Don't get me wrong. There is a great deal of Catholicism I don't like at all. Don't even get me started on the official line on birth control, abortion, ordination of women, and homosexuality. Then there's the Inquisition, crusades, anti-Semitism and the whole raft of others. I'm not particularly fond of the impression most of them give that the laity requires the mediation of the priesthood to reach God, and that a layperson can not speak to God on his or her own. I don't like the exclusion of non-members from the Eucharist (Jesus certainly never told someone "You can't share my table"!) The Catholic church is in desperate need of reform.

My point was that prior to the last month or so, that's *all* that I saw of the Catholic church. I'm seeing another side of it in some of the theologians we've been reading, not to mention in my professor and many of my classmates (I'm in an ecumenical program hosted by a Catholic university). Simply coming from the Catholic tradition is not grounds for automatic dismissal.