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Originally Posted by UGAalum94
Oh, signing on completely to the Church's teaching on sexual and medical ethics is really hard, no doubt. And I think a significant number of Catholics deal with it by just living with a constant baseline level of hypocrisy in their own private behavior, (I think most draw the line before abortion.)
But I'm not sure that the solution is for the Church to modify its teachings necessarily. Their concerns may rightly be focused only on the more spiritual or metaphysical aspects, but of course, I can't say for sure. There's no historic reason to particularly assume the Church has no political motivation for a given teaching.
I doubt that God takes a hard "love it or leave it" attitude about the Church, but I get frustrated a little when people think the church should modify its teachings rather than just maybe that they shouldn't worry about being Catholic when they don't agree with the positions.
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I don't know that I see it as hypocrisy unless they're actively professing the opposite of what they're doing. Sort of back to the 'why would you confess a sin if you didn't think it was a sin' thing.
The implication within your last paragraph though is that Catholicism is more about the social mores than the belief in Jesus and the sacraments. In my mind, those should take priority and it shouldn't be all or nothing. My voting for a politician who is pro-choice, whether it is because s/he is pro-choice or not, shouldn't be a determining factor in my religious identity. I think people can have their actions/votes/etc informed by their faith and come to different conclusions.
A person who thinks that abortion should be legal because otherwise more women die, who think that gay marriage should be legal, and supports birth control while encouraging sex to take place only in a committed loving relationship AND believes in the full Nicene creed from beginning to end, the just war theory and the other teaching of the Church... they really have no place to go. There's no United Liberal Catholic Church (pick name here) under the authority of Rome.