What IS good, and how do we determine it?

[Randy Carson]

Yes, it is "the institution" that talks....the catholic church does not allow you to make up your own doctrine Cath.  When the church says sinners go to hell...it's the institution saying it, you're just a mouthpiece, when you relate it's message to us...and by now it's painfully clear that you haven't thought a single -bit- of it through.  You believe in contradictory things, while espousing positions contrary to doctrine.

I think you did what most people do, when holymen start talking.....explaining the faith....you fell asleep, or payed no attention whatsoever.  There's no real shame in this...I did it too, but then again...I'm not a believer, nor have I ever been.. it may have been a -little- more important for -you- to have kept your eyes open and your ears perked up....

Baloney.

We're thinking adults just like you. And while neither CL nor I may be 100% perfect in our understanding of Catholic doctrine, I think we may actually be a little bit better informed than the average Catholic with whom you may have chatted in the past.

I am a CONVERT to the Catholic faith. I didn't fail to pay attention. I did not fall asleep during CCD. I read. I thought. I prayed. I listened.

It is precisely because I WAS paying attention...in fact, because I STARTED paying attention...that I left Protestantism and embraced the Catholic Church.

Now, for an atheist, that change might sound about as insignificant as whether to pick up a new pair of socks at Walmart or Target. It's actually a really, really big deal.

But my point is this: You are FLAT. DEAD. WRONG. when you say that we have not thought about our faith, and your attempt to dismiss either of us on the basis that we're ignorant because we fell asleep in class (how would we know the "holy men" said if we had fallen asleep?) because THAT'S WHAT YOU DID isn't going to get you very far.

Let me get this straight: you openly admit that you weren't paying attention in class thereby calling your own knowledge and understanding of Christian doctrine into question. Then, you project that experience onto us as some sort of universal experience. Finally, you assume that as a result of your own inadequate faith formation and flawed grasp of theology, ours must be equally deficient; consequently, you can safely ignore anything we say.

Really?

One more point: let's say for the sake of argument that we are simply repeating what the Church has said without much thought. Does it follow automatically that what we are saying is therefore wrong? If the saints and doctors of the Church who have been wrestling with the really big questions of theology for 2,000 years HAVE come up with a few ideas, would it be wrong for Catholics to learn from them?

How is this somehow different (read "worse") than the pimply-faced teenagers in this forum who, in the full-blown throes of hormone-induced rejection of anything and everything that speaks of authority, have giddily embraced atheism and the ideas of Hitchen, Dawkins and others without actually "thinking about them"?