I noticed today that his con­ver­sion entry is no longer on his blog. I checked out some of the 200+ com­ments to his entry the other day and was appaled at what seemed to be an overal negataive and adverse­r­ial nature to a lot of the com­ments. This may be why the entry isn’t there any longer, I’m unsure.

It sad­dens me to read all the nasty com­ments that col­umn engen­dered. Ter­ri­ble abuses are tak­ing place in every denom­i­na­tion. What it all comes down to is this: we are obliged to make the changes we think we have to, in order to main­tain our faith in God as revealed through Jesus. I have been dam­aged by the Catholic Church as well as com­forted by it. But ulti­mately my faith is in Christ — not any Church. I would be the last per­son to tell some­one they must stay in a Church in which they can no longer wor­ship. The sex scan­dal has not only chased Catholics from the Church. It has killed the faith of many who will never darken the door of a church again. Any­one who has pro­tected evil-doers will have to answer in the Pres­ence of God.

Mean­while, I search out­side the Catholic Faith to build my faith and trust in Jesus. How long I will remain Catholic is a ques­tion I can­not answer. The Church is so much a part of my life — I teach in a Catholic school — that even if I choose to align myself with another denom­i­na­tion, I will still remain a Catholic. I can­not excise or erase the mean­ing it has had for me — nor would I want to.

Re the pre­vi­ous com­ment: I was just at the web­site and every­thing is still there as of Sun­day afternoon.

I thought the tone of the com­ments was pretty acidic, but unfor­tu­nately, I was expect­ing as much or worse. That low expec­ta­tion comes firstly from the nasty nature of dis­course in online com­ments — those on this blog notwith­stand­ing . It’s really too bad, but the rel­a­tive anonymity and ease of get­ting your 2-cents in brings out the worst in some people.

And sec­ondly, a high-profile indi­vid­ual who con­verted to Catholi­cism and then left is going to push all the hot but­tons of some peo­ple. I can feel that lit­tle under­cur­rent in myself that could eas­ily mis­take a nat­ural stub­born­ness and intractibil­ity for devo­tion and integrity.

Hav­ing said all that, I was sur­prised at how mean-spirited some of those com­ments were (I did end up read­ing about a third of them until I gave up). I may be miss­ing some con­text, but I don’t see any­thing in his very hon­est and forth­right nar­ra­tive that would lead to some of the accu­sa­tions of “church-shopper” and “betrayer.” And I really resented some of the nasty, igno­rant swipes at the Ortho­dox Church, some made by peo­ple that seem to have made a career out of pro­tect­ing the Catholic Church from any nasty, igno­rant swipes.

It seems to me that the pain that is obvi­ous through­out Dreher’s recount­ing of events was trans­ferred to quite a few of the read­ers. Anyone’s cri­sis of faith is ter­ri­ble to see. Here’s hop­ing he does find peace in this faith. Many com­menters seemed to think that he was just one of those rest­less sorts that will never be able to set­tle, but then that might have just been sour grapes.

Sorry about the cre­ative spelling in my first post. Also, ear­lier today Grace’s link to his post wasn’t work­ing — so I sim­ply went to his blog and searched for the post visu­ally — it wasn’t there.

Now it is back again Such is the way of things some­times. May he and his fam­ily find peace.

Funny the link was up and down. It was through beliefnet, which is usu­ally pretty reli­able. The times I checked it it was work­ing, but maybe I just lucked out. The com­ment num­ber was up to 352 last time I looked.

I dunno… I think any time some­one is ego­ma­ni­a­cal enough to parade their inner life and strug­gles and issues before the world, they get what they get. While I’m sym­pa­thetic to Rod, I know first­hand there is a cer­tain ego­ism to “per­sonal jour­ney” writ­ing. For him to expect any­thing less than he got, pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive, and to let either of them cause him joy or grief is a sign of pas­sion, some­thing hope­fully he’ll come to terms with in Ortho­doxy. Jus­ti­fy­ing a very per­sonal deci­sion to the world on the inter­net is welll.… spir­i­tu­ally sketchy in my book. Maybe I under­es­ti­mate his influ­ence and the grav­ity of him con­vert­ing.
I dunno. Maybe he is above all that and I’m being judg­men­tal here. I’m glad he’s “here”… I’m a bit leery of the pub­lic­ity sur­round­ing the move.

It’s a mixed bag. I didn’t read the com­ments far enough to see what Grace is refer­ring to.…but I did see Al Kimmel’s (Pon­tif­i­ca­tor) reaction…which was to ques­tion whether or not Rod was ever really Catholic. Nice end run. And nice to so hand­ily read and judge the minds of others.…’cause there can only be one way of being Roman Catholic? Like.…how truly uni­ver­sal can THAT be? Yes, some­times those who style them­selves as evan­ge­li­siz­ing for their team need to con­sider how they sound. I think some­one once wrote that we are often best sum­ma­rized both by our friends and admir­ers as well some­times as by those for whom kind words about us do not come read­ily. And Rod is cer­tainly get­ting an ear­ful of both, perhaps.

I guess the whole sense of “my team” and “your team” — which is what this gets down to — is less than con­struc­tive. It is a game, and it is too nar­row. The Roman Catholic inter­net crowd is a very tough crowd. I’m sure the equiv­a­lent can be found in many places.…but my expe­ri­ence with these folks is that many would rather bull than argue the oppo­si­tion. The WWF of apolo­get­ics is not my idea of win­ning folks to Christ. Of course in all fair­ness, the sad thing is that this would not fit either of the last two popes ideas of win­ning folks to Christ either.…their views just doesn’t seem to fil­ter down all that far through the church for some reason.

So while it may be parad­ing some­thing bet­ter kept to the small audi­ence of folks that actu­ally care as s-p sug­gests, Rod’s descrip­tion and expe­ri­ence does hit a few chords for those oth­ers of us who con­sid­ered both teams before see­ing that actu­ally the under­dog team is.….well.…a tad more becom­ing and hum­ble. For me, that’s what it seems to be about in the first place. Nice to have a priest in a small, fam­ily size parish as well.

s-p:
I think there is a com­menter some­where towards the end that makes that point, and I hadn’t thought of it. Like you, I’m not sure if I have all the con­text. For instance, I still don’t under­stand this flurry of accu­sa­tion that he should have hon­estly told every­one he was mov­ing away from Catholi­cism and towards Ortho­doxy when he was crit­i­ciz­ing the Catholic Church on his blog, because — as one of the Catholic com­menters says — they con­sider the crit­i­cism of other Catholics, but reject the crit­i­cisms of ex-Catholics. I just plain don’t get that one, but it may just be a Catholic thing(?)

But all things being equal, I won­der about that pub­lic aspect of this pri­vate deci­sion. I also won­der about other aspects of his per­son­al­ity that show in this, but at about that place, I am get­ting judgmental.

James:
That ‘your team — our team’ thing kind of blew me away. It seems from some of the rhetoric as if it’s a big com­pe­ti­tion. Do Ortho­dox get that way as well? If so, I haven’t seen it.

I try to put myself in the posi­tion of a devout Catholic these days. The scan­dals were really, really awful from anybody’s POV, but maybe you just dig in and adopt a com­bat­ive pose that doesn’t allow for any flexibility.

Just a guess. I don’t know any devout Catholics right now, so it’s all abstract to me.

Grace:

I’m not at the WERE stage. The scan­dals ARE and will con­tinue to be tough, depress­ing, etc. New? Prob­a­bly not. Taken as a sign of a church that wishes to be hon­est with itself and address at least some of the stuff swept under the rug.…I think at the end of the day it is in fact a good sign. If it insti­tutes a level of con­stant vig­i­lance rather than just a one-time clean-up, it will be a real bless­ing. One day.

I think the TEAM thing is an inter­net phe­nom­e­non and hope­fully con­fined there. I do not run into these folks in the flesh, but sup­pose they may carry on the same way…which would make me run. I find it unap­peal­ing and very lack­ing in the sort of Irenic tone that might make the whole good. Used to be a phrase: Chris­t­ian first, catholic (generic sense) sec­ond, and well.…er…Anglican third. Sub­sti­tute Ortho­dox for me, Roman for some oth­ers I guess. In fact, as some­one whose left behind this sort of com­bat in the Angli­can world, I just didn’t want to be a part of it either in the dias­pora, the Roman Catholic church, or else­where. Look­ing for­ward rather than back­ward is a process that helps me keep one foot after the other with­out falling over.

In the end, the com­bat pose adopted of neces­sity may all too read­ily become a frame of mind. When the shoot­ings over, it may be harder to give up and go back to nor­mal. As they say, it’s often a new nor­mal, not the one we started with.

James — I like the term WWF used in con­nec­tion with the sort of com­bat­ive­ness on Catholic blogs. That is one rea­son this blog is refresh­ing. I have found that there are a vari­ety of lit­mus tests one must pass in order to have the “right” to have your com­ments con­sid­ered on a cou­ple of Catholic blogs I read. But I have come to con­sider them a waste of time. Peo­ple aren’t hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions — they are talk­ing at each other, with a gen­er­ous amount of name-calling thrown in for good mea­sure. If you can­not cite a library’s worth of papal or litur­gi­cal doc­u­ments, then move out of the way or get run over.

Regard­ing the public-ness of Dreher’s col­umn, I have heard his name but have not read any­thing prior to this col­umn. In the movie on C.S. Lewis’s life (the name escapes me right now), he is quoted as say­ing that we read to know that we are not alone. It means some­one has to write that mate­r­ial. As some­one who is a cra­dle Catholic, I can iden­tify with the pain he expe­ri­enced and to a cer­tain extent, is still expe­ri­enc­ing. I think every­one who is endur­ing a painful sit­u­a­tion, espe­cially in the spir­i­tual realm, needs to know they are not alone — even if they don’t choose the same path as the writer.

Bar­bara:

Agree 100% with your comments.…in all cases. And my thanks to Grace and so many other Ortho­dox blog­gers for.…er…well, their grace to pro­vide a place where one might actu­ally try to humbly offer a com­ment or two from time to time.

Leav­ing any Church where one has lived and loved and cried for those who have wed, those who were born, and even those who have died.…is a very, very hard thing. No mat­ter what. And we are not now, nor were we then, nor will we ever be alone.…though so often it may seem like it.

Nice com­ments all around. I agree that “reading/writing to know we are not alone” is pow­er­ful. But…A scrip­ture that shell shocked me about 25 years ago when I was at the height of my 80’s “self dis­clo­sure” faze was John’s gospel say­ing of Christ: “He did not con­fide in men because He knew what was in man.” Yikes.

Clearly s-p, one must be wise in whom they con­fide. But the inti­macy of mar­riage for exam­ple, requires that each per­son be able con­fide in the other. Life would be incred­i­bly lonely if we did not have at least one trusted friend. In the case of Dreher, when one’s life is pub­lic and in this instance, his work is intrin­si­cally tied to his reli­gious beliefs, I don’t know how bet­ter he could have han­dled it.

Why do we read Scrip­ture? One rea­son that the Scrip­tures are time­less is that we can relate to David– his joys, shame, and sor­row; to Peter with his blus­ter and fear; to all those who approached Jesus for heal­ing; and to Jesus, who expe­ri­enced rejec­tion, deser­tion by His friends, as well as the com­fort of being in the pres­ence of Martha and Mary. Of course we are never really alone; as Chris­tians we know this. But there is power in the shared expe­ri­ence, even when we can only share vic­ar­i­ously through a book. I am sure that you have read a book or col­umn from time to time and you wished that you could say to the author, “That’s right! That is exactly what I experienced.”

Hi Bar­bara,
I know what you mean… I walk a tightrope between self dis­clo­sure and pri­vacy. At 54 years old I’m tend­ing to be more pri­vate hav­ing seen the fall­out of self dis­clo­sure and frankly my ego involved in think­ing my per­sonal expe­ri­ences needed pub­lic jus­ti­fi­ca­tion or expla­na­tions. The dif­fer­ence between a “per­sonal jour­nal” and the Gospels is that some­one else told the sto­ries about all those peo­ple. Basi­cally, to be hon­est and only because it is true of me, I think it is gen­er­ally (not ALWAYS) a sign of nar­cis­sism to think the world needs to hear me tell about my per­sonal life. I agree, shared expe­ri­ence is what human beings are all about. Its just my short­com­ing that I tend to judge those who go to lengths to jus­tify a very per­sonal path in a very pub­lic forum because I’ve been there, done that, and know my motives. sigh.….maybe not every­one is like me.

Well, you know at some por­tion of peo­ple are like you, or else a lot of the blo­gos­phere would wither up and die.

I think Orthodixie made the point some time ago that blog­gers all have a lit­tle nar­cis­sist in ‘em. Bet­ter peo­ple would prob­a­bly just cease and desist (and some have). I think I hang in there because I know I’m flawed, but fig­ure it’s worth­while to see how all us flawed peo­ple are work­ing out our flawed lives toward the hope of per­fect redemp­tion. Apart from the per­sonal touch, Ortho­doxy (and other “seri­ous” strains of Prot and Catholic, I’m think­ing) can get so beau­ti­ful and abstract that you fall into pre­lest on one hand (“Ortho­doxy looks GOOD on me.”) or despair on the other (“I’m the only schlub in the Church!”).

Everyone’s enti­tled to their opin­ion, espe­cially in the blo­gos­phere. Per­son­ally, I like the ones where peo­ple don’t mind let­ting their scrapes and bruises show. But, in case it needs to be said, that doesn’t include some pub­lic spec­ta­cle of open­ing your veins. For rea­sons I can’t under­stand, some peo­ple need to hurt them­selves and make other peo­ple watch. Hope­fully, there’s no strain of that with the Crunchy Convert.