At this point, I’m going to remind readers of a principle on this blog. It’s against the conversation-stopper of “true church” apologetics. It doesn’t belong to this blog. Those who are convinced Roman Catholics, Orthodox, etc. should set up their own apologetics blogs and sites. I believe in free speech but not shouting matches that make for reams of comment threads that we will either forget or laugh at in a year or two.
Also long strings of comments from the same two or three people can get boring and obsessive. An example can be found on the posting on Fr Smuts’ blog about Bishop Brian Marsh. The subject eventually changed to limbo, because of its value as an example of variations in Roman Catholic teaching. And on and on it goes. None of us have to read this stuff, either over there or here, but it does act as a deterrent to people who like to find other things on comment threads. A blog is both the blogger writing and the readers commenting.
All over the world, the lights are going out as the zealots dispute everything and anything. Starving people are told to go and eat cake!
We are therefore going to stop promoting any particular Church as the true Church, whether it be Orthodox, non-canonical Orthodox, Roman Catholic, any other kind of Catholic, Anglican, whatever. We are also going to stop gratuitous trashing (synonyms: knocking, bashing)* of any particular Church of the same categories or denominations as above. Discussions are interesting when one talks about theology or at least generally in the perspective of the Church of Christ being a sacramental mystery and subsisting to one extent or another in all Christian communities.
Do you want me to moderate postings, put more commenters on moderated status? Am I to post only subjects of less interest and about which no controversy is possible? It would be a pity, because you (plural) often have interesting things to say. I like Fr Smuts’ comments policy – laissez-faire except in cases of extreme rudeness. I try to be liberal, but I sometimes have the impression that such an attitude will be exploited until I have no choice but slamming on the tin lid.
* “Trashing” or any of the synonyms of that word don’t mean reasoned criticism of that Church’s doctrine or beliefs or simply “being negative” or saying “thanks but no thanks”. It means affirming that the Church in question is evil, graceless, sacramentally invalid, no good, rubbish, etc. for the sole purpose of trying to cause a member of that community to leave it and be proselytised to the “true” church in the eyes of the one doing the “trashing”. I don’t think I can be clearer than that.
