He says of the hysterics surrounding figures like Bp. Strickland and other cults of personality around the likes of James Altman or Frank Pavone:
How do you cope with it? I see so much hate and evil from these reactionaries that it feels like the whole Church. How can you trust that the people who belong to your parish aren’t secretly or openly on their side?
It’s a very small movement in comparison with the global Church. The entire US Church is only 6% of the Church. Reactionaries are a small fraction of that. But they have money and cameras and microphones and so feel bigger than they are.
My friend Greg Kandra, who served as deacon in the Archdiocese of New York, tells a story I have never forgotten. The day after a Big Noise on EWTN named Fr. John Corapi (a fabulist who was a massive fraud and abuser) was exposed as such, the Rightwingosphere in Catholic Onlinedom was having a massive freakout and going to the mat to defend yet another obvious fraud because he was a Good Conservative. The whole thing was cast as Evil Liberal Bishops vs. Heroic Martyr for the Truth because, as ever, this subculture so consistently wrong about so much so many times for so long (and utterly unable to learn from their experience) yet again functioned by pure ideology, not reality (see chart).
The facts were obviously against him, but the narrative of the Rightwingosphere which places themselves at the center of the Universe and everbody else as “vermin” (to quote both Trump and Altman) was too cocksure to consider the facts.
Greg got on an elevator at the New York Chancery that day, worried about what appeared to be looming schism over this folk hero priest vs. his Evil Lib Bishop.
The elevator was *packed* with priests and religious in the heart of the most media-heavy, news-drenched city on planet Earth. He remarked to the small crowd in the elevator, “Boy! How about this Corapi thing?”
To a man, they replied, “Who?”
I think that’s very good news. The idiotic teapot tempests of this small, noisy sect have very little interest for the bulk of the Church who are Normals. I bet almost nobody in my parish has the slightest idea who Bp. Strickland is, much less being in secret league with him. Most people are Normals. Be at peace.
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