I just dont understand why you provide ammunition to those who would destroy all the good things in a belief system.

I guess he simply says what he believes to be the case. If others regard that as ammunition, it can't be helped.

For my part, I am ambivalent about ritual. It has lots of positive aspects as Janie said: they can be comforting and inspiring. Perhaps more importantly, they can provide a framework to assist with a deeper understanding of what your particular religion is about. On the other hand, they can be completely empty spaces, with no real significance, which are either an attempt to manipulate god ("you need to sacrifice a black chicken to appease the River-god") or - very commonly in Catholicism - an attempt by the hierarchy to exercise a worldly control over the organisation, exactly as any big business CEO and board might do.

Go back to to the original opening post. The ritual says the cloth should be folded into nine squares. Really? Do we believe God will regard us differently if we fold it into four rather than nine? Now, if the folding into thirds is connected with some meditative thoughts about the nature of the Trinity, that's a good thing. If its a rule from on high, its just a rule.

And it is this reason why some people like me regard Vatican II as so important. Like the sort of audits and reviews that might take place in any business these days, it started out by asking very fundamental questions - what is the relationships between the people, priest and God, for example - and seriously questioned all the rituals that had grown up over the centuries, jettisoning a lot of them as pointless superstition with no theological basis. Since then, as Joe pointed out, we have tended to behave in the typical human fashion and introduce a whole new bunch of rules and regulations, and currently have a centre, in the form of the Pope and his cardinals, that seem very keen on reasserting the centralised control that existed before Vatican II.