Snerk!

Milk out the nose hijinx over at the Register blog as one reader writes:

I don’t know if any of you career Catholic apologists have noticed or not, but Bishop Olmstead of Phoenix is getting absolutely trashed in every corner of online commentary for announcing the ex-communication of Sister McBride for authorizing a direct abortion as a healing measure at a Catholic Hospital. Would one of you please take a moment to offer some counter perspective?!!!

and another guy replies:

I’m sure Mark is too busy counting the huge piles of filthy lucre that he accumulates as a “career Catholic apologist” to get around to such a thing. If he cared about medical ethics, he would have gone into medicine, not into the high stakes, billion dollar industry of Catholic apologetics.

To be fair, the first guy dialed back on his comments a bit, but the reply does remind me of three oddities about this line of work.

The first is the curious “Let’s you and him fight” phenomenon. By that, I mean it is not unusual to get urgent requests from total strangers saying, “Some guy you’ve never heard of on a blog or website or article is talking trash about X. You *have* to go challenge this guy! I’ll sit here and watch.” My reply to such people is, “If it means that much to you, why don’t you challenge him?”

Also, there is the odd “And while you’re at it, please wash my shorts” notion of some correspondents. These are the notes that read “I seem to remember that there was a council that defined the Trinity or something. Could you research that for me and give me a complete history? I don’t have time.” or “Jesus was a ‘Jew’, right? What can you tell me about Jews? Is there any information about them on the web?”

As though Google doesn’t even exist.

But weirdest of all to me is the odd illusion of the Incredibly Rich, Powerful, and Sexy Catholic Apologist. Periodically, I get nasty letters from anonymous strangers informing me that I’m just in it for the money, that my powerful “Novus Ordo friends” will get theirs (as will I), and that I am only doing this because in my own Evangelical world I was a king and a god, but now I am frustrated with Truly True Catholic faith and am trying to Protestantize the Church, using my awesome riches, clout and power.

The truly weird thing about this is that the periodic tin cup rattles I have held in the past (held to stave off familial economic disaster) are only seen by these people as *proof* of my power and riches–as though having a little tip jar is evidence of gold tucked away in a Swiss bank. When I note that we have no insurance and live on a financial knife edge, I am told I should “go get a real job”–and then informed that my fake job is way too lucrative and powerful.

Very odd.

Oh, by the way, fellow Career Catholic apologist, millionaire playboy and power broker Jimmy Akin has taken a look at the Olmsted controversy here. I really should hop down to San Diego in my Learjet and take the dear boy to one of our customary dinners at Ruth’s Chris Steak House.