In politics and religion in the Unites States, journalists are always trying to divide the world into two camps: liberals and conservatives. Conservatives believe that people are basically immoral – that is why we need police, prisons, and a big military so that conservatives can scare everyone into acting like conservatives. Liberals, on the one hand, believe that people are basically stupid- that is why we need better schools, more education, and dialogue, so that liberals can persuade everyone to think like liberals. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, has always taught that people are both immoral and stupid – we call that original sin, the only doctrine for which we have empirical evidence.

Thomas J.Reese, “Organizational Factors Inhibiting Receptive Catholic Learning” in Receptive Ecumenism and the Call to Catholic Learning: Exploring a Way for Contemporary Ecumenism ed. Paul D Murray (Oxford University Press, 2008), 346.