Holy Week approaches, comments closed

Comments will be closed throughout the weekend, possibly through Holy Week and perhaps beyond that, depending on circumstances.

I do not take this step lightly, but to come into moderation tonight to find people attempting to hijack a prayer request for my very ill son in order to rant about a suspended priest, a Catholic layman, my “fake” Christianity and my apparently long association with the Evil One, strike me as such an offense against basic charity that I am not willing at this point to open my family up to that sort of incredible spite and malice, and I frankly cannot allow you to expose yourselves in such a way on my site.

This blog is an opinionated place, and since I give my opinion, I try to let everyone else have theirs, too — we forget too easily that people are entitled to their own thoughts. Whether people “love” me or “hate” me means very little; I never set out to be loved, and I’ve been hated lots of times in my life. I know who I am, and I know who matters.

I am also aware of my sins, my faults, my thoughtlessness, my haplessness and the thorns in my flesh, from which I do ask deliverance, but also accept as part of where I am today. If you want to call me names, disparage my appearance and so forth, that ultimately says more about you than it does me, and so I let that roll. I don’t even take much offense at being called a “liberal” (although that is new) or being referred to as the personification of “lukewarm vomit” (which apparently was a talking point, or something yesterday.) I’ve got six years of archives, here, that have stood for Christ, faithfulness to the church, Catholic Orthodoxy and Yankees Baseball; if you want to judge it by earthly standards, ideological standards, human standards or Red Sox standards, be my guest. The only judgments that matter to me are my family’s and my Lord’s.

But when you see a mother asking prayers for her sons, one of whom is really sick, and the only thing your head or heart can get to is “aha! another space in which to talk about my Catholic hero” or “you deserve that, you heretic, for not thinking as I think” (and I’ve cleaned up and paraphrased those sentiments considerably), then I really feel sorry for you, and I beg God to show himself to us, bring us wisdom and have mercy on all of us.

But I don’t have to give that sort of malevolence access to my site, especially as Holy Week approaches.

Have mercy on us all, indeed. We need it.