Michael Newsom writes:
> 1. A Catholic has lost his or her way, if not his or here
> senses, if he or she believes that acceptance of Jesus or
> objection to abortion is "deeper" than the liturgy. See The
> Catechism of the Catholic Church Part Two: The Celebration of
> the Christian Mystery, in particular paragraph 1068, quoting
> from the Sacrosanctum concilium. (There are other passages
> equally as powerful, but this will do for openers.)
Hmm -- I wonder whether this is the dominant view, at least
among American Catholics. I would think that many of them think shared
opposition to what they see as mass murder, plus a shared acceptance of
the teachings of Jesus, is more important than agreement on finer
theological points; what do other Catholics on the list think?
> 3. The analogy to political speech in inapt. There is no
> need to rehearse our differences in regard to the meaning of
> the Religion Clauses, and whether they do much more than
> shape a Free Speech norm.
Indeed there isn't; I'm sure list members are acquainted with
it. But I do want to suggest that my point isn't simply that Religion
Clauses merely shape a Free Speech norm. Rather, my point is that
Religion Clauses don't *trump* the Free Speech norm -- that freedom of
speech means the freedom to spread all viewpoints, religious,
antireligious, or secular.
> 4. The Church, I think, would prefer to see someone be a
> Protestant rather than an Atheist. But this is irrelevant.
> Context matters. This is surely not true with regard to
> those who are, at least for the nonce, Catholics. And that
> is what matters -- whether those who are now Catholics will
> leave the faith. As I suggested in another post, the
> alliance with the (non-Catholic) Religious Right may well
> undermine the Catholic faith and, I might add, cause people
> to abandon that faith. Neither of these eventualities is
> something that the Church, rationally, could favor.
Might the Church think that an alliance might actually win more
converts from Catholicism to Protestantism (perhaps because the Church
thinks that Catholicism is true and more persuasive than Protestantism)
than vice versa? Might it think that winning more converts to
Christianity of any stripe (both from the non-Christian and from those
who are Christian in name only) is so important that it's worth risking
a small amount of conversion away from Catholicism? Might it think that
preventing the deaths of millions of unborn children is likewise worth
running this small risk?
> 5. What is a "scare quote?"
I hadn't answered this question when it was asked earlier,
because Bob O'Brien beat me to it (see
http://lists.ucla.edu/pipermail/religionlaw/2005-November/020251.html);
but I'm following dictionary.com in using the term to mean "Either of a
pair of quotation marks used to emphasize a word or phrase or to
indicate its special status, especially to express doubt about its
validity or to criticize its use." Am I mistaken?
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