How to ‘Witness’ to Catholics.

Imagine this situation on social media. There is a Catholic discussion group and the members are currently discussing good First Communion gifts, and a new group member breaks in. ‘Hello, I’m a REAL Christian, not like you hellbound Catholics. I know this is supposed to be a Catholic group. I lied about being Catholic to get in. But that’s OK because I’m here to SAVE YOUR SOULS by getting you to repent of your sins of worshiping Mary and the Pope instead of Jesus. And you call your priests ‘Father’ and my father always told me it’s a sin to call any man ‘father.’ I have ten great books written by the pastor of my church on why all Catholics are hellbound, I will give you the list, and you can buy the books, read them, and then I can explain to you all the things you don’t understand…’

Now, is this person witnessing, or just Catholic-bashing? Most Catholics would say the latter. It doesn’t matter how sincere you are, when you insult people you are trying to witness to, you are not planting seeds of your faith but pushing people farther away.

If you feel called to ‘witness’ to a Catholic, you must know actual facts about what the Catholic Church really teaches. Don’t go by some anti-Catholic book written by a member of your denomination, or even the testimony of someone who came from a Catholic family and got ‘saved’ in your church. Many childhood Catholics never had any sort of Catholic religious education and may know less about what practicing Catholics believe than anybody.

Read the Catechism of the Catholic Church to know what real-world Catholics believe. This document has many references to Bible verses or sayings of Early Church leaders that back a certain teaching up. If you are not willing to read from a Catholic source, perhaps you should restrain from making claims about what Catholics believe.

Read The Catholic Verses by Dave Armstrong. He is a former Protestant who became Catholic.

Another important point is to know what you believe and why you believe it. If your church has a catechism or statement of faith, read it. If you don’t believe in ‘doctrine ‘ but just in ‘what the Bible teaches,’ learn more about the many different teachings different Bible-believers find in the same Bible. Learn from Bible commentaries or by learning to read the Bible in the original languages.

Above all, be civil enough to see things from other points of view. You may think a Catholic is hellbound, the Catholic may think you are hellbound. Bickering and insulting is not the way to win people over.

I find that a good number of those who purport to ‘witness’ online are just exposing their ignorance and incivility. Remember, Jesus did not win over the Samaritan woman by declaring she was a whore from a false sect. She had heard insults before, she would not have been moved. But Jesus cared enough about her to be kind even when she was in the wrong on some things.

Let us hope we can all be more like Jesus and less like the online jerks we have all encountered.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Contact Nissa Annakindt on MeWe, the less censored social medium.

Ye Prologue that Sucketh

There is a writing rule that your shouldn’t write prologues. That rule should be don’t write prologues that suck.

A classic prologue that sucks can be found in certain SF and fantasy books where they open with a prosy, dull rehashing of the history of the kingdom or galaxy of the fictional world. In a trilogy in also sums up what happened in the previous books— in the style of a particularly dull history textbook.

Cut that kind of prologue. Start with chapter one with a character in action– learning to use a sword or pilot a starship, chasing a buxom alien woman or an escaped riding dragon, coping with the fact he’s just been turned into a cockroach and that might make him late for work…

There is another kind of prologue often used in horror novels that you can keep. The prologue introduces you to a character who is about to be murdered by the monster or serial killer or whatever you’ve got that kills people, and this killing launches the story. Calling this story start a ‘prologue’ acts as a suggestion to the reader not to get too attached to the prologue viewpoint character.

If you have a prologue in mind that isn’t that kind or a history lesson, and it features your Lead character, is there any real reason to call that a prologue instead of Chapter One? Many readers have been so burned by bad prologues that they don’t read them. Putting ‘prologue’ on a first section just diminishes the number of people to read it.

‘Don’t write prologues’ is not a valid writing rule. Write all the prologues you like. Just don’t write ones that suck. If you put your best foot forward and write things that make the reader curious, you have hooked the reader, and that’s the job of any kind of book beginning.

The Great Facebook Exodus

Facebook has done itself in. In September they made a dreadful new Facebook that you can’t get away from, and forced it on everyone. In October, there are rumors that they will retroactively ban people. My guess is that my conservative or libertarian friends are more likely to get banned than my foul-mouthed stalkers. 

I’ve been annoyed by Facebook for a while because they use what I post on Facebook to pick which ads to throw at me. When I mention my diabetes, I get flooded with ads for diabetes gimmicks. When I mention my low-carb, ketogenic diet, I get flooded with keto gimmicks. You don’t want to know what happened when I mentioned I had an appointment with a kidney doctor.

I’ve never been banned by FB even though I’ve expressed opinions I hate. I only had one post taken down, and that was because I mentioned my stalker, asking people to pray for him. FB likes my stalker more than it likes me, I guess.

I’ve had MeWe and Gab accounts for some time now. I did Gab when a lot of people from the Conservative/Libertarian Fiction Alliance recommended it, and I started on MeWe when the CLFA group migrated there from MeWe.

MeWe seems dull, but I have fewer friends there and a lot of the friends I have there are only there part-time. I have found when I do more things, like comment on posts from pages, I get more interactions. Posting on MeWe is important. I try to post my blog posts onto my timeline, or in some cases in an appropriate group.

Gab has strong free speech policies, but it has a minority of troublesome troll users. Many of the trolls are political extremists of one type or another. Others are ‘88s’— they use the code 88 to signal their sympathies with the NeoNazis or KKK. I dislike it when trolls try to bully me. Which is why it is good that you can block people.

For writers and bloggers, I think it’s important to look into Facebook alternatives. What if FB takes down YOUR page or account overnight? It is only prudent to have a backup. Though I think FB is catching wise. Today a number of people posted links to their MeWe profiles or groups. And when I clicked on the links on my cell phone, MeWe wanted me to sign in again. Even though I have the MeWe app and used it earlier in the day. That didn’t used to happen. 

Join me on MeWe: : https://mewe.com/i/nissaannakindt

Be sure and add a link to your own MeWe profile in a comment, if you want more MeWe friends.