The Hound is BANNED from the Google+ Roman Catholics Group!

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Save the Mahound!

It is the biggest (though, in my post-banning opinion, not the best) Catholic Group on Google+.

So before anyone goes all conspiracy, it wasn't Google, it was the Moderators of the Roman Catholics group. And they didn't ban Mahound's Paradise per se. They banned its humble author, me.

I can't say it was a surprise. I made fun of Patheos, but one of the Moderators is (as he says prominently on his icon) a very Patheos-ish Patheos blogger. I was critical (to say the least) of Pope Francis, and they methodically deleted each one of those posts from the group--though, not before a few commenters would typically bomb in to my posts and accuse me of hating the Catholic Church, or not actually being a Catholic, etc. I was scathing of morons, but one of the Moderators is a...

Well, you get the idea.

Actually, what finally set it off was I that I implicitly equated the Moderators with Nazis. I still don't understand why anyone would get upset at that.

Also, they have no sense of humor.

I was called a spammer--which, if you define "spamming" as posting more than one blog link per two-week period, or sometimes posting to Roman Catholics along with one or two other Catholic groups--is technically correct, though, as far as I can tell, many of the other regular contributors do the same thing. But those other guys post links to their own self-help Catholic websites or yet another gay-marriage bashing story. I was posting original parody stories, such as the one about the heretical frat boy lawsuit crazy priest actually being a "woman" (that one travelled far, let me tell you), or fairly straight (for me) write-ups of interviews with the Pope or his allies that tended (it wasn't my fault, man) to be embarrassing.

Deleted. Deleted. Deleted.

It's just not done. You see. You're not a sedevacantist, are you?

No. I don't even know how to pronounce the word.

After "banning" me , and publicly calling me a spammer, spouter of nonsense, crazy person addicted to disproportion (me?), etc., the Owner of the site "circled" me a few minutes later. I asked him why (adding a few choice adjectives). He said it was so that we could form a "relationship" such that "after things cooled off" he "might be persuaded" to unban me. Then he called me a proto-heretic. The last part of my response rhymed with "toff". The first part rhymed with "suck."

A Catholic friend told me he thought Roman Catholics was sort of weird and New Age. I trust him, but I never saw that. Rather, they seemed to me to be merely snotty. We don't (nose held in air) serve Traditionalists.

That's okay, Skippy, I don't eat them.

But I hate snotty people. They either never let me into their clubs. Or, if I do get in (usually under false pretenses), they're always looking for reasons to kick me out.

Let me be serious for a moment. a few months ago I would have been mortified at this. Now I honestly couldn't care less. Though, I will admit that some of the things the Owner said publicly and privately got under my skin. But, at this stage of the game, I would doubt that more than 1% of the hits and readers of Mahound's Paradise came from that Group. And many of those would write obnoxious comments on my blog, like, "You know the author of this post is not really a Catholic, don't you?"

So, in recent weeks posting in the group was more out of defiance.

Yeah, I know, like that was really mature.

But let me be more serious for a moment. These people make Catholicism into a Dear Leader cult for brain dead strivers. They want to form a study group to read the new encyclical in Latin (because anything else would fall prey to the misinterpretations of the media), yet they are too stupid to know that Latin has ceased to be used by the Vatican in many cases, let alone being any kind of "official" standard. And they have ceased to be able to recognize drivel--or evil--for what it is.

They are Pharisees if ever the term had any meaning. Relax. Don't worry, be happy. The media blah blah blah. Gays blah blah blah. Traditionalists blah blah double-fucking venomous blah, and so on and so forth, etc. etc. The "Gates of Hell will not prevail" but millions will go to hell because their Pope is more interested in bragging than in saving souls.

And they're more interested in forming a study group.

Well, in you-know-where there are plenty of study groups. Indeed, contra Dante, I'm sure the whole place is one big study group--studying Laudato Si. Forever and ever.

In Latin.