Taking It Personally

About this time last year, I wrote about folks who Can't Care, Don't Care, or Won't Care, and I bragged about how I take my business ventures less personally than I used to.

Well, that was a hollow boast.

I take everything personally.

I don't think there's any other way to be an artist, a poet, an actor, a writer - or to live life in an engaged and engaging way.  I really don't think there's any other way to be an authentic Christian and to avoid the trap of Unreality in our daily lives and in our worship.

Thus, life usually hurts. 

And anything to do with the Church - or even with my fellow Catholics - really really hurts, because hypocrisy abounds, in my heart and in theirs.  For part of the sting is realizing how many people fit into the aforementioned DON'T CARE category - even when it comes to loving God and their neighbor. 

And so, it's the same old story.  There are lots of folks around who make a show of their faith, but who dump what the Church teaches the moment it becomes uncomfortable.  I mean, just look at the battles I've fought on this stupid little blog alone. 

I have defended ...

• Honesty against Catholics who make excuses for Lying
• Custody of the Eyes against Catholics who say it's OK to look at naked ladies that aren't your wife.
• Humane Treatment against Catholics who make excuses for Torture.
• Care for Children against Catholics who make excuses for Sex Abuse, and quote Canon Law to mitigate the wrongness of Statutory Rape.
• Protecting Children from abusive priests, and Finding Competent Psychological Help for abusive priests, against Catholics who think it's more important to protect and defend Those in Power, who refuse to do either.
• Loyalty to Jesus before loyalty to your political party, against Catholics who tell me I'm sinning when I criticize their heroes who shill for heartless pro-abortion anti-Catholic politicians (i.e. Romney and Obama).
• The Catechism against Catholics who tell me it has, in general, no significant authority.

... and so forth.

Now these aren't just disagreements, they are heated battles. 

Most recently, the more I point out that Statutory Rape is indeed "legitimate rape", the more my opponents dig in their heels.  If they find talking points somewhere in a combox on a blog site that appears in a cursory way to defend their position, they copy it here with great glee.  Meanwhile, as I write this, there's a fifty-year-old businessman seducing a 14-year-old girl he met on Facebook.  There's a gym coach pressuring a middle school student to commit sodomy.  There's a priest telling a 12-year-old altar boy that sexual release in the confessional frees him of his sins, and not to tell his parents he said that.

So I do tend to take this personally.

I think you'd have to be a bit dead not to.