FWIW I view the problem differently. One purpose of rules is, so to speak, to keep bloodshed down to a minimum.
Rules cannot always inculcate or ensure virtue any more than the rules of football can make people gentle and ensure a pain-free game.
And it is part of our fallenness that when we see rules we tend to test their limits. How many of us, seeing a “55 MPH” sign, think it means, “Keep it under 60 MPH.”
So the rules of the forum will not be used as encouragements to charity and gentleness but as outer limits to permissible verbal cruelty. If we don’t like the way our antagonists express themselves, even when they comply with the rules, we can appeal to them and to our Lord. But I don’t see how we can expect of anyone who says “simul justus et peccator” that he stop being a sinner.
We Catholics have a burden not shared by Protestants, to bear all things,to endure all things, and when we see gross injustice from our antagonists to remember that we also are unjust.
This is not some treacly piety and I make absolutely no claim whatsoever to any success in following my own opinion.
Yeah, they’re sinners. So are we. Yeah, they sometimes seem to set out to cause pain. Even if one day with a straight face I could claim to be innocent of that sin, I still hope I would remember the pains of St. Francis and the pains of our Lord and TRY to accept this as part of the gentle yoke which I pretend to shoulder willingly.
So, yeah, it’s irritating. Were we ever told that it would be otherwise?
Sometimes the problem isn’t “the rules,” its their erratic pattern of application. Hypothetically speaking, of course.
And you're sure of this how?
That's quite an assumption to make about others. Your basis for it is....______________?
“One purpose of rules is, so to speak, to keep bloodshed down to a minimum. And it is part of our fallenness that when we see rules we tend to test their limits. How many of us, seeing a “55 MPH” sign, think it means, “Keep it under 60 MPH.”
The point that I was absolutely not trying to make was that Catholics never go above 5 mph in this 55 mph zone and are still ticketed and jailed, while Protestants are allowed to go 190 mph with impunity. It is of course not true that some Protestants and the moderator (but I repeat myself) then turn around and lie truth out of Texas in denying this bias, and certainly no one on FR would ever say such a thing.
Thank you both for your support.
It's that darn gross JUSTICE that gets me every time!