"Steve, it seems to me that you see all of life as ideology and indoctrination, and you want to make sure everyone has the correct ideology. I suppose those people demonstrating outside the abortion clinics have the same mindset - but in their case, opposition to abortion is the only correct ideology."

Your mission in life seems to be to paint people whose thinking opposes your own personal and very simple-minded ideology as equivalent, opposite to yours and with theirs wicked to yours good. The people outside the clinics are wicked people, not because they oppose abortion but because they are outside the clinics. Mother Teresa was a wicked woman not because she opposed abortion but because she preached the virtues of ignorance and poverty to women and practised what she preached. I have every respect for people who oppose abortion. In fact (and I don't know how many more bloody times I have to say it), I'm a thousand times more opposed to abortion than the withered old virginal nun ever was. She loved abortion so much that she enthusiastically promoted all the policies that serve to increase its incidence. She wanted ignorance, poverty, abstinence, and absolutely not a hint of birth control of any kind. Her message, a bit watered down, is the same as the one your Church still promotes (and you love her so much that she's about to be sainted). The Catholic Church would be lost without sticks like abortion with which to beat its flock into line, and those people outside the clinics are its cheerleaders. You are doing a very grave disservice to every woman on the planet by indulging them in the way you do. You are allowed to condemn. As you're a Catholic, I'm amazed you don't do it more often. In sum, I want as few abortions as possible and I want the real means to achieve that, not silly dressed-up men in pulpits or hateful old nuns in hock with fascists preaching the wrong messages, or people standing outside clinics using every ugly tactic they can conjure to intimidate women who are in an extremely vulnerable state. And as a man I should really be minding my own business about what women decide what to do with their own bodies, but at least I try not to poke my interfering nose in too much to add a sanctimonious layer of my own personal moral compass on their every move. If you really don't like abortion as much as you say, well tell me how you're FIGHTING your Church's rotten policies that encourage it, instead of just gently advising its members that they can, well, interpret the rules (in other words, break them) according to their consciences.   Don't say that too loud, though...

"But then there are many others of us who aren't so sure about things. We have the nasty habit of seeing both sides of an issue, so we're not so eager to take a rigid stand on issues. I believe the choice to have or not to have an abortion should be up to the pregnant woman, but I also think that abortion is the taking of a life - and the taking of a life is always regrettable."

Condemnation in such gentle words: it's your choice, of course, but to me you're taking a life, and that's regrettable." Not a bloody word about the doctrines that do nothing except help women to get to that point in the first place.

"And I oppose capital punishment, but I can understand how the family of a murder victim might want the murderer to be executed. So, for me, such decisions are difficult because there is no right answer."

Yes there is a right answer, and it is that justice is not served well if victims of crime get the first word on retribution. Another part of the right answer is that capital punishment is completely immoral and should never be used.

"Most of the time, I have a reasonable amount of faith in God, but sometimes I'm an atheist or agnostic. And I could never bring myself to believe in the simplistic, anthropomorphic God that you and Raggytash describe."

Well I call your God "he" purely for convenience, and any image of him that I characterise in my remarks is not mine, I assure you. I don't carry around in my head an image of something that doesn't exist, thank you. You've studied theology. Most Christians haven't, and it's a good bet that the vast majority of them either don't think much about a God at all or have the simplistic picture in their heads that you deride and which you condemn Raggytash and me for depicting. I think we're ten times more on the ball in this regard than you are, frankly.

"Defining or describing God forces me into a rigid, limited understanding."

But you see him when you look at the starry night. You don't want to limit your understanding of him, but you don't object if he stunts your understanding of the universe. Odd.