I have met few Catholics in “real life” who were rude. They have been adamant, even insistant, usually engaging, but rarely rude. On here it seems to be a different matter. It seems to be kind of like driving a car. They say that road rage is somewhat a matter of lack of body language. That is to say that the subtle signals of face to face encounter are missing. Here we only have words in type, and that constitutes an insualtion of sorts, it being that we have to rely more on dictionaryisms and not so much on inflections and tones. Unfortunately for this kind of communication, that subtlty is where a large part of our social navigational information and markers come from. It may account for a large part of the rampant adversarialism found in these forums.
That being said, anyone’s religious, or other, convictions usually seem to fall into the catagory of an intractable position. In my experience, having been a very missionary minded Catholic, and having won a prestigious award in our state-wide high school system for knowledge of our theology, it took a major shock to get me to look at what I believed, and at how I was willing to look at it. Before the denouement shock, having had a few minor ones, I seriously persued the advice of my confessors. After, I found only one who even remotely understood the position I had metaphysically found myself in. I actually had to go outside the Church to rediscover its meaning for me. It wasn’t after that, by any means, the same Church in terms of understanding, that I had promoted with all my heart at the begining.
But I found that the position of religionists of any sort or description who had not faced a severe internal challange to be very inflexible and unaccomodating to the nature of the need for inquiry in many situations that were, for me at least, necessary and legitimate lines of questioning. I could not, myself, force my experience into the constraint of dogmatic belief as I understood it at the start. It was like I had to stop believing in Santa Clause, The Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy all at once, step back, erase the blackboard and start again. This time it was for real, on my own, and not because I had believed somone. Now I had to KNOW. In a way I envied those who simply believed, but I was in the position of the seeker who found the happy people by the river bank.
I was in the pain of crisis, and adamantine dogmatizing was not the solution for me. Ultimately I came to understand that Good, a synonym for God, and religious form are two different things that only seem to intersect. They are certainly not necessarily congrutent, at least from my perspective.
So it was kindness and understanding of my situation that allowed me to consider anyone’s offerings, while I became hypersensetive to anyone who was simply spouting an untested faith out of birth habit or from insecurity. So I have to say that I responded primarily to feeling, rather than to argument, though the feeling of being accepted on my own terms for who and what I am allowed me to listen to various cognative lines. Any hint of rudness or obvious false piety just set me off. What attracted me was the voice of experience. That never seeks converts, only the honesty which may beget transformation.
Anyway, that is my two cents worth on the topic, with one last observation. Given the parable of the lost sheep and the Love of the Almighty, I had to ask, which of my children would I allow to go to hell? Ask yourself that as a parent and choose, and decide if browbeating or rudeness, or any such acts of frustrated ignorance, would be your method of choice for demonstrating your love as a representative of God.
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