The Catholic Bubble

Here is an excellent article about the Pharisaism that has crept into the Church. We see in the comboxes  of the internet Catholics who analyze with scrupulous detail the minutiae of doctrine without regard to charity or kindness. They pick apart every word and deed of the Pope, just as Christ was picked apart by the Pharisees. As Our Lord said:

But woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men, for you yourselves do not enter in; and those that are going in, you suffer not to enter. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites: because you devour the houses of widows, praying long prayers. For this you shall receive the greater judgment. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you go round about the sea and the land to make one proselyte; and when he is made, you make him the child of hell twofold more than yourselves. ~St. Matthew 23:11-15

From Aleteia:

 Serious Catholics — by and large and in my own experience — don’t spend a lot of time in public spaces. By “serious” I don’t mean the man who goes to the early Mass every day before work, or the group who come to say the rosary on Wednesday evening, deeply faithful as they are, but those of us who care about Catholicism as a thing: the people who read the Catholic press, keep the Catechism by their computer, argue over Francis, can parse the distinction between the ordinary and extraordinary magisterium, mentally grade the homily, take sides on Scott Hahn, follow church politics and fret about the state of the Church, or fuss about those who fret about the state of the Church. Some of them do it for a living.

I speak as one of them. We wear the Church on our sleeve. It is, as I say, a thing for us. The Church is a life and a family but also something external, something we analyze and examine. This is especially true for converts, who make up a higher percentage of this group than they do of the Church in general. For us, the public space we inhabit tends to be the space we choose and the spaces we choose tend to be filled mostly with people like us, which is to say, other serious Catholics. (Read more.)