin to claiming that National Catholic Reporter is a Marxist rag, which is also a common accusation spewed by the radical right. National Catholic Reporter is a lay edited, award winning Catholic newspaper, like the Christian Science Monitor.