As a proud and sincere Catholic lay young person. I say “sincere” as opposed to the many “super market” or “luke warm” Catholics who really are “Catholic” in name only as…
["you are either with me or against me...." speaks cleary for as only Jesus could articulate that which is cleary what is weakening our great Church today,as i believe was included in your admirable and much appreciated blog/debate hereinregarding the theme of "everyone interpreting whatever they "prefer" to be rite or wrong or everyone redefinig God's will and Word to "accomodate what happens to be the current fasion.trend,ones personal preference or opinion or political "plot" etc. I very much appreciate your addressing the debate's theme and doing so with honor,accuracy,and humility.Your "presentation" commanded the respect,attention,and any reasonable sincere person's [including myself] realization that a bona fide Catholic as yourself surely merited the determinations and conclusions that you so efficiently pleaded.You also reinforced what are my professions which i adhere to out of obligation and practice as mandated by the Church,and in following the debate you made me proud as a sincere Catholic to grow from the manner in which you brought Catholic knowledge, you restored clarity where today’s onslaught of deceptions are so prevelant to discredit that [the Church]which often times is society’s only sole hope of survival due to America’s current path toward it’s certain destruction due to its cancer of total impropriety and immorality fueled by the “Culture of Death”.

Did he say something about not having enough tome to remark about how much your Blog/Debate accomplished?!..heh heh..
Looking forward to returning and soon.Keep on doing what you are doing so very well for humanity,our fellow man,our awesum Catholic Faith and last but certainly not least Our Lord,whom im sure appreciated it [you] even more than myself certainly did.

Remember the story of Jesus’ baptism. As he is coming out of the waters, the Holy Spirit descends upon him and a voice from the heavens declares, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

I have often taken this story to be applied not only to Jesus but to all who are baptized and adopted into the family of God. As we rise from the baptismal waters (or drip from a sprinkling), the voice from heavens repeats, “This is my Child, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

I should begin with the caveat that, although I trust that I am accurately representing what the Catholic Church teaches, my perspective is merely that of a lay Catholic who of course cannot speak for the Church. Thus, if my explanation in this post or any other previous post is in need of clarification, I invite any other readers to correct, clarify, etc. (Priests, deacons, sisters, etc. who may be reading: please feel free to chime in.)

With that caveat, I think I should clarify that not everything that has ever been said by a bishop or pope — and certainly not everything that has ever been said or done by a majority of Catholics — constitutes “Magisterial” authority. When we speak of “Magisterial” documents in the Catholic church, we are referring to a specific type of document that bears an official imprimatur on matters of doctrine or morals. (I believe that there are various guidelines under canon law for what kinds of documents represent truly “Magisterial” documents, but someone who is more knowledgeable about the subject would have to comment).

To make an anology to your own tradition, surely no one would say that a stateement issued by single presbytery (or even an overture passed by the entire General Assembly) bears the same relative weight of authority as the Westminster Confession of Faith, and certainly comments from the pulpit from individual pastors do not rise to the level of a Creed or Confession. Somewhat similarly, there is a big difference in the Catholic Church between, on the one hand, an off-hand remark by the Pope at a press conference or even a pastoral letter by a national bishops conference (like the USCCB) versus, on the other hand, a papal encyclical or an officially endorsed compendium of Catholic doctrine (such as the Cathechism of the Catholic Church).

We of course recognize that the Church is made up of sinful people, and, as such, those who make up the Church have often committed sins in the name of the Church — sometimes with the apparent conding of the Church. Like Southern Presbyterians, Southern Catholics are also guilty of having endorsed slavery and segregation for the most part (though it should be said that a number of the most active Civil Rights workers in the 1960s and even before then were nuns and prists who served at African-American parishes in the South and saw the evils of segregation firsthand). Indeed, plenty of bishops and even popes have supported many causes throughout history — the Crusades and Inquisition, for example — that were shameful corruptions of the Gospel.

But while such corporal sins are an occasion of serious scandal, they do not call into question the truth of the dogmas proclaimed by the Magisterium because such dogmas do not support such sins and in fact, when properly interpreted, condemn them. To return to my analogy to the Reformed tradition, could anyone reasonably argue that the Salem witch trials — as embarassing as they were to an authentic Reformed witness — are somehow an intellectual indictment of the entire Westminster Confession of Faith? The answer is of couse no, because nothing in the Westminster Confession says that individuals must be burned at the stake when they are accused of withcraft on the hearsay accusation of a pre-pubescent child with an overactive imagination. Similarly, the fact that some people have committed grievous sins in the name of the Catholic Church does not mean that the dogmas proclainmed by the Church support such sins. To the contrary, as history has shown repeatedly, throughout time the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, learns from the past and clarifies prior teachings in such a way as to clearly condemn prior corruptions of the Church’s teachings.

In short, by saying that the Magisterium clarifies but does not reverse prior Magisterial statements, Catholics don’t mean to imply that Catholics have never said or done anything sinful in the name of the Church. What we do mean to say is that, regarding official dogmas, the Holy Spirit has so guided the Magisterium of the Church such that we can be sure that the Church bears an authentic witness to the Gospel.

On one point, I raise the Reformed worry… You state, “The Magisterium can and does clarify prior statements, but it does not ‘reverse’ previous statements.” As a Reformed thinking, my worry rises in the thought of not “reversing” statements. Even the legal case you site, “Plessy v. Ferguson” is a good illustration of corporate sin. I must ask, “Could such corporate sin not also influence the church?”

As a Southern Presbyterian, I must say a resounding, “Yes!” for it was some of my ancestors in faith who argued from the pulpit that slavery (and later “separate but equal”) were indeed God’s will for the world. It was not until the 1960’s and specifically in the Confession of 1967 that such corporate sin was acknowledged and reversed for the good of the Presbyterian church (indeed the good of all people of faith).

So perhaps my question is: “In what ways does the catholic church ‘confess’ its corporate sin?”

To quote from the PCUSA Brief Statement of faith:
“In a broken and fearful world
the Spirit gives us courage
to pray without ceasing,
to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior,
to unmask idolatries in Church and culture,
to hear the voices of peoples long silenced,
and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace.”

In what ways does the catholic church “unmask idolatries in Church” (even in the Magisterium)?