charity in truth

first and foremost, i hope yall had a wonderful 2nd week of Advent! this week was pretty phenomenal for me even though i didn't sleep much, took 2-out-of-my-3 finals, have pretty much been stressing about finances over the holidays and am on the precipice of un-friending an old college acquaintance... wha? more on that in a sec...

here's a quick break-down of my week: on monday i had my last class in my favorite class, "faith in hispanic cultures," at my professor's house with my classmates... his wife cooked us dinner and we had a great time talking about nerdy catholic ministry topics and socializing... on tuesday, i spent an hour in adoration with my young adults group from my parish and afterwards we went to dinner and just hung out for a while. wednesday evening was my first final, which was difficult but did not leave me wanting to pull out my hair or cry by the time i finished the exam. on thursday evening i took my second exam and was surprised at how much information i was able to discuss different heresies in the early Church, the several ecumenical councils who helped define or develop doctrine to refute the heresies and also discuss the theology behind the nicean and constantinopolitan creeds. yay me! after my exam i went over to one of my good friend's houses and ate dinner, talked about our faith lives and prayed a meditation for Advent. today, after work, i went to dinner with two of my favorite sister-friends ever in life and just spent some time catching up and being silly. just what i needed after a month of being sick and stressed out...

see? told you my week was pretty phenomenal. :)

so what's with that blip i mentioned about un-friending someone??? uhhhhhh yeahhhhhh, it's actually not a new situation, it's one that i've been dealing with for some months now and if you're my friend on facebook you have probably read the vicious [and cowardly] posts this 'friend' has been posting on my wall accusing the Catholic Church of creating or starting everything from the holocaust to pedophilia to natural disasters to the financial crisis to the aids epidemic. yes, apparently the Church is culpable for everything. o_O [yeah, i don't get it, either!]

so, i think the general practice on facebook is that people post things in their status that they are either doing, thinking or find interesting/shocking/thought-provoking/meaningful to them. i am opinionated, i have thoughts and feelings and i am passionate about a lot of things, the most important of which [to me] is my faith. so, yes, i post a lot of stuff in my status about my faith--different links to videos or programs with information about the faith, articles or lectures offering opportunities for catechesis, even prayer intentions and requests. i know this can get annoying because i have friends who post ALL THE TIME about honing their craft as a club dee-jay or about their obsession with high-heeled shoes or how insanely boring their job is or how they're broke all the time. i get it. it can get annoying... but i also know that my friendship with them is a result of getting to know them and getting to know what's important to them and relevant in their lives, even if it's not important or relevant to me.

we all know that i love twitter wayyyyy more than i love facebook [and if you're on twitter, you can follow me at @girl_on_the_run--say hi & i'll tweet back and follow you, too!] for many, many reasons but one of the things that i do love about facebook is that you can 'subscribe' or 'unsubscribe' to your friend's statuses... perfect. so if i don't like the cuss words you keep posting or i don't care to hear about your latest exploits or see the raunchy pictures you post to your friends, i can unsubscribe from your updates and *boom* problem solved. this also works the other way around. if someone doesn't like my posts or ramblings about the Church or my spiritual growth, then they are welcome to unsubscribe from my updates. plain and simple.

so imagine my surprise when this 'friend' who i got to know during college started doing the equivalent of a virtual harrassment drive-by when he repeatedly posted things on my wall about the "occupy wall street" movement on my wall... i would get p.o.'ed because he would post things claiming that the movement represented me as one of the "99%" of americans on the bottom part of the earnings brackets... well, in my opinion, while i may be one of the bottom 99% of earners, the "occupy" movement doesn't represent me. i do not see any clear sense of purpose, demands for change or solutions to any problems. from what i've seen, the movements seem to be a bunch of over-grown children huffing and puffing around while stomping their feet and holding their breath. don't get me wrong--i'm not against helping the poor. in fact, that's one of the very tangible and actionable beliefs in my religion and the Church takes social justice seriously... but when the "occupy" movement (or perhaps just my 'friend') started hijacking religious language and supporting it with bible verses, it really ticked me off. and since he posted on my wall i felt that i needed to respond to set the record straight... so we argued back and forth for a while until i realized that he was the epitome of the "one-sided, Fox News-loving, religious right zealot" that he was accusing "occupy" detractors of being. he didn't want to hear an opposing side to his argument, nor did he want to be corrected by me putting the verses he quoted in their correct context. he would not stand for that. and for some reason he stopped posting on my wall for a time. i thought that was the end of his attacks...

well, i was wrong. turns out the silence was short-lived and vicious attacks started up again--only this time their target was not the political structure or economic turmoil in our country... his attacks now turned to my Church. and so the malicious and false attacks on the Catholic Church started when he posted a youtube video on my facebook wall. if you've ever heard of that crazy so-called 'christian' church which protests military funerals and is flagrantly hostile against homosexuals, minorities and many others, i'm sure, you kind of get the idea of the vitriol that his youtube clip contained... except the video was all the reasons anyone who had a brain would be against the Catholic Church. >:(

so... suffice to say that i was uber-p.o.'ed this time. political theories and economic policies are one thing, but to slander and outright attack my Church--the Bride of Christ himself--it got my blood boiling really quickly! every time he posted, i would write out a LONG response and then count to ten, delete it and go back and try to respond back rationally and with love to his accusations... sometimes my anger got the best of me, other times love won out...

after posting back and forth several times i realized that his issues with the Church have nothing to do with me or the actual Church herself... but they have everything to do with him and his spiritual journey. so while i can't change his mind or get him to see the err of his ways, i can pray for him and not allow myself to be goaded into a 'fight fire with fire' argument. and trust me, that is SO difficult not to do knowing what i know about him and his views on life.

the best thing i could think to do was write him a message to respectfully ask him to stop posting on my wall and that if he wanted to dialogue about the issues he has with the Church, i'd be happy to do so via email or by phone. i also had to say that if he didn't respect my boundaries, then i'd have to delete him from my friends list, which i don't take lightly. i'm not one of those people who add friends of friends of friends i've met here or there or add celebrities and other randoms to my friends list. the people i 'know' on facebook are people i actually know in real life. so yes, deleting someone from facebook is deleting them out of my life.

i prayed before i typed out that message and knew that the Holy Spirit would guide and guard my words from misinterpretation or escalating the problem. he chose to respond [not very politely, i might add] that he would continue posting things to my wall because i needed to know the 'truth' about my Church and others needed to know it, too. he said he didn't care if i deleted him because i would be just another Catholic who blindly follows the hierarchy and sticks her head in the sand about the 'realities' of my dying religion. his words were unwarranted, acidic, hateful and full of anger.

in all seriousness, please pray for him.

the reason i posted this blog is because i have come to some realizations in my interactions with this 'friend' who i thought i knew... he has always been rough around the edges, kind of like a bull in a china shop, and didn't really care to try to be respectful of others' feelings about anything. he liked to "tell it like it is" and didn't sugarcoat things. and in some ways, i appreciated that about him. i figured, "at least he's himself 24/7 and he doesn't try to pretend he's someone that he's not when it would be advantagious or convenient." during college, we'd get into raucous debates about dems versus republicans, right versus left, crazy liberals versus stiff-lipped conservatives. it was fun and i thought that it was all in good spirit. at the end of the day, we both knew we had done nothing to enlighten the other's perspective and enjoyed the sport of dialogue. at least that's what i thought.

so in light of the events that transpired over facebook, i realized that i am not as slow to anger as i hoped that i was. nor have i perfected the 'turn the other cheek' tactic which Jesus asks of us when we come under attack. it was also incredibly hard for me not to go for the jugular and hit him where it would hurt [if you get my drift]... there are things which he holds near and dear that i know i could have exploited to make my point, to make him feel the hurt and disgust he inflicted on me by insulting my Church and my Savior.

the phrase i kept hearing in my head when i'd get ready to hit the 'send' button was, "love is God's greatest gift to humanity," from Pope Benedict's encyclical, "Caritas in Veritate," or in english, "Charity in Truth."

though B16 actually talks a lot about economic issues and seeking the common good in this letter, he still expounds on the rich mandate from Jesus to "love thy neighbor." i took this prompting from the Holy Spirit to mean that in refuting the claims and accusations my 'friend' made against the Church, i still need to be mindful of his dignity as a person and to treat him with love and respect even if he doesn't treat me that way. and i needed to remember that my actions as a professed Catholic Christian do represent my identity in Christ. so i couldn't--and shouldn't--fight fire with fire. that pretty much took the wind out of my sails to continue dialogue with him.

something else i learned [that i'm not so proud of] is that the kind of company i kept when i was in college was keeping me from the path to righteousness... it's sad to say that many times i was the ringleader who was taking groups of people down in flames with me... i don't know how many people i led to sin or put them in situations or places they shouldn't have been... and i am truly sorry. through it all, i had many, many friends and family members who, like st. monica did for 20 years for st. augustine, prayed for my reversion to the faith... i just couldn't see it when i was lost during that time... but i am SO THANKFUL that they never ceased praying for me and hoping that i would turn from the life i was living and come back to the Church. by the grace of God i did, and i'm so happy that i did, but now i realize that literally hundreds of people i know from college know the 'old' me and maybe they're not ready for the 'new' me i've become in Christ...

so this situation with my 'friend' from college has caused me to reflect about who i was back then, who i am now and who i hope to become... what words of wisdom would i share with a group of captive teenagers who will in a few years go off to college and be left to fend for themselves in the real world? this is a very real opportunity i have when i teach my confirmation class so i should make use of the opportunity, right?

i guess lastly i will say that i have been fortified by several friends who have messaged or texted me to say that they were proud of me or happy for me [even though they don't share my beliefs] for sticking up for myself and my beliefs to this 'friend.' just when you think you're fighting the battle alone, reinforcements come in... :)

well, please pray for the situation if you don't mind because as of yet i haven't deleted the guy... at the very next instance of posting negative things on my wall he is a goner, so i'm hopeful that he respects me as a person enough to either unsubscribe from my posts so he's not reminded of my Catholic-zeal every time i update my status or that he just stops being a jerkface and posting things on my wall.

at the end of it all i have to say that i am thankful for the opportunity to love even when i am hated and for the reminder to speak truth in charity and charity in truth.

hope this helps you the next time your faith is challenged in some way... have a great weekend!

pax et bonum,
crystal