Irishshane,
I'm elated that although you admit of not being a Catholic, you did present the side of the Catholic Church in a more or less balanced manner. You do seem to know more about the practice of the Catholic Church more than the others. What pains Catholics is when it attack based on a doctrine or dogma that is improperly understood. Well, perhaps it is attacked because a misunderstood doctrine is naturally bad. Anyway, I'm gratified the the contributors to this blogs are generally polite.

Reading this blog, I can see how badly misunderstood the Catholic Church is. I hope that we Catholics can not be faulted for such misunderstanding when we comment on other religions.

Anyway, I will not discuss about doctrine this time (yet) but I would like to share the comment of Dr. Einstein regarding the action of the Catholic Church in Hitler's Germany. By the way Einstein was a German Jew and not a Catholic.

"Being a lover of freedom, when the Nazi revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of newspapers, whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom: but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks. Only the Catholic Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing the truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised, I now praise unreservedly."

-- Albert Einstein, quoted in Time Magazine December 23, 1940