People here have actually been contributing in a pretty informed way, IMO. Things "in the real world" of Catholics are often as you say Joe. But there is also a long tradition of Catholic intellectualism, where people are more interested in the secular academic history of the church than they are the nuances of worship on the ground.

I come from a Catholic intellectual background myself, and can even claim a close relative who is in the clergy, has a doctorate in Aramaic and Aramaic Studies from Catholic University, who also teaches at a well-known Catholic college. I recognize that makes our family somewhat unique among Catholics nowadays, especially in the US where the tradition of raising one son and one daughter for the church isn't as strong a tradition as it once was in Europe.

I agree that a lot of what gets onto the web is very conservative. But then, we need to remember that the church itself has gone to pretty extreme lengths to stamp out the radical left elements within the church itself in recent years. Liberation theologians have been successfully beaten down and beaten back by Rome, making the world safe for suffering and the saving of Catholic souls.

I'm not going to argue with people on the language issue. It is one of the issues related to biblical studies which is still very polticized. The dominant culture (ie English and Spanish language cultures of Europe and the Americas) are heavily invested in the Greek texts of the bible, just as they are heavily invested in Greco-Roman history on the secular side. Which is why we still force our kids to read Homer.

But that doesn't make what is being taught in the schools accurate or even remotely close to the contemporary knowledge academics have gained as a result of the past 50 years of research independent of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim clerical influences. The importance of that research being independent was certainly brought home to roost with the Dead Sea scroll controversies, which also never had much of an effect on generic Catholicism either. But it blew the doors on scholarship wide open, as they say.

Best wishes for a healthy, proseperous, and blessed New Year to all.