If it helps at all, regarding the “daily bread” bit, I’ve become convined (from NT NT Wright, and Amy-Jill Levine) that this particular line from our Lord’s prayer should read, “give us this day the bread of the Day” –> meaning, the prayer has an eschatological leaning. Thy (future-ly completed) kingdom, come (in part, now) on earth…
Give us (now) today, the (kingdom life) bread of the day (the fully kingdom to come)…

But it is obvious that today many Catholics use to identify themselves either as conservative or as progressive, and that that could arise much controversy – even to the point that some are accusing others of sharing Protestant or unorthodox views. You’re right that this may even lead to yet new factions within the Church. May God grant us the humility to follow the way you suggest, and look for His greater glory, instead of falling in the pitfall of spiritual pride.

No prob!

Just to be clear though, I wasn’t necessarily focussing my comments towards you even though it was meant to address a certain of your comments contained therein; it was more so those seminarians specifically who have (and may) suffer from such a sad symptom such as that which may, in the long run, prove fatal to their vocation if they should ever find themselves taking up the priesthood.

God bless.

P.S. Yeah, hopefully, you might be able to turn that offensive linking thing off; such a bother.

Yes, the Pope as Anti-Christ article is rather annoying. Come to think of it, that automatically-generated link thing seems new; I don’t remember seeing it before. I wonder if I can turn it off…

On another entirely different matter, what’s with the ‘Pope as Anti-Christ’ article that’s being featured on the bottom of your post?

I know you’re not responsible for it, but it’s just a blatant (not to mention, seemingly offensive) eyesore.

That’s where you’re wrong; priesthood (which is the ultimate end of seminary training) is permanent as well.

If you end up bitter, your very vocation whence ordination and ultimately priesthood is conferred upon the individual will severely hurt a priest’s own marriage not only with regards to Christ but to his parish as well.

That is a very egregious error which I hope certain seminarians in like mind will correct accordingly before their discernment inevitably proves a waste of time.

Indeed –

Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who’ve sinned against us.

Difficult and, in some instances, almost impossible; although, hopefully, with Christ’s help, we can do so and forgive our enemies and even love them — somehow.

As for your other examples. I don’t think anyone denies that people in positions of authority have difficult decisions to make. The question is whether they can make some of those decisions without sin. Let’s assume for a moment that you kill a man who breaks into your house in order to protect your family. St. Thomas, as well as the Catholic Church, teaches that the ends and the means of an act must be good in order for the act to be good. But in this example, killing seems to be a means towards the end of saving one’s family. The conservative PDE advocate is going to charge this person with back-door consequentialism.

Furthermore, the conservative PDE’r will argue for the prima facie most intuitive and common sense definition of ‘intrinsically evil act’ as one that is wrong despite one’s intentions, an object that cannot be chosen under any circumstances. Thus, to defend oneself with the intention of killing–no matter what the further circumstances–is wrong. To say otherwise would be to say that intrinsically evil acts can be justified if the circumstances are right, which is to say that there are no such things as intrinsically evil acts.

I don’t think the St. Paul example works, either. At best, it is question-begging against the conservative, who would argue that you cannot be acting lovingly towards a person while you are intending to kill them.

In sum, I don’t think it’s that simple; in fact, I think the problem is extraordinarily complicated. As much as I think the conservative position leads to some undesirable consequences, their charge of consequentialism against their opponents deserves to be taken seriously. If e.g. killing in self-defense is permissible, there needs to be a way of describing the act a) in a non-arbitrary way that b) adequately explains the killing as a foreseen and not intended side effect of the act and c) is not part of the means.

The conservative answer is appealing because it is simple: when intentionally killing in self-defense, the killing belongs to the means and is therefore wrong. The object of the game is to show that killing is not a part of the means. The only way to discover the right answer will be through prayer, the virtues, a cap of intelligence +5, and a string of lucky dice rolls.