Reply #254: Wrong on every count.

[FiveGoodMen]

"We don't identify with our country based on some intellectual exercise."

Yes, we most certainly do. Identification with something is all in the head. That's different from being identified for legal purposes, but identifying is most certainly in your mind and there alone.

"Health care workers are in favor of good health. That does not mean they only hang with healthy people so they can identify with health. To the contrary, they go where the sick people are."

But they don't depend on those sick people for health care advice (the way church-goers depend on the clergy).

"No longer being a Catholic is not a matter of "switching churches" as though it were an exercise in consumerism."

Sure it is. Lots of people have done it. You don't even have to show ID or take a test. If you're unwilling to switch, that's your business, but you most certainly can.

"Are you more attached to your government than you are to the ideals of your country? Why do you continue to call yourself an American? Why do you comply with a government that violates those ideals?"

You're not even trying now... It is precisely because I'm more attached to the ideals than the actual government that I come to a site devoted to changing the government in order to make it fit the ideals.

I don't really 'call' myself an American. Much of the time that's a depressing fact. However, citizenship isn't an easy thing to change, as I pointed out earlier.

I don't comply with the government when it violates those ideals except insofar as they have guns, tasers, police, judges, etc who can force me to. That is not true of the church.