Masks of Irrespectability

Photo by Tom Roberts on Unsplash

Masks are how we protect ourselves or so someone said a long time ago. We wear masks, so others won't come to know the person we perceive ourselves to be.

"I don't want you to discover the monster I truly am, so I will pretend to be a jewel around you."

That's how it often goes, right?

Social media is a great place to observe this. No one ever posts who they really are. The vast majority post who they would like to be. A few post the monsters they believe themselves to be. All of them want someone else to acknowledge the illusion as reality.

For example, a Catholic on Twitter tweeted a list of the saints to whom he prays at the end of each rosary he prays and that was it. He didn't ask for feedback or a response of any kind. Why? How are his personal prayer habits relevant to me? Doesn't this seem to violate Christ's injunction to close the door of your room, when you pray (Matthew 5:5-6)? Was he trying to convince himself, that he is a good Catholic? Was this a reaction to some sin he had just committed? Had someone just criticized or judged his faith or him as a disciple? Had the devil spent the day whispering in his ear? Perhaps, he thought he was helping others with a random list of obscure saints out of nowhere.

But that is precisely what got my hackles up. The saints on his list were so obscure, as if he had consulted Eusebius or some ancient Greek Father from the mists of time. The obscurity of the saints were what his followers commented on, too. So, was he trying to demonstrate his erudition and sophistication? If so, why? Is his insecurity so great, he needs that type of recognition? Or is he just arrogant as hell? One of those triumphalist and self-righteous Catholics, who humbly brag about their unworthiness and nearness to damnation before condemning everyone who attends the Novus Ordo and doesn't homeschool.

It seems Twitter is the social platform for many of these types of Catholics. They are millennials and self-described hipsters (and, surprisingly, even older Catholics, who should know better) looking for validation largely through participation in positive feedback loops and condemning everyone, who doesn't look like they do.

For example, a Catholic on Twitter tweeted, "imagine if adoration chapels were as full as gyms not filled with the kind of people who go to gyms, of course filled with cooler people yes, that'd be good." Except Christ said, "I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance" (Luke 5:32).

From where do such attitudes well up? How do these self-proclaimed followers of Jesus Christ, Humility Himself, find the stones to be such arrogantly off-putting punks? Are these the masks of the Benedict Option?

"Since you would reject me, if I were to evangelize you, I'm going to reject you first." Sounds a bit like grade school and not at all like St. Paul: "For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ" (Philippians 3:8) and "For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, that I might win the more" (1 Corinthians 9:19).

Bragging on Twitter to score points in this game of collecting Catholic followers and their approbation is ridiculous, completely without worth or merit, and arrogant. Those who are participating in this are ruining the only opportunity others may take of observing what it is truly to be Catholic. It's time to back off the rhetoric and present humility, warmth, and gentleness. It's time to emulate the most humiliated Man in history, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It's time to take off our masks and "put on the new nature, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator" (Colossians 3:10).