The Catholic Church's moral authority...

[skepticscott]

28. Apparently my question was quite necessary

since you still don't seem to have a grasp of what's important here (unless you're just being deliberately obtuse).

Yes, it was a perfectly legitimate legal argument. And obviously, any competent lawyer would have told their clients what their options were, and what could be reasonably argued under the law in their defense. But at that point, the non-hypocritical course for the defendants would have been to say "Even if that's the law, we don't want to base our defense on that argument, because it goes against a fundamental principle of Catholic teaching and belief. We want you to take another tack, even if it means we might lose."

And yes, everyone is guilty of hypocrisy at some point. More stating of the obvious. But "everyone" doesn't try to influence the actions of lawmakers the world over, or to dictate the moral behavior or restrict the legal rights of billions of people with regard to the very principles that they are hypocritical about. The Catholic Church does. Which is why their hypocrisy particularly bears pointing to. If you're interested in a "genuine conversation", feel free to start there.

And btw...no one needs to "portray" the Catholic Church as hypocrites. They do a fine job all by themselves.