Cheap Shots Can Bring People to the Church

Slate’s William Saletan hit Catholic writers with a cheap and silly shot for their explanations of Benedict’s resignation, as I wrote yesterday. But even cheap shots help.

As G. K. Chesterton said in The Catholic Church and Conversion, the first stage of conversion is often feeling that someone’s being unfair to the Church. Many people, reading this kind of thing, will feel some sympathy for Pope Benedict and his Church, and from there they may find their way in. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church, as Tertullian said, and the bruises of the popes may be too.