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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]A Pope who endorsed the admission of women to Holy Orders and/or procured abortion and/or sacramental marriage between persons of the same sex would by that act become a material heretic and ipsofacto cease to be Pope.

The pope can modify celibacy requirements for secular priests (those not a part of a religious order with a separate vow of chastity) at any time. Celibacy is a discipline, not an ontological part of the priestly state. [/quote]

This is not technically true. All of these issues are debated and some have been different within the Church at different times in history. [/quote]

The Pope’s ability to modify the discipline of celibacy is debated?  I think not.

The gravely sinful nature of abortion debated?  Hardly.

The ontological inability to confer Holy Orders on a woman debated?  No. That has been firmly settled long before it was definitively (and one can argue based on phrasing infallibly) rejected by John Paul II.

The impossibility to confect the sacrament of matrimony between persons of the same sex debated?  Certainly not.

There are people who would like to debate these matters now, and who hope to obscure the longstanding clarity of doctrine in these areas, but the questions are closed and more or less always have been. There is room for discussion as to how such matters should be approached pastorally, which is what Pope Francis is doing.[/quote]

This "black and white" absolute thinking peppered with language marketed by a hypocritical patriarchy fearful of losing its power is precisely what's causing droves of people to leave the RCC for other more inclusive denominations or to become unchurched entirely.[/quote]

I think that the vast majority of people who abandon the practice of their Catholic Faith and/or apostatize to other denominations do so without a meaningful understanding of the teachings they claim to reject, or of the reasons why the Church teaches as it does.  People often are attached to behaviors that go against Church teaching and feel like hypocrites if they stay, never considering the availability of Divine Mercy or the role of a well-formed conscience in making individual moral decisions. People leave because they’re dissatisfied with externals, get their feelings hurt or because of the sins and shortcomings of Church personnel, acting on a human and emotional level and losing sight of how God operates in and through the Church despite human frailty.

Relativism, the refusal to acknowledge that truth is objective, knowable and absolute, is probably the greatest modern heresies. Church teaching is “black and white” because beliefs in some matters are either true or not, with no middle ground, and the Church is obliged to seek and teach the truth.

Blaming “patriarchy” for the perceived shortcomings of the Church and its doctrines is a puerile, disingenuous and ill-informed dodge that focuses on the superficialities of what is perceived as worldly “power,” and ignores the servant nature of leadership in the Church, especially today. It likewise casts aside the example of centuries of highly influential women in the Church, such as Catherine of Siena, Joan of Arc, Teresa of Avila, Therese of Lisieux,  Mother Teresa, and centuries of Abbesses, nuns, teaching sisters, to name only a few.  The Bible records that Jesus first appearance after his resurrection was to a woman; it is a pious belief that he appeared even before that to another woman, his mother. 
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In the US, you certainly are entitled to believe what you believe.  First Amendment, etc.  But the issue many have with the RCC is that the US Bishops seek to impose RCC views on the rest of the US.   Fundamentally, un-American.   Moreover, what you assume is that, at any given time, and assuming there is a fixed ultimate truth, we humans can know what that ultimate truth is.   We know that, for multiple centuries, many, including the RCC, thought that slavery was okay.  [/quote]

It is not “fundamentally un-American” for the bishops or anyone else to exercise their rights of free speech, free belief, free exercise, and the right to peaceably assemble and petition for redress. The Constitution prohibits an establishment of religion (a State Church) primarily to protect these rights, and in no event to silence religious speech.
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It is fundamentally un-America to force religious believes on others.[/quote]

You mean like people who want to compel others to violate their conscience as by, for example, being required involuntarily to participate in procured abortion, etc.?[/quote]

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