What IS good, and how do we determine it?

[Catholic_Lady]

Mike-

I'm interested in what atheists think, and I would have no problem with you posting passages from Hitchens or Harris or Dawkins as you think appropriate. As I said to Nestor in the Gary Habermas Q & A thread, I would LOVE to go hear a good debate between Ehrman and a skilled Christian representative.

So I'm disappointed to see you speaking so disdainfully of my posting of snippets from the Catechism. Presumably, you are interested in hearing what Christians (Catholics specifically) think on a given topic, and if the Catechism presents a point of view more eloquently and accurately than I might do on my own, why the objections?

Of course, if you aren't interested in a discussion with Catholics about these things, why bother reading these threads at all?

I am interested in what Catholics think. I am not interested in what the Catholic Church thinks you should think. The disdain comes from the idea that it is so difficult for you to form your own ideas as part of a conversation. Being in the moment and present within a discussion seems to be very difficult for you. Hence your prepared Word documents and your incredulity and sheer inability to cope when someone doesn't follow your expectations. (Hence the AIDS example, which you conveniently dropped) And so, instead of succinctly telling us in your own words what you believe, you copypasta half of the catechism.

But what if what we think is that the Church holds the answers? And that the Catechism can do a better job of putting it into words than we can? I'd also like to point out that there have been times here where I've said something about what the Church teaches and have been told by another member that I am wrong about what the Church teaches. So I went ahead and linked to the catechism in order to prove that what I just said really is in line with Church teaching.

I am sorry you feel as though we have done a poor job of sharing our thoughts and beliefs. I'll own it and say that indeed I do have a hard time putting things into words a lot of times.