That being the case, it really doesn’t bother me that these people make asessments of websites in nearly the same fashion that you are making an asessment of them. In turn people who don’t agree with my opinions on this, that, or the other thing either leave a comment in the combox… Or quit reading my blog.

Indeed.

I mean God forbid we let american Catholics in on the secret that most people in throughout the world (Catholics, no less!) DO NOT THINK LIKE THEM.

I am kind of delighted by being a “yellow” – gives us a bit of a bad boy edge I think – dangerously risky with our linking to Orthodox websites!

Before today I had never heard of them… I wonder how many people use them.

Certainly there is a catechesis issue going on; and so it makes the situation to me that much more grave. Good catechesis is helpful, and is to be recommended. But net authorities often tend to provide the exact opposite, alas.

It is sad that the net has so many inquisitors; it makes dialogue near impossible at times.

I agree about the Church being at a transition stage; it is clear that the Church is moving more and more to re-evaluation of “just war principles” and not in favor of widening them, but narrowing them even more, just as it has done with capital punishment.

Lets face it the religious education, whether it’s in a Catholic primary and secondary school system or via the RCIA is at best very weak in the USA.

Additionally until recent years bishops allowed all sorts of questionable seminars in local parishes.

The majority of Catholic sadly don’t have the desire, time, resources to check primary resources just what the church permits and what is closed for discussion. They seek a concrete black and white general explainations to most theological questions.

The net provides these “answers” which should be given by the parish priest and o bishop, but for what ever reason doesn’t.

Good article overall.

A worrying thought is that it is these heresy-hunters who may have the ear of the Vatican. The notions of orthodoxy brought into play against Dupuis and Sobrino and Phan are quite close to those of The Wanderer and rightwing Catholic blogs.

No problem. I will make no judgment about someone’s conversion experience, nor will I judge whatever MM said or his reasons for saying it. I just think it’s important to carefully distinguish who says what on this blog, lest we misrepresent each other.

As far as your snippet of my views on the war and soldiers go, I will simply again point out that I did not refer to anyone’s orthodoxy or heterodoxy. I think those are technical terms, as is the term heresy, and I don’t throw them around lightly.

As I have repeatedly pointed out, u.s. soldiers who are fighting in the Iraq war are technically within the bounds of “orthodoxy” as the Church’s teaching in this particular context are not, on the whole, coercive (with the exception of the courageous Bishop Botean who forbade his flock to participate in the war). That this is so does not mean, however, that Catholic soldiers are doing what is right, or that they are in fact taking the Gospel or Catholic teaching on this particular war seriously. And while the Vatican and two popes have given their judgment of the war in light of the Church’s very clear just war doctrine, as articulated in the Catechism, the Church is clearly not interested in opposing the war in much of concrete, pastoral, practical sense. The fault rests with our individual bishops and priests and pastoral teams and Catholic school teachers — in short, all of us! — just as much as it does the soldiers. We are all a part of the Church, and if the Church is not clearly opposing the war then we are all guilty, and we all have blood on our hands.