Since the beginning I have controlled the publication of comments on this blog. That won't change. I am quite liberal about that which is published. I am not interested in comments that are personally critical; it's water off a duck's back when it is not constructive, but so long as standards of decency are maintained I have no qualms about publishing them. But I will not publish abuse, sarcasm or long-winded tangents, especially from people who are utterly and invincibly convinced of Rome’s claim to be the true church, let alone a church. One such contributor is "AnthonyMunday." You will follow the link to his profile in vain, since it is not available on Blogger, but we can expect as much from such a one. Since vowing to give up his persona and move onto better things in a hissy fit a few months ago, I have refused to publish his comments. Now, you'd expect most trolls to just give up after repeated attempts to impose their unwanted, feeble points of view in a forum in which they aren't welcome, but not he (assuming it is a man)! At first, like any other reader, I let through his comments. I disagreed with them, and made plain my disgust with any person who tried to drag me back into the Papal communion, but it transpired that his long-winded tangents degenerated into insults and personal abuse when it was made aware that I would not tread the Romeward path. I'll give readers a sample of his wit this once, so that they can shun him (shake the dust off your feet, &c), and my advice to other Bloggers would be to delete any comments he leaves on your blogs without reading them; they are clearly left to cause a nuisance.
"I feel your pain, Kallistos! You’re having a bit of a crisis at the moment. Be assured, I have prayed for you, as requested.
"It’s such a shame (I’m being selfish now) that you’re not Catholic anymore. Otherwise, we could have met up at Westminster Cathedral one Saturday for the 10.30am Mass. I could have given you a hug (no funny business, please – I’m unacquainted with the works of Dorothy), then we could have got in line for confession with the Caribbeans and Asians, lit a votive candle at St John Southworth, raided the Catholic bookshops, and then I could have treated you to a boozy pub lunch in Pimlico, you on the Margaritas and me on the real ale.
"Oh well….. such is life. “Farewell, Tadzio....it was all too brief”."
What a prat!
Art: Ted Nasmith. Bilbo's trolls. Not his best painting but given the subject...as my father would say in his assiduous way, "you can't polish a turd."
"Oh, dear," as my grandmothers would say. That looks to me like a not very well disguised attempt at seduction by someone who believes he is Gustav von Aschenbach (but, in reality, most certainly is not). Not to worry: very soon he will be found slumped somewhere in a beach chair. "Passion as confusion and degradation" indeed!
ReplyDelete"After all, my dear, I am no Friend of Dorothy."
Delete"Oooh, I'll just bet you're not, you wicked old witch. Say, is that your broomstick or are you just glad to see me?"
You are lucky to have such kind comments from your trolls. I used to collect them in my TAC days. I have had one or two since. With a good technique, you can troll trolls, but I find I have better things to do in life.
ReplyDeletePoor Patrick.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me your misery and perpetual bitterness that the world is not the medieval tableau (and no doubt your taste is impeccable) you desire in your aestheticism means you have to either find hope or conclude one of two things:
A) that God does not exist
or
B) that He does but hates you
In either case, I'd think, there are only two logical options for how to move forward in your life:
A) you embrace a hedonism of carnal pleasure (if there is no God, why not? If there is but He hates you and you are thus reprobate and surely damned anyway...why not?) Yes, you might retain some bitterness that Beauty and the life of the spirit were all just cruel illusions, but better to enjoy yourself in low real pleasures than to wallow in maddening dreams of figments that will never (again) be.
Or
B) kill yourself (if there is no God, it will end the misery. If there is but He hates you and thus a continued Hell is your fate whether in this life or the next...might as well get it over with).
As far as I can tell, those are the only reasonable conclusions/courses of action if you cannot find hope, if the Despair you constantly wallow in on the blog is all you have, if you can't define some sort of purposeful course and goal for your life and framework in which such a goal makes sense (I'll be honest, even getting to Heaven doesn't sound like a prime concern for you, or at the very least the desire for heaven makes little sense if the cosmos are as ugly and disenchanted as the lack of good liturgy seems to make you feel...)