Joan Venocchi is ready to throw in the towel. She’s finally realized that no matter how hard dissenting Catholics work at it, the Church is not going to change her teachings. She says that liberals who keep going to Mass in the hopes of effecting a change in the Church’s “outdated” teachings are deluding themselves. Well, yes they are. But that doesn’t mean they should just leave.
Instead, they should be asking themselves why. I’m not one of those people who says that if people don’t like the Church’s teachings they should just leave. If I’m convinced of the truth of those teachings, then as a Christian I want all people to know the truth and to come believe in the Gospel. I want all people to be saved and to experience the joy of being Catholic.
The problem here is that people who reject the Church’s teachings, like Venocchi, are not simply believers who reject the Church’s teachings. They are, by and large, people who don’t understand it. Take the flap over gay adoptions. In all of the reporting, what we’re told is “The Vatican says gay adoptions are immoral and ‘do violence’ to kids and so it’s bad.” Those are the rules, like or it lump it, they seem to be saying. That’s not good enough.
A teaching moment
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