By your comments I can see you truly want to be loving to everyone, but it seems you are still missing the point. This is the crucial question: Do you assent to the authority of the pope and the bishops? If you can’t assent and publicly dissent, is it time to go? To be honest I am not sure what is best, but to stay in the church which makes you so angry, rebellious, and unhappy doesn’t seem to make much sense. It is like someone being in the Girl Scouts and then saying” I hate working for the badges and that stupid pledge has got to go.Let’s see if I can convince some of the other girls to join me in changing all of this. We are surely being victimized in this situation.” The others girls who are happily gathering their badges and love the whole program find their group in a constant state of turmoil and confusion. Using your definition, Is this showing love, gentleness, and living Jesus? Of course, an organization is not the same as one’s religion, but no one is forced to join or stay in the Catholic church. From my personal experience, dissenting Catholics preach a lot about being so loving, but they refuse to see their actions are anything but loving to everyone else.

Speaking of those bishops who were “tolerating for Christ’s name’s sake the false apostles,” St Augustine says [Ep 43:22] “Nevertheless, even if they were actually committed, and that under our own eyes, and we bore with them for the sake of unity, letting the tares alone on account of the wheat, whosoever with open heart receives the Holy Scriptures would pronounce us not only free from blame, but worthy of no small praise.”

You are correct that we must always be concerned about those who are lax or are nonobservant Catholics. However, the Catholics being spoken about here are the militant kind who are staying only in the church to change it. They are trying to lead others away from the church’s teachings and very often causing public scandal and dissension. Yes, Jesus was a very compassionate person, but do you really think he would have supported apostles who knowingly and directly preached the opposite message of Him? Jesus is the one and only truth, there is not my truth and your truth or whatever makes you feel good about yourself. Either the Catholic church was founded by Jesus and was charged to speak His truth, which is the church’s claim, or it is just an organization which sways and bends with public opinion. That is what is at stake here!

Whilst all truths are equally true, the motive of credulity may be different. In the case of doctrines divinely revealed, as the doctrine of the one Person in Christ, one believes them on the authority of God who speaks. On the other hand, one believes Ephesus I was a general council and that Ephesus II was not, but, rather, a “robber synod,” on the faith of the Church and her promised divine guidance.

What the article does bring out is that any attempt to define the Church by its teaching, or the faithful by their tenets is bound to end in tautology – “The Catholic faith is the faith that Catholics hold” only works, if “Catholics” has a definite meaning in extension and, if “Catholics” is then defined as “those who hold the Catholic faith,” one has produced, not a test, but a vicious circle.

In fact, “Catholics” have traditionally been defined as “those in visible communion with the see of Rome.” This excludes those who refuse communion with the Pope or bishops in communion with him on the one hand and those that Rome has excommunicated on the other.

It is a test remarkably easy of application.

If you want to know what Catholicism is about, go to mass and go to confession and don’t listen to the garbage on blogs.

Apparently, David is not aware that the Law of the Excluded Middle is not the only possibility. But even that is not what is going on in Catholicism, religion not being mathematics.

When I worked in intelligence, we always had a confidence value associated with the information we provided ranging from “we’re sure” down to “it’s a good possibility”. The levels of “truths”, I suspect are more of that type.

One might remember the saying, “There known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns.” Though credited with it, Rumsfeld did not originate it. It’s from the intelligence field. Politics being what it is, I lost a lot of respect for the media when they made fun of it, demonstrating their own ignorance.