Toxic Trad Catholics

I’ve unfortunately found myself in this muck and mire in the past. As of late, I’ve been trying to pull myself out of it but there is always a tendency to fall back. The blogosphere is filled with toxic people of all stripes. The Toxic Trad Catholics are the most perilous and often times talked about by other Catholic bloggers. It’s not that we possess any judgment or condemnation toward our brothers in the Faith, it’s that the loudness and the rudeness has a tendency to formulate a conglomeration of internet tribalism. When I started blogging, I was a seeker. I didn’t really have any tribal connections or affiliations. I just put out what I felt what was on my heart. But then, earlier in 2020, when the lockdowns began, I teetered more toward using social media and found the tribe of Toxic Trad Catholics. I thought for certain that this was my tribe. I should form groups with them. But as I’ve learned recently, it is not my tribe and I never had any business with them in the first place.

They tend to get hysterical over the little things that Pope Francis has been saying. As a Catholic, I have many displeasures with this current Pope, but little things that he says that may or may not be heretical or even true is not a place I want to go down. A lot of the Trad Catholics have always come out as super-nice to me, offering to pray for me and offering up Masses for me, but there is an appearance that they have and then there is the rashness they get into. It tends toward ecclesiastical triumphalism, heresy hunting, and a grotesque obsession with politics. I’m not saying these issues aren’t important. I certainly am no religious indifferentist. But when your whole shebang is just going after all the Protestants or all the little things someone new to the Catholic faith is saying or getting tied down with all the little things Pope Francis is saying or doing or even our clergy, you’re not really winning people to the Faith.

I have found that my most lasting relationship with someone online has been with a Catholic but my second-most lasting relationship with someone online has been with a Protestant. Why is this? It is because I acknowledge that there are certain things that Protestants and Catholics share that are more important than anything else. My priest talks about how we need to clean up our own backyard and maybe then the neighbors will get the message. I think it’s important that we start this. I am powerless to accomplish anything outside my own parish. But I can’t get nit-picky about what the Pontiff happened to say about being a king alongside Jesus. I can only assume that he was referencing the fact that in Christ, we become a Kingdom of Priests. This is 100% true and Catholics should really get with the program then. But I can’t fix all the toxic Catholics out there. I can only offer my perspective on the issue and focus more on distancing myself from the toxic personalities.

Let me put this bluntly, you’re not a martyr for your resistance to reasonable measures to control a pandemic. You’re not fighting communism on a day-to-day basis, there is no Red Scare. There are a lot of really awful things happening, but your business is not the doom and gloom. Reasonable resistance against totalitarian authority is necessary at times, but in a world where things are still a matter of locality, most people are just trying to go about their daily lives. You’re not special. You’re one of them. There is no social doctrine that condemns or forbids vaccination. I acknowledge that issue is divisive but I have found refraining from judgment against people’s decision over this and not talking about has helped quite a bit. I cannot fix either an anti-vaxxer or a mandate-happy individual. What I can do is I can distance myself from the toxicity of both sides. That is how I clean my backyard up. Maybe the neighbors will get the message soon. I don’t know. I’ll have to see…