A reader asks how I deal with the hate mail

Virtually all the really vicious mail I get comes, not from unbelievers, or even from anti-Catholic Christians, but from members of my own communion who hate me with an intensity that only the Greatest Catholics of All Time can fire up in the blast furnace of their fury.

A reader asked how I deal with such hate mail.

Once, I was taking a walk a couple of years after my exile from Faithful Conservative Catholicdom[TM] had begun with the National Catholic Register’s decision to make a Very Public Example of me as a warning to all critics of the Orange Messiah. I was mourning my fate and bitching and moaning at God in prayer when the Holy Spirit very clearly put me a question: “Why are you so upset about being rejected by people whose views horrify you?” I had no good answer to that and I felt a great peace.

If you are dealing with a similar sense of exile, consider the question posed to you as well.

Mind you, I recognize that this is not a panacaea. One of the things that the Greatest Catholics of All Time and the rest of the MAGA cult have done many, many times to their victims (in between endless complaining that they are being “cancelled” by Normals who don’t care for their racism, anti-semitism, Big Lies about the election, riotous attacks on democracy, vicious slanders of the Pope, or promotion of anti-vax lies that helped kill a million Americans) is really and truly cancel and economically harm innocent brother and sister Catholics, ostracize them from families, amputate them as friends, and put them through brutal blackballing and whisper campaigns that inflict both social isolation and financial poverty.

The social isolation is painful and that is what I was primarily struggling with. But the familial and financial harm can be far worse and the healing I received is not (as one reader pointed out) something that could really address their condition.

I think it is important, as we try to live our lives as Catholics faithful to Christ “outside the camp” to check in on each other and see if others who are struggling are okay and, in particular, to keep in mind that not everybody is merely paying emotional costs for that fidelity (though those are very real too). If you know a brother or sister Christian struggling financially, or ostracized from family, or suffering from job woes, or alienated from their parish because they would not bend the knee to the MAGA cult, then keep an eye and ear out for things like job opportunities or fellowship opportunities in their area or on-line.

For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing abuse for him. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city which is to come. (Hebrews 13:11-14)