From Occupy Catholic, a new "testimony" by Steve Saporito: I have been separated from the church for a long time, and the fulcrum of that split has always been my understanding of the sermon on the mount as the nexus of Catholic theology.  I saw, from the vantage point of growing up in the church, a terrible paradox;  on the one hand I learned a wonderful liturgy of social justice based on moral strength rooted in the lessons in the Beatitudes.  It was my understanding that by putting those concerns at the core of our lives we will shine a light, as Catholics, for the rest of the world to see, and in the process make the world a better place, as we, individually embrace the very essence of God.  But time and time again the church failed to overtly embrace the very thing that made it Catholic.