Living up to Catholic Stereotypes

So the whole Live Action thing is in the news.  Fine.  Looks like they've been calling around to see if Planned Parenthood really does provide mammograms - which is why Planned Parenthood says it needs the money, for services like that.  Seems Live Action isn't committing that mortal sin of lying in this case, and many have taken to cheering, saying well done, forgiving them their blasphemous evils, and pointing out that evil can be defeated without lying - even though I've not seen any more results of this honest approach than I did the much maligned sting operations of a month or so ago.

On Mark Shea's blog, he posts an article pointing the same things out - that lying isn't necessary, and it's nice to see Live Action doing it right.  Fair enough.  But then, in the comments, I read this:

"Technically, Mark, they also asked questions like "I was hoping I could come into Planned Parenthood for a mammogram" (from their Georgetown and St. Louis PP call) Now, most of the called-in inquiries on their video were of the "Does Planned Parenthood offer mammograms?" sort, but some were fibs, for they were posing as someone wanting to come in for a mammogram."

You see that?  Live Action is only mostly perfect.  They're still not 100% perfect - and that's where we should focus! 

One of the stereotypes of Catholicism is, of course, that it guts the Gospel of its heart and soul and replaces it with a stone cold, heartless, computer microchip precision style legalism.  But another is something I remember hearing as a Protestant.  That Catholics firmly believe that salvation is attained by everyone[else] being 100% perfect 100% of the time.  99.9999999999999999999999999999999999% perfection just won't do.  Unless, of course, it's my own sins - which are OK, since God loves to forgive me, I have confession, and when I sin it's just the natural thing to do and grace and forgiveness and mercy and all that jazz. 

Hence, Catholics give the dual presentation of a religion where nobody has a ghost of a chance to be saved since except for a select few (who can have among the worst lives of anyone), folks just will never be able to cut it (think Martin Luther).  And yet on the other side, one that maintains a religion that continually scores near dead last on all the religious studies and surveys.  A religion where its adherents have the reputation of out lying, out cheating, out screwing, out drinking, out gambling, out smoking, and out debauching the most die-hared atheist.  Because the focus in on how intolerant we should be of everyone[else]'s sins, but so understanding of our own. 

Of course that isn't unique to Catholicism.  It is a human trait to focus on the splinter in our neighbor's eye while demanding nothing less than understanding and forgiveness for the logs in our own eyes.  But with the Catholic Faith's premium on philosophical wrangling in order to explain and promote this or that teaching, when filtered through that weird, strange world of the combox, it can certainly make it appear that, at least in this case, old stereotypes have at least some basis in fact.