To My Readers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"First of all, let me apologize for calling you all a niche market. When I wrote that, I knew all but a few of you in the abstract -- many of you, as you\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/diaryofawimpycatholic\/2012\/02\/to-my-readers\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"To My Readers\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"First of all, let me apologize for calling you all a niche market. 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{"id":3011,"date":"2012-02-27T13:23:16","date_gmt":"2012-02-27T19:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/diaryofawimpycatholic\/?p=3011"},"modified":"2015-03-13T15:03:10","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T21:03:10","slug":"to-my-readers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/diaryofawimpycatholic\/2012\/02\/to-my-readers\/","title":{"rendered":"To My Readers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I was pleased to see a few priests out there in the audience. I may be off the reservation in many respects, but I\u2019m thoroughly Catholic in my knee-jerk reverence for anyone in Holy Orders or religious life. In my mental universe, all of you are super-highbrows, used to bedding down for the night with Apologia pro Vita Sua.<\/em> If you\u2019re reading my crap, then, well, maybe it\u2019s not all crap after all.<\/p>\n

It was also nice to hear from some non-Catholics. In this, the age of the New Evangelism, there seems to be a backlash against \u201cfalse ecumenism\u201d; apparently, Catholics are letting down the side unless they\u2019re kicking the other guys in the groin with all due charity. Well, setting good theological boundaries is fine, I guess, but so\u2019s finding common ground. If that common ground can\u2019t include the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist or the primacy of the pope, let it be something more humdrum, like the agony of doubt, or of an inflamed eye.<\/p>\n

Thank you, everyone, for your spiritual direction. (Here I applaud the restraint of my Episcopalian reader, who did not promise to leave the light on for me.) Riding out my indigestion of the soul will take a while \u2014 maybe a long while \u2014 but I have no intention of throwing in the towel at any time in the near future. I entered the Church at what the Chinese would euphemistically call an interesting time. Convinced Catholics complain, reasonably enough, about aggressive New Atheists and sensationalistic press coverage of the clerical sex abuse scandals. But pity the poor seeker who enters the Church just as the call goes out to restore Catholic identity! Barely has he had the chance to wash the chrism from his hair before his new friends are screaming at him to quit being a relativist and man the barricades. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve formed a love-hate relationship with that kind of militancy. One on hand, it\u2019s a headache. Catholic anthropology aside, I like to think of myself simply as a human being who\u2019s trying to build a pleasant life for himself. I don\u2019t ask much \u2014 just a career, a family, some nice vacations, maybe some sane and reliable friends. Being morally and emotionally bludgeoned toward radical witness isn\u2019t quite what I\u2019d bargained for. Despite squeezing in \u2014 so to speak \u2014 a two-part philippic against anal intercourse, my RCIA instructors never covered cultural counter-revolution.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, well, interesting times are interesting times, aren\u2019t they?. Not long ago, Alice von Hildebrand critiqued<\/strong><\/a> Christopher West\u2019s presentation of John Paul II\u2019s Theology of the Body. In a bid for the attention of a society starved for sensuality by its Puritan heritage, West praises Hugh Hefner as \u201ctarnished gold.\u201d With a straight face \u2014 one doubts she has any other \u2014 Hildebrand writes back that the very mention of pornography \u201ctriggered an expression of horror on [deceased husband Dietrich von Hildebrand\u2019s] noble face.\u201d Intellectuals can debate the merits of these writers\u2019 respective positions, but this man on the street sees slick marketing in a death match with old-fashioned frumpery\u2013 and can\u2019t tear his eyes away.<\/p>\n

But when I try to write about this stuff, I find I have to handle the material with tongs. Remember what Eleanor Roosevelt said about great minds discussing ideas, mediocre minds discussing events and small ones discussing people? I have a small mind, but a very active one. If minds were dogs, mine would be a Jack Russell terrier. Put it down to an underdevelopment of imaginative sympathy, but the person I find myself able to write about most confidently is\u2026myself.<\/p>\n

Believe me, I\u2019m as sick as anyone of memoirs from undistinguished people. A few months ago, a young writer friended me on Facebook, asking my help in promoting her self-published memoir. Following a link to the book\u2019s website, I was aghast. Judging by the promotional material, the book was exhibitionism, pure and simple. Anne Lamott remembers crumpling when an editor scolded her: \u201cYou think that everything that happens to you is interesting.\u201d I got the sense that this author thought that events in her life weren\u2019t merely interesting, but epochal.<\/em> As I begged off the project, I hoped I\u2019d never be too guilty of the same crime.<\/p>\n

But for some reason, you, the good people who make up my readership, seem to like my personal reflections and anedcotes. (You were all too nice to say, \u201cMeh\u201d to my punditry, but I\u2019ll say it for you.) Since I\u2019m both a crowd-pleaser and a me-pleaser, I\u2019ll happily keep it coming. Also to please us all, I\u2019ll dedicate myself to quality control, keeping pieces short and sweet, easy on the angst, with a insight-to-confession ratio of .500 or higher. God willing, the finished product won\u2019t read like Eat, Pray, Sneak a Smoke and Swear it\u2019s the Last.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"