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The Author Replies Again: Nowhere do I suggest that all was “sweetness and light” with regard to the Church and slavery. I merely suggested that "De Indiis" was an expression of the Church’s “social magisterium” --- something that many people don’t think began until Pope Leo XIII. That’s it. It was a simple example to illustrate a simple point. As for the papacy and slavery, I recommend reading Fr. Joel Panzer’s article “The Popes and Slavery: Setting the Record Straight” (available on the EWTN website) or his book of the same name. It is, however, I admit, a complicated issue, as is much of Church history. It’s a human institution, thus full of sin and confusion. How could it not be messy? There are issues in all of this about the nature of the development of doctrine. And I tend to allow for a lot more “complexity” in this regard than most people I know --- with a lot of room for the “chaos” of back-and-forth. But to claim that the Church has simply changed major fundamental teachings (in the sense of doing a complete 180 degree turn on something that they set down definitively in an earlier age, as Noonan does in order to justify his desire to see the Church change its teaching on contraception, and as I have heard many others do seeking to justify the Church changing its teaching on homosexual sodomy) is to make a statement that lacks care, prudence, and the necessary sophistication. It’s a dangerous game to play in an age when many people want to tweak the nose of the Church in the direction they choose. I find the assertion that "All throughout the web, we have essays praising the good side of the Magisterium without noting the negative aspects of the Magisterium ..." rather odd. I find a plethora of criticisms of the Magisterium almost everywhere I turn --- especially in the "comments" sections of Catholic web sites. As far as I can tell, it's all the rage to harp on the negative aspects of the Magisterium, not only among New York Times reporters and Commonweal Catholics, but among so-called "conservative" Catholics as well. This, it seems to me, is part-and-parcel of the "everyone is stupid but me and my friends" tendency in American public discourse these days. As for bishops, one would think from what one reads on most "Catholic" web sites that they are the most stupid, most uninformed, most foolish men who ever lived. I don't have to agree with every decision made by every bishop (I don't) to conceive of the possibility that (A) being a bishop is a hard job, and (B) many bishops are actually a lot brighter than most of the people who write for Catholic web sites (the present writer included). - Randall B. Smith