Fr. James Martin, S.J., offers an amusing, or grimly amusing, example of internet arguments in What’s That Supposed to Mean? ”No matter what you write,” he notes in his introduction,
there are Catholics ready to take immediate offense, to explode in righteous anger, to threaten to report you to the proper authorities or, most of all, to correct. The most common responses are these five: 1.) Your soul is in mortal danger. 2.) You’re uneducated and need to be schooled. 3.) I hate the church and so I hate you. 4.) You’re an unthinking tool of the Vatican. 5.) You’re disobedient and must be reported.
The imagined exchange that follows is both accurate and funny. I particularly appreciated the way he identified the faux concerned, passive-aggressive comment.
Greetings on a Morning Walk
Blackberry vines, you hold this ground in the shade of a willow: all thorns, no fruit. *…
An Outline of Trees
They rise above us, arching, spreading, thin Where trunk and bough give way to veining twig. We…
Fallacy
A shadow cast by something invisible falls on the white cover of a book lying on my…