as I was called for insisting that there is hatred behind some of this.
I remember thinking that Catholicism was so awful that anybody who converted had to be so crazy that only a smack in the chops would suffice to respond to the news of their conversion. I still owe someone an apology from almost 40 years ago for incredible rudeness on my part.
My godmother, an oxford grad, told me that catholics were just superstitious. Cardinal Newman? Oxford movement? There is a kind of embraced cognitive dissonance in anti-Catholicism. Jesuits are wily, so that Jesuitical means deceptively intricate in argument. But Catholics are stupid.
And as I posted earlier, it really is kind of like Bush Derangement Syndrome, remember?
If dear de Montfort, whose enthusiasm I really enjoy, goes overboard, as he often does, that's our fault, and because we exercise iron and minute control over everybody, we oblige people to disagree with de Montfort's excessive diction only in whispers and darkened rooms and behind closed doors. But if Catholics use ABC, that just shows what they've always said, that we are impotent.
It does seem to me that we need to reconsider our call to witness in our manner as much as in our words, and to bear in mind that against these enemies (not the posters but the "principalities and powers" behind some of the posts) we've got to find a truly evangelical modus operandi.
I know I will be mocked for saying this, but I think those who protest the loudest that they do not hate us, while showing the most hostility in what they say and how they say it, are completely sincere. Insight is not a friend of our enemy, and some manifestations of religiosity are especially good at making insight unattractive (and it's rarely fun anyway) and unlikely.