I got a few thoughtful emails taking issue with my brief post yesterday. In response: Yes, I agree that Catholics (including both Marc Thiessen and me) have an obligation to do our best to figure out how Catholic teaching bears on a particular controversy and conform our thoughts and actions to that teaching. But it seemed to me to be simply mistaken — descriptively incorrect — to describe Marc as someone who had decided to disregard Church teaching because other considerations trumped it. My primary point was not that Thiessen is morally in the clear even if he is wrong; it is that if he is wrong — and I left open the possibility that he is not wrong at all — his wrongness has to consist of misunderstanding what the Church teaches (and, perhaps, allowing various emotional biases to cloud his ability to understand it).