The problem is that liberals are liberals FIRST!!!
This is a pretty meaningless statement. What do you mean by it? That anyone who holds views you describe as liberal cares more about those views than anything else? This is at best a highly improbable claim.
They care about being pro-death
Like the first statement, this is either blatant nonsense or indicates that there are a lot fewer liberals than one might thing. I know a lot of folks who are liberal Catholics by the standards of many on this forum but who are prolife. I’m a liberal by the standards of many on this forum, and I’m prolife.
[QUTOE]and female priests
You have more basis for this one–a lot of liberal Catholics do seem to see the female priesthood as a nonnegotiable. By that standard I’m not a liberal. I find arguments for female priesthood to be theologically sound and rooted in historic Christian orthodoxy (for reasons I’ve given many times on this forum), and I find the arguments against it to be strained, question-begging, and/or trivial. But I recognize that I am fallible and that my reasoning may be flawed due to the influence of the cultural norms that surround me.
and “fundamentally changing” the Church similar as how Anglicans and Methodists had their institution destroyed from within.
The problem with this language is that liberal Anglicans and Methodists will tell you that the other side is “destroying from within.” This kind of language just inflames partisan feeling and doesn’t serve the truth.
They know that the only way to take down the Church is to rot Her from within
You have no basis for thinking that liberals are trying to “take down the Church.” That’s how you see it, because they are trying to change things you see as essential. But obviously they don’t see them as essential. They are trying, as they see it, to help the Church grow in its pilgrimage toward the eschatological fullness God intends for it.
By the way I love how you throw in your little slap at the end “limits of language/knowledge”? Typical Lib tactic cant argue the topic so you throw out that consevatives are intellectual midgets… Very original Eddie very original
I have not accused you of being an intellectual midget. But I do here and now accuse you of not reading very carefully. I said that this was, as you say, a typical liberal talking point, and I was pointing out that liberals too often assume that their culture-bound beliefs (like their insistence on gender equality in the priesthood) are directly inspired by the Holy Spirit, when given their own rhetoric they ought to know better.
I do think that the liberals have good points about the limitations of language and ideas, and if you don’t take those limitations seriously your conservatism is going to fall well short of the fullness of orthodoxy. However, liberals often use this language as a rhetorical weapon against conservative views of orthodoxy rather than thinking carefully through the issues raised by divine transcendence and human limitation (as great theologians of the past such as St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Gregory Palamas have done, in different ways). So we were actually agreeing!
This is a good example of how your assumptions about “liberals” get in the way of understanding. Not everyone who holds views you consider liberal corresponds to your cookie-cutter image of a “liberal.”
Edwin
