I've been slammed...

Recently, this was posted on another blog regarding me.

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Listen, I find intra-Christian politics boring as can be, but I have noticed a slight change in my visitor statistics lately, so I thought I would clear a few things up before the next inquisition.

The nasty emails were annoying enough last time; this time, I would like to make sure my nasty emails are at least for the right reasons.

I was recently invited to join a "support group" for "survivors" of a certain online ministry. The mission statement talks about a place "where these survivors can heal and can begin to grow again."

Let's get some facts straight:

1. I didn't leave active participation in that ministry because of corruption or some such nonsense. Actually, I think they are a pretty nice bunch of people. I pray for them regularly, and wish a few would keep in touch.
2. If you are letting an online ministry dominate your life to the point where you need an online support group to deal with your online quibbles, then you need to start spending more time with your "real life" flesh and blood community, and a lot less time online.
3. If you left that online ministry over two years ago, and are still spending nearly every waking moment obsessing over how ill-treated you think you were, then something gone seriously wrong.

The internet is a wonderful thing, but the moment it starts consuming you and superseding face-to-face relationships, you need to take a step back and reevaluate. It's dangerous ground.

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I tried to reply with the truth of the matter. My comments were summarily hidden to prevent others from reading the truth.

I will post them here now, where they will get an ever wider audience than if the original comment had been allowed to stand. She was kind enough to send me my comments back, along with a nasty e-mail telling me to "back off." *sigh* Oh well.

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Ok, let's do get a few things straight. I didn't start the "support group," Jean-Luc did and he invited me.

The group is focusing not on griping about the past, but looking forward to the future. Almost every post from every participant is either generally chit chat of the "getting to know you" type, or has to do with planning Jean-Luc's new forum. We're currently at the point of voting on a name, since the forum can't be set up without one.

You wouldn't know this unless you could READ the messages of course, which you can't because you opted not to join the group, so you really have no right to gripe about something you have never seen and know nothing about.

For your information, we asked you to join because we wanted a Catholic's input into how the forum should be run, to avoid what happened at EW. We were trying to be more inclusive. Instead, we only get slammed.

And I reiterate, every time we have IMed about EW is because YOU brought it up, not me. Who's the one obsessing here?

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She called this "offensive" and hid it, but people need to know the truth - her post is nothing but assumptions about a person she has never met (me) and a forum she had never seen or read. She is going totally by the description of what is on the front page, which is very different from what the forum very quickly became. It is made up of people who have left or been made to leave EW; it is not a forum to gripe about those experiences. She needs to stick to writing about what she knows about, not what she thinks she knows.

There were no nasty e-mails from me so I have no idea what she is talking about there. I did e-mail her after she hid my comments, but not before.

She later deleted the entire post, but not before I had copied it here. She got really pissed and told me her post was her intellectual property and I had no right copying it. Still, her post was up a few days for all the world to see before I found it and told the truth and forced her to take it down.

And let me add that she really doesn't know the first thing about Jean-Luc or the group if she doesn't know that we have been exhorted by J-L (publicly) to pray for EW. It's right in his very public blog. It was also posted to the group.

She'll blame me for this little spat. I simply point out that she was the first to publicly accuse me of these things. I am merely defending myself against her baseless accusations.