It is merely my own opinion.
And who am I ? I am a 62 year old South Jersey man who attended Catholic grade school, Catholic high school, Catholic college, and secular law school, and then spent 30 years practicing law in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. I attended weekly Mass at a Catholic Church, go to Catholic confession, go to weekly Catholic Bible study, function as a speaker in a Catholic speakers' program, and occasionally address Catholic CCD students on Catholic theology. I have also written about a dozen published articles in a Catholic magazine on various religious topics -- mostly, about the Bible. The perspective is Catholic.
Despite all of that, would today's Church officials agree that I am "Catholic"? I don't know, for a particular reason.
One of the things I do, here, is go after the Church, energetically, if I see a weakness.
For example, so many bishops nationwide wrote letters of recommendation transferring priests out of their dioceses for so many priests concerning whom they had thick files verifying statutory rape of one boy or young man after another, again and again and again and again, that there was an appearance of hiding the crime (Obstruction of Justice) and pimping for gay "johns" by helping them prey on the young sheep in their own flocks (Solicitation), while we stupid Catholics, with our heads in the ground like dumb ostriches, financed the whole endeavor. So, I have gone after that set-up, repeatedly.
I am certain that I am not well-liked for writing things like, "Are our bishops actually knowingly engaged in homosexual pimping ???" or, "Come on, John Jay Institute !!! Right after admitting that 70% of the priests accused of 'doing' boys and young men, only, actually said, 'I do it with male adults, too !' you write, 'The Church does not have a 'homosexual problem!' What liars !"
I have also been absolutely clear about the direct relationship between Benedict XVI and the priestly sex abuse problem, and the indirect relationship between Pope Francis and the priestly sex abuse problem.
I have also gone after the Church for not going all of the way on the Adam-and-Eve teaching -- for not simply admitting, "The Adam and Eve story is not history, at all. It is divinely-inspired myth teaching religious truth."
I have also criticized a piece of theology about Mary about which the Church is very quiet. Whereas Mary really was always a virgin, the Church includes within the Perpetual Virginity doctrine a bizarre teaching that Jesus was not born in the technical sense -- that God, instead, had Him come out of Mary's womb "like a beam of sunlight through glass." This doctrine is called, "Virginity in Partu," "virginity even in the act of birthing Jesus." As we would put it in our day and age, "Jesus beamed-down out of Mary."
Priests and theologian can jump up and down in protest and angrily deny that the Church uses the words "beaming down," but in essence it teaches exactly that.
This rather strikingly Gnostic -- and, in my opinion, absolutely heretical -- teaching not only converts Jesus into something that is un-Biblical and fundamentally different than us, it also seems to create a deadly conflict with the hypostatic union doctrine -- that Jesus, at all points in His life, was "always God and always Man." He can't have been "always Man" during the point in time when He was engage in passing through the wall of Mary's womb "like a beam of sunlight through glass" and then coming in for a landing on the ground.
The Church also regrets its own correct Biblical theology on contraception, to a point that ironically indirectly advances the pro-abortion movement.
When, to try to "stop the bleeding" by exposing the Church on such things, I am clear in writing about such things, it can't be that I am well-liked among any Church administrators aware of how I write. So, would Church administrators say that I am "Catholic"? I think I am. But I think that some of them would deny it.
And so, I am chronically afraid that one of these days I am going to be told, "Stop using the word 'Catholic' in your website title, or be excommunicated."
In any event, I really do look for proposed articles in my e-mail. They can be on nearly any subject of general interest, or relevant to politics or religion. I love humor and history. If you have an idea for an article, or an article, itself, e-mail me at
peter.j.dawson.nj.us@gmail.com
No compensation for the articles -- sorry -- and I become the owner of all copyright rights, to avoid controversy.
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