Today's column, about the Archdiocese of Philadelphia's incoming leader, Archbishop Charles Chaput, drew a predictable slew of calls and email from the faithful and those who fled.
No point sharing the mashnotes from readers in passionate praise of my prose. But critics often deride me for getting the last word in print. Pieces like today's seem like an opportunity to give them their due.
So for your reading pleasure, allow me to play a little game I call, "Fun With Reader Voicemail."
"Man's been in town a day and you know everything about him?" cried one of the mostly-anonymous and mostly male critics. This reader also scoffed at my quoting an emeritus professor at Penn involved in a Catholic reform group.
"Most professors are, in my estimation, either Socialists or, even worse, Marxists," the critic deduced. "He may believe he's a Catholic, but he don't have Catholic beliefs."
Several callers wanted me to know that they fully embrace the church becoming even more hard-line and conservative, even if that leads to more empty pews.
"The Catholic church needs to circle their wagons now," explained a male reader. "We've become moral relativists. We can't have Bill Maher in charge, as much as people would maybe like that."
Added another: "Why should the church permit lesbians to send their children to parochial school? They are living in sin. I find it strange they would want to send their children to parochial school."
Mostly, folks wanted me to know that they'd be fine if I refrained from going to Mass. Even better, I could find a new line of work.
"One has a free choice. If one does not want to follow the church's teaching, leave," Jim from Bryn Mawr advised. "I will pray for the salvation of your immortal soul."
"You're not a journalist, you're just a character assassin who writes under the cover of a journalist," added another cloaked in anonymity. "There's no place in the newspaper for people like you."
-- Monica Yant Kinney