Mary is "fair game" on an open thread in the Religion Forum - as are any religious figures, teachers and authors who are not Freepers.
If you are offended by that, then stick with the threads marked devotional, prayer or Catholic/Orthodox Caucus.
Wow.....Who ARE you? I have been a member since the get-go---three digits, and I have never been talked to like this....Mary seems to have open season on her, and I WILL straighten out ignorance when I se it. There seems to be a PLethora of anti-Catholics on this lately....hoefully you aren't one, but....
Since this thread has already been hijacked, as happens so often, and is now way off-topic, I hope you won't be offended by my taking the opportunity to address a few of the points you have raised, and how they relate to the moderation of the religion forum.
First of all, I think we should drop the polite fiction that everyone comes in for an equal share of heat. It simply isn't so. Catholics are the most frequently targeted group, and the most frequent targeters are Calvinists. You will rarely find a thread started by a Catholic raking Protestants of any denomination over the coals for various difficulties arising from their beliefs or practices. But there are many which go in the opposite direction. The purpose of these threads is not clarification, but irritation, and it is quite tiresome to address the same issues over and over again. We have, time and again, clarified these issues by stating, with referenced sources, what the Catholic Church actually teaches, only to find the same poster repeating the same false statements within hours. That's not how people who are interested in an intellectual discussion behave; it is, however, the behavior of a bigot. Such behavior would not be tolerated here if it were directed at Jews, and I have seen the management jump in, in the past, when it was directed at Mormons, but it does always seem to be open season on Catholics here. Why the double standard?
With regard to the exercise of charity, I've seen it stated that Catholics are as guilty as the Calvinists of not living up to Christian standards. This is not so. We endure insult, ridicule, and incivility on a continual basis, but they are returned in kind only when one of us has been goaded beyond human endurance. We are far from perfect, but we are a good deal better in this regard, as a simple count of posts will show.
Now, to a few specific points:
"You are showing your ignorance." is making it personal. Don't do it.
Actually, it's a statement of objective fact. "Ignorance", in this context, simply means, "lack of knowledge", and there's no particular shame in that. Since no one knows everything, everyone is ignorant of something. It is also the most charitable interpretation of why the poster in question is speaking a falsehood. One prefers to believe that it's due to a lack of knowledge rather than attribute the falsehood to malice or deliberate mendacity. After several such corrections, though, it becomes clear that something less innocent than ignorance is operative.
Your attempt to distinguish between the general and the personal is logically flawed. A statement made about a group of people is a statement made about every individual in that group. In logic, this is the inference rule known as "instantiation". For example, if someone says, as we so often see here, "The Catholic Church teaches idolatry," the unavoidable implication is that I am an idolator. For if the Catholic Church teaches idolatry, and I am a faithful Catholic, i.e., one who believes what the Church teaches, I must therefore be an idolator. The personal nature of these kinds of statements is unavoidable, so the distinction you are trying to make doesn't exist.
Not only are these things inherently personal, they are personal in the most intimate way. For people who take their religious beliefs seriously, who organize their whole lives around the principles of their faith, there is nothing that can wound more deeply than false accusations and evil imputations directed at these beliefs.
Religious matters can be discussed dispassionately, and with intellectual honesty. And because religious principles form the basis of objective morality, which should be the basis for law, which is created by legislatures and is therefore a matter of politics, relgion is an appropriate topic for discussion at FR. But only if one treads lightly. It can be productive if the discussion is grounded in respect for one's opponent, civility in tone, and arises from a genuine desire for understanding.
But so often here, that is far from the case. More often than not, these "debates" are nothing more than an opportunity to exchange polemical barbs, or present historical events in a distortionate manner to one's advantage. In short, it's little more than negative propagandizing, and it reflects very poorly on those who engage in it. Such propaganda has lead to real injustices directed toward Catholics not only in Western Europe, but in the United States. The publication of the book Rebecca Reed, though less well-known than Maria Monk, lead directly to the burning of the Ursaline convent on Bunker Hill near Boston, for example. And I know of no other religious group, Jews included, which has had a whole political party, the Know-Nothing Party, which was loosely associated with the Republicans, formally organized against it.
So the issue, as I see it, is not one of "making things personal", but of bigotry. Bigotry toward Jews is not permitted here, because the management does not want such garbage on his website. I heartily agree. But, in fairness, that principle should be applied to all members of FR. None of us should have to endure bigotry in order to participate in this forum, Catholics included.
Did you really mean to say this? The Blessed Virgin, the Mother of Our Lord is "fair game", but any factual statements regarding the lack of knowledge, or ignorance, of any particular poster on this forum, (none of whom carried the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity within the womb by the way), are forbidden?
Religious teachers are all "fair game"? Some people believe Jesus was just a "religious teacher", is He now "fair game" on open threads?