That last one was my very polite reply to pete. Not that he particularly deserved it.

"Steve, I'd like to introduce you to some Catholics who share your narrow, polemical perspective of Catholicism. They're the "team of apologists" at the Catholic Answers, http://www.catholic.com//. Just like you, they claim to know everything there is to know about Catholicism, and they're ready to fight to the death to prove they're right."

You are breaking your own fourth commandment. Show that I'm wrong, and reproduce any post of mine that even begins to suggest that I know everything there is, etc. You really are getting desperate.

"I don't like being put in a position where I'm forced to fight about my faith. I think that sort of approach is poison, destructive to all sides - so I avoid it as much as I can."

I don't ask people to fight about their personal beliefs. I am asking you to justify telling children to believe in a miraculously-conceived Jesus who worked magic and who came back from the dead. In your heart of hearts, you know that that is just nonsense. But you think that telling children that is better than telling them the truth. I note that you never address this. Your prerogative, of course.

"Just like you, Steve, they see no value in tolerance."

Apprise me as to the tolerance you show children in faith schools when you make them say prayers and sing hymns full of certainties that you can nowhere near verify. You are one hundred percent intolerant of uncomfortable truths.

"Leave my faith alone - it's sacred to me."

Your sacred faith has thrown up popes who collaborate with Nazis and who have connived in centuries of antisemitism, and which has caused misery to millions of people with its illiberal teachings. It doesn't deserve to be left alone. It deserves to be thoroughly got at, big time, and made to answer for itself. You've shown yourself to be a pretty poor spokesman in that regard. Could be a failure of nerve, I suppose, or just sheer boredom. And there are far fewer of me than of you, so stop worrying.

By the way, I've been to Catholic Answers many times and found that I don't need allies like that. Unlike what I get from you and pete, what you get from me is authentic and original. I'm that honest.