I can hear John Hood now, groaning through the wall (he’s next door to me) over the beginning of yet another religious/moral debate striking up in The Locker Room. Therefore I will post no more here on this issue, after this rebuttal to Kent, although I may do so here.
All you need to look at to show that Catholic ministries have departed from their core message is to look at this California decision. If Catholic Charities can’t uphold its own basic tenets in its hiring and ministry practices, why call it Catholic? And if most Catholics have abandoned their own church’s doctrine, then that is the responsibility of the Catholic leadership’s lack of authority and/or will. Therefore, there is an abandonment of Church doctrine by the Catholic leadership in practice, if not in word. And I don’t think the priest pedophilia problems are disconnected here.
Perhaps I need some clarifying language. Catholics and mainliners may not have abandoned some form of ungrounded “airy-fairy” religious beliefs, but they have left behind many of the doctrinal standards foundational to their faiths. My guess is, in many cases, they have no idea what they believe, or what their church believes.
