I can bet that when I meet Our Lord face to face He won’t ask me anything about the Aristotelian geocentric idea. He will ask me if I fed the hungry, clothed the naked, gave drink to the tjirsty, visted the prisoner and the sick, welcomed the stranger. How do I know that ? He told us all in Matthew 25.
CJ, I’m sure your way to God is consistent with the way God fashioned you, but if you really look at the gospel message of Jesus you will see that our obligations to Him are pretty simple: Love God with everything in us and love our neighbor as ourselves.

Poor Pff,

Judging by what you’re saying, it appears you have nothing more than an elementary understanding of the Galileo affair. It had little to do with Church Doctrine and a whole lot to do with a conflict with the Aristotelian geocentric idea held by the scientific community of the time. The debate was between scientists, the Church stepped in when Galileo overstepped his bounds after he tried his hand at Biblical exegesis. Get the facts straight before you start with the rhetoric. You could crack open a legitimate history book and educate yourself on this.

Your hatred for the clergy is really un-Christian, assuming you are Christian. If you have any faith in the Eucharist I’d imagine you’d have a whole lot more respect for priests. If you call yourself Catholic, with that sort of attitude, I’m afraid to say from appearances you aren’t, and you are really just one of the apostates that Bravo16 is talking about, doing yourself a disservice by living in abject hypocrisy. Take a look in the mirror and quit calling yourself Catholic if you do, because you aren’t. Like Pontius Pilate you ask, what is Truth? You don’t believe in God’s Revelation? You think that the Truth can be found in other Creeds? There may be reflections of the Truth, but the Truth of Revelation is only found in the Holy Roman Catholic Church.

God Bless and hopefully you’ll seek and find Christ one day and enter into communion with His Body the Church.

And to Judy:
Judestar was pretty funny… LOL! =)

In all things God has the last word. Do you really believe that protestants are not welcome in eternal life ? Jews ? Muslims ? Is the TRUTH only captured in the teachings of Church councils ( many of which were politically motivated) or in the words of popes ? ( Remember GAlileo??). God cannot be pinned down or confined in one dogmatic tradition. God is greater than us all and always manages to get the last laugh. Despite the rantings of celeibate old men in Rome, we will see married and women priests yet…either that or forego the Eucharist.

If you think that making a distinction between intrinsic evil and evil is merely parsing the law, and judging by your tone something to be avoided, then I suppose you disagree with both the Catechism and Aquinas, who deal at length with both evil and intrinsic evil. Both types of evil are critical to a sound understanding of morality. The problem with your form of Catholicism, the relativistic variety, is that you make yourself the sole judge of what is right and wrong. No it doesn’t surprise me that you’re opposed to abortion, I don’t jump to conclusions as quickly as you apparently do, given that you think it would surprise me. To make the argument that society isn’t threatened by abortion, and therefore abortion is not of the same league as those other crimes, is terribly absurd, what is society but a community of individuals, when one is lost to abortion the world is changed irreversibly. One person makes an infinite amount of difference in the word, it’s mind boggling to consider.

Jesus said “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, which the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows it. But you know it, because it remains with you, and will be in you.” John 14:15-17

That law is what Christ asks us to follow, those are his commandments, and we know this because we have a Tradition, which “transmits” the Truth to us. We can’t claim to have any objective truth without recourse to a body that transmits absolute Truth, a instrument of God’s revelation as it were, that is the Magisterium. Otherwise what is left are people trying in vain to make sense of a world without any logical and coherent epistemology, a relative reality, hence the sad breakdowns and tragic sense of life that so many of the secular world’s most esteemed philosophers suffered from. They asked the existential questions but had no True answers. But I’m off on a tangent now.

The fact that you need to keep commenting to me over the course of an hour tells me a lot too, so I’ll ignore the fact that you felt the need to brandish your degrees. Throwing out highly rhetorical statements like “blind acceptance to law” also speaks volumes. Remember that the root of all sin is pride. I’ve chosen to submit before Christ’s body, the Church, you’ve decided to make yourself the arbiter of Truth. We’ll see how that works out in the end.

And by the way, I’ve only got 2 decades under my belt and haven’t completed my bachelors degree. Oh well.

In every moral argument there has to be a pastoral application. And yes, Pharisee, the “label” stands..and you should wear it proudly. The Pharisees were upright, honorable, honest men ( by and large) and they believed that the law was God..That by following the law one was assured of God’s approval. That all who deviated from the law were sinners. The Pharisees continued to parse the law just to make sure that God wasn’t being offended. Many you speak of intrinsic evil, evil, etc. are basically parsing the law. the bottom line is : What does Jesus require of all of us ?
As for the abortion question. This may surprise you…I am absolutely against abortion. I would do ( and have done) anything in my power to stop a person from making that choice. But the major difference between the legality of choosing rape, murder, etc ( you mentioned) is that society at large is threatened.

One more thing to all the Pharisees out there : Receiving Jesus in Holy Communion is not a reward for a job well done–it is food for the journey. Remember the very flawed disciples at the Last Supper ? Jesus didn’t give them a litmus test–and neither should we.

CJ,
Your comments are well thought-out. But I will say it again. Outlawing abortions will not end the act of abortion. Offering support–both monetarily and spiritually will do much to cut down on abortions. When abortion was illegal in all 50 states, the rich took their daughters overseas and the poor found other methods ( my grandmother in the late 1920′s was offered an abortion by a midwife–it was my grandmother’s 8th child and she was 40 years old. My grandmother roundly refused–but it was available none the less. ) What Catholics everywhere must work for is to create a climate in which abortion will be unnecessary–proper sex education , for one; making it easier to adopt children, for another.
A twelve year old who is raped by a relative ( or stranger) and finds herself pregnant and has an abortion ( because a child having a child is extremely unhealthy) is not evil. The abortion is, but the act is not–follow ??The CIA agent who waterboards a suspected terrorist is much more culpable of the evil enacted than the 12 year old.
Making abortion illegal is a matter for the courts, not a presidential administration. The Supreme Court ( which clearly leans conservative) and the past three Republican presidents have done NOTHING to overturn Roe v. Wade–so no party is really the Party of Life. the Republicans just talk big.
Pres. Obama’s policies still embody more of the Catholic teachings than did Bush’s.

Judy:
It’s been some time since you last posted so I don’t know if you’ll ever read this. It’s distressing to me to see that you and some others have justified your vote for Obama, in your minds, based on the anti-war pro peace argument. As if the tragic deaths of so many in a costly and perhaps even unjust war could somehow outweigh the over 50 million souls lost to abortion. The argument that a vote for Obama is a vote to somehow decrease abortions overall, attempting to aid the less fortunate and thereby reduce the reasons why individuals seek abortion in the first place is flawed at best. Now I hope you don’t take offense to this, and i hope you approach it with an open mind. I have done the same for the arguments that you have made, and I find them all lacking. I hope you have also taken the time to reflect on the document promulgated by the USCCB, Faithful Citizenship. http://www.faithfulcitizenship.org/ This is not an issue of individual conscience or private interpretation, and this is certainly not an issue of weighing the lesser of two evils, I’m afraid. The Pope as well as the Bishops have made it clear time and again that the issue of abortion is such that it takes precedence over all others, it deals with the most fundamental right to life after all. The Republican party may have failed in other respects, but it is incumbent upon everyone to work with such a party to right the wrongs of the so called “Neo-cons.” The Democratic party, on the other hand, has aligned itself entirely with the pro-abortion movement, and for that reason it cannot be supported.

My fear is that you may have a flawed and malformed conscience. In that case I doubt recourse to the authority of the Magisterium, the Pope, or the Bishops will be of much use. It’s sad to see so many nominal Catholics touting their faith, while not actually being a real member of the Body of Christ, can apparently go on indefinitely without self-examination. If one is going to simply deny the most central tenets of the Roman Catholic faith why be Catholic at all? I’ll offer up a prayer for you that you might discern this matter more clearly, and that any that stumble across this post that are in the same boat as you might do the same.

I hope you’ll read Faithful Citizenship, as well as the numerous other documents that have made this point clear.

lets add this to the mix –found this on foxnews:
Groups Declare Obama’s Stimulus Bill a War on Prayer
A provision in the House-passed stimulus bill — banning money to be used to renovate schools from being spent on facilities that allow “religious worship” — has ignited fury among those who claim it discriminates on the basis of faith and violates the right to free speech.

“The recent USA Today/Gallup poll shows that only 35 percent of those surveyed approve of the President’s controversial move ‘allowing funding to overseas family planning groups that provide abortions.’ Fifty-eight percent disapproved of this executive order.”