lexmark, you seem to have some very deep seeded issues.  Could it be that you were a "victim" of a priest?  You don't have to answer that, I just had to put that out there.  Usually when someone is that narrowminded, it comes from somewhere!

Evil, mean people walk in all beliefs. And some of the greatest people in the world can be athiest!

Wow, only 1.7% of Catholic Clergy have been found guilty?  Why is everyone making a big deal out of that?

Its not like it happened to your kid.

Hypocrites.

If you all devout catholics had one of YOUR kids humped by a preist, then you would change your tune.

But, since it was kids, not yours, its not a big deal.

I'm a Lutheran, not a Catholic. I watched all of Pope Benedict's visit to the United States with interest. I would be the last one to bash the Catholic church. They carried the name of Jesus forward through some very dark times in history. They worked unendingly to translate the Bible.

I worked with the St. Vincent dePaul Society in Casa Grande a few years ago (one of two in that organization at the time who were not Catholic), and I saw firsthand how hard they work to try to make better lives for those who are down and out.

Ultimately, we are responsible for our own salvation. Knowing that we are all sinners and have fallen short of the Glory of God is a basic tenet of Christianity. We pray incessantly for both ourselves and others.

BTW, Catholicism is not the only religion being bashed by the press in this country and around the world. This bashing of Christians has been steadily increasing in the past few years...all, I believe, paving the way toward socialism or communism and possibly with Islam as a state religion in many areas of the world, and our losing our right to practice whichever religion we choose under our Constitution.

We have a very liberal press. They know that when our children are in public schools and colleges, they can be indoctrinated into the religion of liberalism (which has been happening over the past 40 to 50 years). When our children are raised in church and educated in private, parochial schools, they are fairly unreachable. I'm convinced that liberals would like nothing better than to close down parochial schools and let the state raise our children the way THEY want to. Search the Constitution and you will find that it does not provide for government-run schools. Our forefathers really knew what they were doing.

I stated that we have government-funded schools. Did you not read that, kenmoreguy? Our Constitution does not provide for state schools.

Do a little research, and you'll find that Christianity IS under fire. Go to the the American Family Association website, Ave Maria School of Law website, Thomas More Law website and a few others like them, and you'll find out just how much our religious liberties are threatened.

Please point out the hypocrisy since you mentioned it.

Jesus a liberal pacifist - more left wing propaganda. ROTFL

Last I checked, the United Methodist Church is on the verge of a schism, along with the Episcopalian Church.

A few observations on items included in this thread. The left's attacks on the Catholic Church (of which I am not a member) comes from its dislike of an institution that keeps its traditional conservative positions on matters of religion and morality. The left prefers a more liberal approach. One in which no ones actions are judged, and life styles are all considered of equal value no matter how perverse. It is interesting that many on the left roundly condemn the entire Catholic Church for the actions of a tiny percentage of priests, while at the same time cries "stereotyping!", and "discrimination!", if anyone dares to make a generalization about Muslims, gays, blacks, or any number of minorities. This reeks of hypocrisy and religious bigotry.

As to the idea of brainwashing in public schools - As a conservative who spent 30 years teaching high school history, I can comment on this issue with some authority. I never saw an organized effort along those lines. Having said that however, one must acknowledge that the vast majority of the teachers I dealt with were liberals. In my department a number of liberal teachers were not at all adverse to expressing their views to students. They proudly expressed their ideology to their classes. I on the other hand, when asked about my opinion on a controversial issue by students, would tell them that my job was not to tell them my views but to get them to use knowledge and intellect to form their own opinions. We had many discussions in the department on this issue. Those on the left always felt that it was their mission to get the students to have the right (proper) view. I was always in the minority. An interesting side-note - of 120 staff members only 3 had served in the military, and we were all conservatives.