Saturday, July 8, 2023

My latest column: “Salvation happens ‘IRL’, not on Twitter”


July 6, 2023

By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK

Some of our readers may remember aspects of the history of my Twitter exploits a few years back. I built an account up with a very large follower to followed ratio, almost 25k to 83. This is calculated to impress, Twitter being a superficial medium that measures reality in terms of follows and likes. It’s fueled by much fruitlessly expended CO2, so to speak. Many opinions, but often little context. A lot of talk but little action or real effort results from much expended “gas.”

But one can, with patience and fortitude, find a pool of folks who don’t follow just to get a follow back, tit for tat, and who want to hear what a priest has to say. Granted I offered a unique “brand,” as it were, telling the story of my experience of relaunching the integral Catholic tradition within a parish context. And that’s the real point of this column. The “real.”

After a few incidents involving my account I was asked, or rather told, to stop posting. Or else. On behalf of whom this was communicated it is better not to mention. The reason for going back in time and delving once again into the late unpleasantness is to make a point. I was making Twitter less fun because I was boldly challenging one of the more widely known and “followed” heresiarchs who presents himself as a Catholic and is treated as a priest in good standing by his religious community. He is well liked by the Pope and treated to personal audiences, photo-ops with His Holiness, and hand-penned congratulatory notes. All of these are, of course, posted on his Twitter account.

You may guess of whom I speak. Or not. It doesn’t really make a difference in the end. Why? The real protagonist in this and all matters Catholic is the Faith, the truths of the Faith. The Logos, our Lord, is the center of our lives. And this is important for the sake of the souls whom Christ sent the Church to save.

On another occasion I made a point about modesty in this forum that offers little to no context. Latin Mass Catholics inhabit a largely lost world, where men and women use clothing for a similar purpose in a true equality long forgotten by a society that measures freedom in terms of license. Thousands of consumers of information on Twitter with no experience of a Latin Mass, or the unique experience of community enabled by it, had little to no capacity to understand how one person with skin exposed in a sea of people can provide a considerable distraction at Holy Mass. That was the point of a tweet that drew international ire and caused a Twitter mob of deranged thousands to swarm and attack a single priest.

Read the rest: https://thewandererpress.com/catholic/news/our-catholic-faith/salvation-is-irl-not-on-twitter/

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