My suggestion is that you try the more moderate non-Catholic Christian sites, and even secular sites.
I’m frankly frightened by some of the more extreme anti-Catholic websites. Do you have children? Or other family members?
I’m writing a teen novel (my third) about the Holocaust (WWII) and hate crimes. In the novel, I originally used the name of a racist society that existed back in the 19th Century. I thought the society was no longer in existence.
Then I did some research online, and uh-oh, there was the society. It’s still around, and one section of the website featured *a list of names, addresses, and phone numbers * of ALL THE PEOPLE WHO HAD OFFENDED THEM by publishing articles, books, novels, or making a speech, or selling a product–they urged their members to “harass” these people!
So I changed the name of the society in my book to a fictional name. I don’t want my kids to suffer.
I think some of these virulent anti-Catholic sites could possibly have links to some of the hate sites, and I would be very careful if I were you to stay away from those small, independent websites.
Another problem with those hate sites is that some of the posters are dangerous. This can happen even on good sites. On one site, I got very nervous about the violent language that a poster was using. My husband (a computer guru) did some searches that indicated that this poster was a drifter who had a “violent” personal website (under a different name, of course). We reported him to the mods and provided the links, also suggesting that the mods call the authories. The poster was banned, but not sure if anything else happened.
This is scary to me. I think that it’s possible that some of these extreme anti-Catholics might consider it their holy duty to…well, you get the idea. Marcus Grodi wrote a book about this kind of thing called How Firm A Foundation.
Stick with Christian sites that are affiliated with respectable Protestant organizations like Campus Crusade for Christ, Focus on the Family, Christianity Today etc., or that are affiliated with respectable Christian teachers like Dr. Dobson, Chuck Colson, Chuck Swindoll, etc.
Believe it or not, I have had lots of good things happen on one of the ice skating boards that I participate in. These kids are always asking questions in the OT Section about the Church and abortion. I get PMs all the time from kids and their mothers asking questions and thanking me for helping them.
The problem with even the respectable non-Catholic Christian sites is that their mods get scared when Catholics come on board and sometimes make up new rules. One site made a rule forbidding any posts except those using the Bible only as documentation; in other words, no Early Church Fathers, no history texts, no articles by other Christian writers–just the Bible. Real scholarly, right?!
One site bans all discussion of denominations, but people get around it by saying, “Here is what I personally believe…”
Try some of these “friendlier” non-Catholic Christian sites. My suggestion is that you minimize your posts on these sites. Keep your posts small and pithy, and extremely gracious and loving. It’s hard for someone to fight you when you turn the other cheek.
Finally, remember that the members who actually post are few in number, but hundreds of people are lurking and reading. You may be the instrument that the Lord uses to convict all these readers.
thus my crankiness in the morning!