I can’t remember if it was St. Augustine that said this, but it was one of the early church doctors that said that it is wrong for a person to deny what is “divinely inspired by God”, or a “divine revelation” especially when dealing with an issue that required, and, went through of a process of intense discernement reflecting upon church teaching, prayer, scripture, and after that extensive process, then eventually the integrity of oneself, and realizing, or having the “truth” revealed, in such process, is entirely within church doctrine. Therefore, it is this process that is entirely accepted as official church revelation, and a lot of these rules that are stipulated are “accepted”, or being constantly being reviewed, but to the best of my understanding, we are held responsible for the creed ((what we say as the recite as the apostles creed)), as being the basic ideas that we as Catholics are expected to follow. I mean, if we believe in that, then i am certain that i can call myself a Catholic.

In a more personal example, i am gay, and i am Catholic. No, i do not follow every single part of what is the “official Catholic stance”, but the spirit of Catholicism, yes, i do believe in a community and a body within Christ, which is the general spirit of what Catholicism is about, and i don’t think anyone can take that away from. Hell, i don’t think i will be excommunicated, i dare that to happen, but it won’t, because Catholicism is so diverse as an institution that it is impossible to say that Catholics have to believe in every single piece of dogma that exists. If that were to happen, we would be contradicting the very nature of Jesus’ teaching about the law made for man, vs. the man made for the law. If we had to follow catholicism heel-to-toe, then we would essentially be very bad… catholics.
I was also wondering about one of the references made in 1877, a lot has changed since the second vatican council…
aside from that… er… i hope i didn’t want to confuse anyone, i was just merely interested in this topic, please ignore my ranting if it doesn’t do you any good. Oh yes! and i agree judy. hehehe, see you around