Sarah wrote: > > You expect me to respect your Catholicism and your criticism, but you > won't respect my atheism or my criticism.
and this from another message: > And, with respect, you have written posts about the Middle East, but > appear not to be an expert, and you have a right to. Similarly, I > have a right to express a view about the Catholic Church without > having to be a specialist. Sarah, 1. With the first comment above you try to turn this disagreement into an argument about religion, and based on the messages on the list, you've succeeded at that, unfortunately. 2. It is not about religion. It is about my not accepting negatively biased inaccurate generalizations about a huge group of people. 3. I recall you doing a similar condemnation of Islam a while ago when I didn't have time to read everything and respond with care, so I let it go, and was glad to see that other people did respond to what I considered bigoted comments. This time I did have the time to react to your comments. Bigoted statements, toward any group, don't go unnoticed here. 4. Then you blame me of claiming I'm an expert and you're not. I'm not an expert in anything. I could see, though, that you did not have accurate information and I shared what I knew. 5. Condemning the entire Church because of one book/movie and your mother's experiences (which really are HER experiences from an earlier time and not yours) is taking bits of information way too far, and then refusing to listen when three different people say something about it creates an odd situation for everyone. It's not your lack of personal experience with it all that bothered me and it's not your lack of agreement. What set me off yesterday was that you then turn that around and make accusations as your defense, rather than consider what anyone has said. 6. So you've effectively twisted it up enough now that it's confusing for almost everyone, and you feel put upon. That's your choice. 7. The tactic of "the best defense is a good offense" is rather common. I'm not buying it this time. Debra Shea P.S. And because I'm in a peevish mood, I will point out that since I know so little about the Middle East, my last message about it was on April 12, 2002, and was about Sharon and Arafat, and messages followed that contradicted my opinion. They didn't change my mind, but did make me realize there's a bigger picture to be seen. In other words, and this is an extreme peevishness alert: I didn't keep battering anyone over the head with my bit of knowledge, and then blame them of other things when they didn't accept my limited viewpoint as the TRUTH. Being faced with that attitude from you (as I saw it) is what made me so angry yesterday. For whatever that is worth to anyone...
