Sigh. OK just for you I went back and read her whooole post. …It sounds like it’s trying to justify bad behavior because others also exhibit bad behavior.
No, sigh. You didn’t read it well.
Not at all.
It’s not about justifying bad behavior. It’s about myopia. It’s about limited vision in spotting the mote in the eyes of others when the you have a beam in “your” own.
Just for the record, while I read and hear orthodox Catholics describe themselves as more in line with Catholic doctrine (and by that deifnition, “more Catholic” ), I never read or hear them make comparisons of virtue between themselves and others, which is a regular habit on this site by those who define doctrinally correct Catholicism as “un-Christian,” “intolerant,” “lacking compassion,” and the entire list I submitted. It’s an artificial division, created not by orthodox Catholics but by their detractors: you see, orthodox Catholicism cannot be truly Christian because it (must be) intolerant, etc.
Except that it isn’t. There is nothing in Catholic moral theology as fully embraced and accurately understood that is any of those condemnatory adjectives. The phony dichotomy which is set up not by orthodox Catholics but by many of their opposers is that it is not possible to embrace correct doctrine and be a person filled with charity.
It’s absurd on its face, and absurd according to Catholic theology. Charity and doctrine are not in opposition. They never have been. It’s a phony antithesis, manufactured by the left, not the right. It’s a way of diminishing doctrine in favor of a self-created definition of Catholicism which eliminates doctrine, or reduces it radically, on the grounds that doctrine opposes love. Wrong.
Doctrine, and those who answer doctrinal questions with doctrinal answers, are not intolerant. Specifically people are intolerant: people who choose a traditional emphasis and people who choose a much more loose emphasis.
Much of this is a failure of respondents to read, such as read a question being asked in an OP. A question (again, it doesn’t appear that you really read the context of my thoughts), which is asked about doctrine is appropriately answered with doctrine, not answered with emotion ( a non-answer). If you ask a question about whether something is a mortal sin, don’t react with horror when you receive an answer that in fact it is a mortal sin, because if you meant to ask something else, ask that instead.
And some people do ask “that,” instead. Some people need/want guidance. (“how do I stop committing X sin?”) I actually wish they would put those questions in the Spirituality forum, because frankly that is where such questions belong, i.m.o. But unfortunately they often end up in the Moral Theology forum when it’s not a moral theology question. And it stays there. (Further misfortune.)
In the case of such a question, the appropriate answer is not a doctrinal answer, but a guidance & resource answer, often with communicated support (‘tolerance,’ ‘compassion,’ ‘charity,’ etc.) In that case, a respondent offering a clinically orthodox answer would seem to miss the point of the charity.
I stand by the narrated scenario I have seen dominate the Moral Theology subforum, and which I previously described. Threads often start with accusatory questioning about why such and such is a sin (or why it supposedly shouldn’t be), and sometimes with implied threats about labels about to be laid upon anyone daring to re-assert doctrine. It’s a set up, often resulting in those who fall for the trap being accused of “lack of charity” or “being judgmental” for answering the question in the OP.
It’s a lot of nonsense for grown-ups to be engaging in.
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