5 Questions Before You Leave the Catholic Church

[laconicsax]

7. It started out weak and just went downhill.

The first question and explanation is little more than a paltry excuse for the hierarchy's active role in protecting the child rapists in the church.

The second gets a bit silly:

Keep in mind that leaving the Catholic Church means leaving the sacraments -- sacraments with real power, which are not available outside of the Church that Jesus founded.

Real power? I thought Quindlen may have meant to say "no real power" and there was a misprint, but she quickly delves into madness by suggesting that the wafer really does turn into Jesus bites, and talking about the "time-tested prayers of the Church."

It was in the third part that she lost me completely. The question, "are you sure the Church's teachings are wrong?" ends up with Quindlen proclaiming not only that the Church's misogynist stance on women's reproductive rights is correct, but that the idea that those teachings are correct

seemed crazy simply because our culture has it so wrong, and the Church is the last institution left that's willing to proclaim what's right.

After that, I wasn't terribly interested in what she had to say on the subject of whether the Church's doctrines are divinely inspired, but read what is perhaps the weakest apologetic drivel I've seen in a while. Apparently, it's important to believe that Church doctrine is divinely inspired because if it isn't, then there's no good reason to follow it.

Yes, Anna, that's absolutely correct. There isn't a good reason to follow Church doctrine. I wonder if she believes that the Church's geocentric doctrine was divinely inspired...

The fifth question can be answered with a simple "no." The notion that the Church is needed is pure drivel. People got on just fine for the hundreds of thousands of years before the RCC, non-Catholics are doing fine without the RCC, and humanity will manage to continue long after attrition slowly kills the Church.