Hi, Erwin.
As a Catholic who has had his share of being beaten over the head on the Net, let me just step in and try to dispassionately make a few comments, if I may.
First of all, I want to say that I think this site is overall a pretty darn good site. It has a lot on some of the other so-called "Christian" sites I have been to, where the non-Catholics rip both the Catholics and each other, to shreds. This site has, thanks be to God, avoided that for the most part. We have a good team of moderators here, and I think they do a good job. That extends to you as well; so far from what I've seen, you're doing a very good job here. I constantly see improvements to the site itself, and that's a good thing.
I agree with you to an extent about what posters may and may not do. If a poster comes on and types in some sort of trash, you or the mods are certainly not to blame for what that person said. If what the poster says gets of bounds, then naturally the staff is, to a certain extent, responsible for what the poster has said, in that the staff needs to either edit the post or remove it entirely and issue a warning to the offending party.
Something you said in one of your responses to Alpha caught my eye, and I would like to expand on it, just to a degree. Please understand that I do not say this as any sort of criticism towards you or to the staff or the site. You have my respect, and I intend to do everything I can to make sure it stays that way.
I merely wish to expand on this so that it might help you to understand where Alpha is coming from. Alpha said this:
Next you gonna invite Jack T. Chick to post here?
To which you responded:
I don't know who Jack T. Chick is, so why are you predicting that I would invite him to post here?
I think this may be part of the reason why Alpha is upset, and you are confused.
Jack Chick is a nutball from California who publishes some of the worst, most vile anti-Catholic sewage in the world. If you want to see a sampling of his bilge, you can tap into his website at
http://www.chick.com.
The reason this caught my eye was that Alpha was upset at the posting of the "Boettner list"; this is a list of lies about Catholic practices that was originally published in a book written by one Loraine Boettner in 1962, and it's been around ever since. His book consists of 300+ pages of bum fodder, but it was posted, and Alpha was irritated, naturally enough; those of us who are Catholic have seen this thing nine million times at various sites around the Net. I agree with you that if Alpha was upset with the content, he should have reported the post. However, I'm suspecting that maybe the reason why you're befuddled as to the extent of Alpha's anger is because, as you said, you don't know who Jack T. Chick is.
I think that maybe if you investigate a bit into these people, Chick, and Boettner, and Dave Hunt, and Alexander Hislop, and take the time to read some of the things they have published, you might gain a better understanding of why Catholics get sick and tired of seeing this stuff posted all the time. It's sort of like someone posting sections of
Mein Kampf on a Jewish website, and when someone gets upset, the moderator says, "I don't know why you're angry; and besides, I don't even know who Adolf Hitler is."
(I say this entirely as an illustration, of course.)
So, my point is, if you take just a few extra minutes to examine some of this material that's put forth at times, it will help you to understand why it's so provacative to Catholics. Sewage is sewage, even if it's cut-and-pasted on a website, and even if you don't know who the original author is. Maybe you've never seen it before, and ergo, undersatandably enough, you don't know why it causes anger; but it's still sewage, nevertheless. Again, I am not being critical of you, Sir, or of the mods. Or at least, I'm trying not to be
I am not suggesting that you block all posts of an anti-Catholic nature; personally, I see them as educational portunities, and as I said, I agree with you that if a poster is upset with a certain post, he should report it to the mods. I simply wanted to take the time to highlight for you the reason why Alpha was upset, in a dispassionate sort of way, and maybe you can understand better where he's coming from. And, maybe next time, when somebody mentions garbage by Chick, you'll know what they're talking about.
I wish you the very finest of days, Sir. May the Lord bless you and please keep up the fine work here.
I remain very sincerely yours,
---Wolseley.
.
