In the file at the Website about "'First Amendment Right' ASCD", I say: "In most discussions of 'First Amendment Rights', the discussants make me feel as if I, and other non-mediacs, are second-class citizens."

And that's comparable to how the theology of the Roman Catholic Church would make me feel if I, a life-long Protestant, were to convert to that faith. I'd feel if I I were a second-class Christian, in a Church where only the priests are first-class (just as mediacs act if only they are first-class under this Republic).

A child must have an adult represent him or her. But a child has the possibiity to arrive at adulthood and no longer need another adult representative for everything.

I accept my political representation by elected officials in this Republic.

Christened a Southern Methodist by my minister father, later (when Dad left the minstry) I became a Presbyterian, an "Edinburgh Catholic". I mention this to point out that, in my Church, any congregant can be a priest to another congregant. But we accept the minister as the teaching elder, which is why a Presbyterian minister wears the robes of a university professor. I accept subsurvience to that role, just as I accept any qualified person to teach me in a given subject. That does not mean needing any one to be my mediator with God.

I've heard and read stories all my life about people -- particularly those known in the media as "gangsters" -- allegedly using the confessional to carry on their secret illegal activities.

As I understand it, society's most helpless, the children, have had the accounts of their being raped by Roman Catholic priests kept silent by the confessional, until the abused ones earned the adult speaking rights to expose the reported scandal of the past several years.

I thought I heard last year that priests can bypass the confessional if it would mean allowing a murderer to go free. But i can't find anything about this online.

In the file at the Website about "'First Amendment Right' ASCD", I say: "Those seeking protection under the First Amendment to the Constitution must do more to convince me that their real concern is for 'liberty' of our society, rather than protection of their jobs." Similarly, priests claiming "the right of the confessional" must do more to convince me that their real concern is for "religious liberty", rather than protection of their jobs.