The Theology of Punctuation
It all boils down to this...

I've been cruising around various Catholic news sites to get more info on the USCCB's latest statement on how scumbags who rape and murder little kids should be allowed to live. I read this the other day, but it never really hit me until now.

Stay with me on this...

The official statement included such gems as; "It is time for our nation to abandon the illusion that we can protect life by taking life." and "The use of the death penalty ought to be abandoned not only for what it does to those who are executed, but what it does to all of society." And here's the biggie; "The sanction of death violates respect for human life and dignity"

Wow... pretty powerful stuff. Straightforward and to the point. Especially the last quote. That one pretty much says that if I'm in favor of the death penalty, I'm in essence, a murderer. And this is from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops!!

But take a gander at at what His Excellency Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn had to say; "While the bishops argue against capital punishment, he said, Catholics may disagree without separating themselves from the Church community."

Huh? I'm confused. If I'm in favor of such, I'm in direct contradiction to what the USCCB says... but simultaneously, I can DIRECTLY go against the USCCB and somehow magically be in communion with "the Church community". So I reinterate... huh?

Catholicism never has vagueness and ambiguity at this scale until the great and sweeping changes stemming from the Second Vatican Council. You know, I've come to the conclusion that the Traditional Catholicism and the Vatican II Huggy-Touchie-Feelie Church can be boiled down to puncuation.

The theology of Traditional Catholicism is by and large, a period (.) with an occasional exclamation point (!).

The theology of The New & Improved Vatican II Church is in essence, a question mark (?).