If the Faith were their primary motivation, then they'd work for free.  I'm not saying they are fake catholics, but there's just something uncatholic about selling the Faith through books, speaker fees, news stories, etc.

I agree; there’s a bad taste in my mouth from trafficking in the faith which smacks of simony.  That’s another reason it should be the domain of clerics, many/most of whom have to abide by certain standards of poverty.  We don’t need the Catholic equivalent of those Prot televangelist, most of whom live scandalously opulent lifestyles.

Most sports heroes are actually freaks, genetic outliers.

I've coached and marshalled a lot of sports over the last 30 years, it is almost a second career.  I've done track and field, soccer, basketball, professional cycling and seen talented children and young adults work hard, practice, make the team, win local, regional and national competition and then at international level get beaten by a person who has not worked harder and sometimes worked less hard, but is a genetic freak and has some physical attribute that gives them an advantage.  Sometimes, not just beaten either but completely humiliated and the freak wins by an embarrassing margin or victory.

At the level of the Olympics we are really talking for MOST sports about the freakiest of the freaks.  They are all freaks from their country competing with other freaks to find the biggest freak of all.

More recently of course they might even be a man instead of a woman and this usually overcomes even the freakiest genetics of very masculine, tall, strong women.

There are a few sports and pastimes where practice and hard work can get you to the top levels.  Golf and Pole Vault for example where learned technique really matters.  But whether you are dealing with drugged athletes, TranssɛҳuąƖs or just people with freakish bio-chemistry, most sports automatically favour people who have freakishless, long, light, short, tall, large, small, flexible limbs, hearts, lungs.

I have a friend for example who is an OK swimmer on the surface but can swim underwater like a fish.  He can hold his breath for a stupidly long time and always could since our child hood.  I can swim perhaps 100 feet underwater, he can swim well over 300 feet.  He does not practice it is just some natural freakish attribute he has.  If they had underwater swimming completion, no matter how much 99.9% of people practiced they could never beat him.

We should acknowledge sports as a freak show and a form of entertainment.

Agreed wholeheartedly, at least where the "power sports" --- probably basketball prime among these --- are involved.

I'd also like to add that "freak shows" are not confined to sports.  For the longest time, I have referred to Jeopardy as an "Asperger's Syndrome freak show".  Not that all, or even most, of the contestants, have Asperger's, but it is a show uniquely geared to those who can remember, and quickly summon up, vast reserves of arcane knowledge, or --- as I do when I play along (and I positively slay that show every time!) --- are able to make highly educated guesses based upon what they do know.  Many of the contestants appear slightly "off", and their personalities incline more towards librarians, mathematicians, engineers, and so on.  Some of them revel in their eccentricity (think Austin Rogers) and make no attempt to hide it.  I simply cannot comprehend how anyone could find the show entertaining if they weren't also of the same intellectual stripe as the people on the show (as I am), I have to think it is more like watching a high-powered "math challenge" show --- and I am making up examples here, I know little more about these things, than that these words exist (I was always an unmotivated math student, I only took what I had to, and no more) --- where the host asks "what is the quadratic surd of the linear function of pi to the fourth power?", someone comes up with the answer just like that, and everyone goes "ooh...aah!" at the contestant's prowess, while having no idea what the host just said.

And, no, I am not as "Aspie", I have known people with Asperger's, and I know it when I see it.  The way I was raised, oh, you had it bludgeoned into you from Day One that other people don't want to hear you go into detail about things (unless they're interested in them), that you let other people take their turn, that you listen with rapt attention to other people's inane musings in the name of "being a good listener", that you watch for little non-verbal cues that people give when they're too sheepish to make their objections known, all that interpersonal business.  Many people have the communication skills of tree trunks, yet you're called upon to be a mind-reader when they start dispensing their sage wisdom.

And I won't get into why Jeopardy's low-rent cousin, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, had to cut out that business of selecting contestants based on how quickly the studio audience buzzed in with the correct answers to questions --- it was coming up almost all white males.  Horrors!  Of course, that was because our entire social and educational system elevates them, gives them "privilege", and trods everyone else underfoot.  Systemic racism and sexism, don't you know?  Every ghetto dweller and ingenue co-ed (now there's a dated term for you!) is a brain surgeon in the making, you just have to pump them full of self-esteem and nominate them for the Nobel Prize every time they break wind.

Ladislaus, who should actively suppress error?

Anyone who is in a position to do so.  So, the father of a family in the family, secular officials in society, and the Catholic hierarchy among Catholics.

Okay, let's just stick with the secular officials in society for now.  Who in the Bıdɛn administration would you select to be in charge of suppressing religious errors?  

 We're talking about a catholic country, with catholic politicians or even a Catholic King.  Obviously, an anti-catholic society won't defend Catholic truth.
.
But overall, EVERY catholic has the duty to attack error and support truth.  That's why we get confirmed.  That's why it's weird to get paid for it, because it's a moral duty.

If the Faith were their primary motivation, then they'd work for free.  I'm not saying they are fake catholics, but there's just something uncatholic about selling the Faith through books, speaker fees, news stories, etc.

Do you work for free?

Taylor has a large family to support. If he cared about money, he could use his PhD to teach at a university. Or he could have remained Episcopalian and been financially comfortable.


At the root of some, not all, of these attacks on Marshall there appears to be a great deal of envy. To those who are green with envy I say, if what he has done is so easy, just do it yourself.

 We're talking about a catholic country, with catholic politicians or even a Catholic King.  Obviously, an anti-catholic society won't defend Catholic truth.

Exactly right.  Now let's take this one step further.   

If a non-Catholic country, which will almost always be an anti-catholic country, does not have the right to suppress false religions or religious errors, does that not result in the citizens of this anti-Catholic country having a negative civil right not to be prohibited from practicing a false religion and/or spreading religious errors? 

We all agree that no one has a moral right "to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall considers true," (Syllabus of Pius IX), but if the civil authority in an anti-Catholic country is not permitted to suppress religious errors, it follows logically that the citizens of that non-Catholic country will have the civil right not to be prohibited from committing that particular evil.  Do you agree?  

My comment was not a slight towards +Vigano, just an observation on how quickly he rose to stardom in the lack of truth-speakers of indult-land.

He had a perfectly reasonable resume before he was catapulted into the limelight. We can only wonder, because 1960-70 is not fresh in any of our memories, how the events leading up to his fame are comparable to the events that led to Lefebvre being a (Catholic) household name. For many of us the first time we heard his name was in the reports of the consecrations and not even the work he was doing the previous +20 years. 
There is certainly something of the world about Vigano. Would he have spoken out if Francis named him a cardinal and gave him a nicer assignment ... maybe not but then again maybe that's why the Holy Spirit allowed Francis to do that. Are he and Marshall bringing souls to Christ through the Catholic faith? Are any of us even qualified to make that judgement. 
I would say no, we're not qualified.