“People perhaps need to get over their bad experiences with the nuns and parish priests. That was another time.” comment by Mark

Right on the money. My experience with them was mixed. I had the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in grammar school and the Salesian Fathers and Brothers for high school. The latter were truly great guys who treated us kindly, respectfully, and like we were human beings. Some of the religious sisters did not. I think some of those women never should have been in a room full of kids, but there were other sisters who were quite good.

Most critics of Christianity and Catholicism have a lot of anger issues. I can understand and empathize – up to a point. When you go as deeply into the Church (and aspire to the priesthood)as people like me have you DO find where the bodies are buried. But, you have to make an evaluation of the big picture and the entire history of the Church and Christianity. Were the horrendous episodes the essence of our Church or were they deviations from the Gospel and the best teachings of the Church? I like to think that Thomas Aquinas would have disapproved of many medieval practices and episodes, but then again he died too young and only left us a prodigious amount of work.

Christianity and the Church ARE NOT at all the same as the Founder. It aint perfect, and I don’t expect perfection from people or institutions.

When comparing Christianity with Islam, I just am amazed and dumbfounded that some people can get it so wrong. If you compare the behavior of Jesus of Nazareth with the behavior of Muhammad, the difference is so stark as to defy the need for a comparison to begin with. So, I can only conclude that those who lump the two together as roughly equivalent know neither of them at any depth at all. And that confirms an observation I have made about our modern world as it is right now: intellectual sloth and moral torpor are rampant among our populations, especially among the educated elites.