Internet Discourse

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.