Mark Shea vs. the Catholic Champion

Entertaining stuff.

Highlights:

Shea: Seriously, Matthew. Put up or shut up. If you seriously *believe* the nonsense you are defending then hie thee to your bishop make sure I am never allowed into your diocese. But you have to be honest about it. Don't just pass along "Shea is so *mean*!" whines.

Bellisario: You want to talk about "putting up or shutting up," why don't you act in a moral manner and give Robert the chance to address your personal accusations in public forum? He is willing to pay for it!

Palm: Again, Matthew, I wonder if your moral outrage is balanced enough to take Father to task on your blog for his own treatment of his opponents?

Shea: As to my alleged foul mouth, I think offering defenses of torture is much more filthy than stating clearly that terms like "enhanced interrogation techniques" or claims like "waterboarding is not torture" are Orwellian bu******t (or, if you prefer the biblical term "skubala").

Bellisario: You would ultimately be a much more effective voice for the Catholic apologetics world if you got your temper under control before you started blogging.

Palm: If you are prepared to defend Sungenis in his attacks on Bishop Rhoades, Jewish converts such as Roy Schoeman, and the Jewish people as a whole then by all means do so. But if not then it would seem, as I suggested above, that your moral outrage is seriously out of balance.

Bellisario: Palm, also in case you haven't noticed, the original blog post is not primarily about Sungenis. It is about Shea's poor example of Catholic charity and his repeated personal attacks on fellow Catholics including priests.

Shea: At any rate, I'm done here. If you feel the need to actually act on your conviction that I am a disgrace to the Church, I really would urge you to contact your bishop and put your money where your mouth is. If possible, please make an audio or video file of that interview and post it, cuz I would *love* to see you explain to him what Sungenis has said, Fr. Harrison has defended, and you are so passionate to defend as well. Not too surprising that you keep all this stuff bottled up on a blog. Actually saying it out loud to competent ecclesial authorities might force you to step outside the hothouse and watch your defenses of this stuff get blown away by a gust of laughter.