On my Catholic Teaching page yesterday, Ignatius Benedict posted a comment which drew a response from me, leading to further exchanges from each of us. Ignatius Benedict has his own blog In the Roman Catacombs, which I respect but often disagree with, and we clearly have very different views on church and authority, so I suggested that on that matter we should now agree to differ and close that particular discussion.
However, reflecting on his comments, and those posted by Conway on the same page earlier, I realised that this page is one that I have neglected for too long. The reasons I think are understandable. In setting up this site 6 months ago, I built a structure that intially represented ambition and intention rather than achievement, reflected in pages that were set up as templates without content. As time has passed, I have tried to build up the content on three fronts simultaneously: a series of regular front page postings reflecting mostly personal opinions and reflections, prompted by events in the news or in my life, or ideas as they occur to me ; a series of information pages which attempt to build up information on faith and sexuality from a range of perspectives (church, history, scripture, and so on); and an expanding set of books pages.
These inner inforamtion pages are the most difficult for me: I am very conscious that I ahve no particular expertise or training in these fields, and so I depend on sharing information that I have gleaned from others. Also, inevitably I find it easier and more useful for me personally to time my time on the topics in which I am personally most interested, and about which I feel most confident. So these pages ahve been more neglected than others, and Church Teaching most of all.
Excuses though are not good enough. I personally have limited interest in the detail of Church teaching, but others do. I will henceforth make a greater effort to research and report on the official teaching. Be warned, though, that in doing so there will be some surprises. For as I noted in response to James, the official teaching, once you go beond the simple headlines coming out of the Vatican, are not nearly as clearcut and simple as one would think.
In the meantime, until I have been able to flesh out my thinking in more organised fashion, you may like to check out the interchange in the comments boxes, which has now become quite an extended exchange – and by all means, go ahead and make your own contributions.