Quoth Joe Offer: "The Catholic faith doesn't work for people who see things in absolute terms."

So you'd apply this to the Bishop of Phoenix Arizona who declared as excommunicated a devout nun and hospital administrator who gave her ethical consent to the termination of a mother of four's pregnancy when she would otherwise (along with her fetus) died?

Works pretty well for him. He rides around in a limo.

Or how about the nut-job Chaput, late of Denver and now inflicted on us Philadelphians, who tossed the adopted kids of a lesbian couple out of one of his Catholic elementary schools BECAUSE THEY HAD TWO MOMS?

Your arguments remind me of those of the George Bushes who constantly tried to distinguish between "the people" of the countries they bombed and their governments. At what pont are "the people" responsible? How many boys wouldn't have been buggered and girls wouldn't have been diddled if you pew-sitting sheeples had grown a set and told your priests and bishops NO!!!

The latest crap is that SNAP (The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) is being attacked with subpoenas for confidential information about survivors by the Kansas City Dioceses. Yes, they're trying to force SNAP to release confidential communications with RAPE VICTIMS.

So when, Joe Offer, do you stop being a "Christian Soldier" and tell your bishop "NO!" These guys are trying to cripple the organization that helps victims fight back against the massive organization that seeks to silence them.

Aren't you in the Diocese of Santa Rosa? Two bishops back, he was an sexual abuser of kids. One bishop back, well, he let a confessed abuser escape into Mexico and HAD TO GO INTO A DIVERSION PROGRAM for failing to report abuse as a mandated reporter! Your current bishop has a record of defying the USCCB's own Dallas Charter.

The problem is that it just doesn't work. It, like Reaganomics (and piss), "trickles down." So the young couple going for "pre-Cana" counseling gets fed the anti-contraception bullshit, has to sign the "we promise not to use rubbers" papers, under pain of excommunication, etc. etc.

Oh, there are ways to be "Catholic" that don't buy into this crapola. There are any number of "non-Roman" Catholic groups cropping up. Such as the Ecumenical Catholic Communion and any number of totally independent congregations and "Intentional Eucharistic Communities."
Or folks like this.

I spent a lot of years thinking that the Roman Catholic Church would pull its head out of its ass and ordain women and married people and so on. I waited for a quarter of a century and more and now I see nothing but folks who want to take things back to 1959 and abolish Vatican II.

Then I tried to live with the contradictions, and like our friend Joe Offer, explain them away as some sort of "misunderstandings."

No more.

"Let the dead bury their dead."