Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If it were as easy as switching churches, yes.

It's not just church, it is family and communities and schools and traditions. I have changed churches when I don't like the priests, yea that was easy, there are about 5 <15 minutes from my house.

leaving all of the above is not uncommon when its a way to avoid association with child sexual abuse and strictures against abortion and birth control.

You can find the good things in lots of places -- but for the bad things, you need the Catholic church.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If it were as easy as switching churches, yes.

It's not just church, it is family and communities and schools and traditions. I have changed churches when I don't like the priests, yea that was easy, there are about 5 <15 minutes from my house.

Anonymous wrote:If it were as easy as switching churches, yes.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just to add... I do not suffer, actually I have found some on DCUM that don't understand a Catholic family member or a teaching and after a few posts have a better understanding. I can also say I have learned a few things about Muslims on DCUM.

My Catholic friends do not care what my beliefs are or what teaching I do not believe. They are my friends.

I have yet to find a perfect religion so I have no plans on changing.

would you consider changing if you found a religion with the benefits of catholicism, but without the systemic hypocrisy?

Anonymous wrote:The leadership of the Catholic church, the leadership at seminaries where priests are trained, Catholic doctrine is clearly against contraceptives and IVF.

Catholics who pretend like it is just a fringe group in the Church who are against these things are fulling themselves. And if you continue to give money to that organization, then you are essentially participating in the Church's active campaign to limit access to contraceptives to women in third world countries.

It's called hypocrisy.

Anonymous wrote:Just to add... I do not suffer, actually I have found some on DCUM that don't understand a Catholic family member or a teaching and after a few posts have a better understanding. I can also say I have learned a few things about Muslims on DCUM.

My Catholic friends do not care what my beliefs are or what teaching I do not believe. They are my friends.

I have yet to find a perfect religion so I have no plans on changing.

Anonymous wrote:On this Pro Life March Day I want to share how painful it is to watch Catholics present themselves as nso arrow-minded on this issue. We should be advocating for more birth control. I'm friends with older priests and sisters who talk about how awful it was in 1968 when Humanae Vitae came out. Here's a story about Fr. Horace McKenna, one of the greatest priests to work in DC:

Horace’s most difficult time as a priest came in 1968, after Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical Humanae Vitae. He publicly dissented from the archbishop of Washington, Cardinal O’Boyle, who had issued guidelines for priests to apply the teaching prohibiting the use of artificial birth control. Horace, who had great personal affection for the cardinal, joined a group of priests in protesting a literal application of the encyclical. Relying on more than 40 years experience hearing confessions, Horace argued for some pastoral accommodation for married couples who as a matter of conscience found the teaching unduly burdensome. Because of this dissent, Cardinal O’Boyle, who had equal esteem for Horace, restricted him from hearing confessions. Being kept from the “peace box” pained Horace deeply. After two-and-a-half years of canonical appeals and personal pleas, Horace and other dissenting priests expressed assent to a series of statements of doctrine, after which O’Boyle restored their faculties to hear confessions.
http://americamagazine.org/issue/625/faith-focus/horace-mckenna-apostle-poor

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most Catholics do think birth control is okay. It's just that the more radical Catholics get more air time. There are many Catholic organizations that are about "social justice". What news organization wants to air good thing Catholics are doings, none.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/154799/americans-including-catholics-say-birth-control-morally.aspx

You mean those radical Catholics like Cardinal Burke, Cardinal Rigali, the American Conference of Bishops and other very senior members of the church hierarchy? It's kinda tough to call the whole leadership structure of your organization "radical."

Complaining that they get air time for their views over grass-roots Catholic organizations who might support the use of birth control is like complaining about the air time to the Republican leadership when they talk about gay marriage vs. highlighting the good the Log Cabin Republicans do for gay rights.

Even though a lot of Republicans might be ok with gay marriage, the leadership of the Republican party - ie the people who supposedly set the Republican agenda and are responsible for speaking for the organization - are very anti-gay rights, and the media covers their position accordingly.

In the same vein, just because a lot of lay Catholics use birth control (which the Church says is a sin) and doesn't see anything wrong with it, the leadership of the Church is outspoken about their objection to birth control and has, in the past, disciplined members of the clergy and threatened the laity for expressing opinions that differ from Catholic doctrine. Remember in 2004 when Cardinal Burke said that Catholic politicians who support abortion must not receive Holy Communion?

So there you have someone who was a former archbishop of the Church and who, at the time, was the chief judge for ecclesiastical matters for the Church, saying politicians who express views contrary to the Church should not receive communion. That gets news. The fact that you and your spouse use birth control, not so much.

When you say, "I'm a Republican," people make assumptions about your beliefs because you've aligned yourself with the positions taken by that group.

When you say, "I'm a Catholic," people do the same thing.

If you don't like people making those assumptions about you, you have four options:

- suffer (and, if it makes you feel better, whine anonymously on DCUM how unfair it is that you get tarred with that brush)
- spend a lot of your time saying, "I'm Catholic but here's where I disagree with the Church..." and see what that does for you with your other Catholic friends (not to mention your priest)
- change the Church's position on the things you don't like (good luck with that)
- become a member of a different religious group

The choice is yours.