Mrs. Kathy Shaidle and logo of her website
www.fivefeetoffury.com
Let's Adore Jesus-Eucharist! | Home >> Directory of sheep and wolves
Mrs. Kathy Shaidle and logo of her website
www.fivefeetoffury.com
1) Blog entry by K. Shaidle (2007-Oct-04; 8:15 AM)
2) S. Jetchick blog entry (2007-Oct-04; 3:55 PM)
3) K. Shaidle (2007-Oct-04; 4:52 PM)
4) S. Jetchick, transferred conversation here (2007-Oct-06)
www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/007158.html Dear foolish Christians: If your goal is to win the unchurched to Christ (rather than just displaying your smug self-righteousness for all the world to see) PLEASE do not name your website inquisition.ca Congratulations: you have just doomed countless souls with your Pharasiacal pomposity. I can hear the unmistakable sound of hardening hearts all the way from Quebec: Democracy in Action Calendar Counter-demonstration : pro-choice "Next Sunday, some reactionaries will be demonstrating in from of CHUQ in Ste.-Foy, to be in opposition to abortion and, most of all, to the right of women to make free choices. Conscious of the danger that this anti-feminist movement constitutes in the present context, we call for a massive demonstration of our opposition to this retrograde discourse by means of a pro-choice counter- demonstration. "The reactionary demonstration on Sunday is organized by a small committee composed of Christian integrists [???] based in the west of the capital and supported by an anti-choice lobby (www.rvme.org). Presided over by Bernard Westerveld, pastor of the Reformed Church in Ste-Foy, the main worker on the committee is Stefan Jetchick, one of the principal animators in Québec of the Christian Heritage Party and of the website www.inquisition.ca (yes! yes!) These people are dangerous. We refuse their religious delirium!" Etc. etc. You're not supposed to make it harder for people to be good. Thanks for nothing, guys.
(I omit many subsequent blog entries; roughly fourty on 2007-Oct-06)
(Disclaimer: I run the infamous www.inquisition.ca website) Hello my friends in Christ, I would like to say that there is a whole page on my web site dedicated to the choice of the actual name "www.inquisition.ca" If you are going to argue whether my web site has a good name or not, maybe you should refer to that page? (I'll give you a hint: it's in the FAQ.) For the rest, please all remain charitable during this debate, whether or not you claim to be Christians. God Bless You! Stefan
Stefan, your FAQ doesn't matter and neither does your reasoning, no matter how clever. The people who see the word "inquisition" and go ballistic will never read your FAQ. You have already turned them off and lost the argument, no matter how deep and profound your FAQ may be. Like many pro-lifers, you seem more interested in displaying your own Catholic bona fides and preaching to the choir than reaching out to the unconvinced. You are hiding your light under a bushel. If you really believe that abortion is the most pressing issue of our time, you & yours would lose the little baby feet lapel pins and plastic fetus dolls, and try appealing to the women you are trying to reach, rather than turning them off. How have these strategies been working out so far? Not very good, hmmm? I stayed pro-choice for years precisely because of sites like yours. Yes, that was stubborn and silly of me, but multiply me by a few million. We may be stubborn and silly, but how is your site an invitation rather than a condemnation? We're the women you want to reach and I put it to you that it isn't working. Profane, secular movies (and yes, abrasive) like Knocked Up will ultimately prevent more abortions than all the Catholic pro-life websites put together, because they reach people where they are, not where YOU are. "The publicans and prostitutes will enter the Kingdom before you..." "Abrasiveness" isn't the issue -- the use of trigger words like "inquisition" is. The word "crusade" is similar. WE all know that the crimes of the Inquisition and the Crusades have been exaggerated by the secular left, but the average person does not and never will. But if you are proud of your site, do carry on. How's your traffic, though? How many lives have you really saved? Your good intentions don't matter as much as results.
(Immediately followed by another post by K. Shaidle)
All that to say: As long as pro-lifers are more attached to their failed, off-putting tactics and self-righteousness than they are to really saving lives, abortion will continue to be a problem. These are the same folks who form fringe political parties with the best of intentions, which espouse all kinds of stuff I actually agree with, but tactically all these Christian parties do is split the vote and give our opponents MORE power. Again: good intentions are very often canceled out by bad results. It is a sad, tragic and paradoxical fact of life, but if your wedding ring has just rolled down the drain, so is gravity. Rail all you like, get angry that you're being "misunderstood" all you like, the fact remains that your efforts may still fail, no matter how clever they seem to you. Because "you" are not your intended audience... This is Marketing 101.
Good day Mrs. Shaidle, (By the way, nice logo for your web site! I'm kind of jealous!) >> Stefan, your FAQ doesn't matter and neither does your reasoning Well, in that case, I admit defeat! If facts and logic don't have any influence on your opinions, obviously, I'm wrong and you are right! ;-) >> You have already turned them off >> and lost the argument, no matter how deep and profound your FAQ may >> be. Precisely! That is exactly what I'm trying to accomplish! As I explain on the FAQ which you refuse to read: "By using the word "inquisition", I often get people with a closed mind to abruptly condemn this web site, often without even taking a few minutes to read the FAQ. I can then call their attention to their behavior, and say something like: "See, that is what bad inquisitions are all about, i.e. condemning somebody without giving them even a chance to defend themselves." Often this is a strong enough argument to get these people to open their minds." [6) Couldn't you come up with a better word than "inquisition"?] >> You are hiding your light under a bushel. I sure hope not. But your concerns are absolutely legitimate, and I struggle with them daily. One of the problems with converting anti-Catholics (according to me, of course), is that they refuse to even look at facts and logic! They BELIEVE that the Catholic Church is wrong, and condemn Her without listening to the Defense Attorney, and with no possibility of an appeal. As long as they hang on to this belief, I find it very difficult to even start up a casual conversation with them, about any topic even vaguely related to religion. But by giving them the "shock treatment", by showing them that something which they find horrible (condemning without giving the accused a chance to present his defense), is actually a behavior that they themselves are indulging in, sometimes they "snap out of it". Is that "shock treatment" the best approach? Is it the most effective? I don't know, so I have other approaches, other "treatments" (i.e. I "hedge my bets"). First example of other approaches: I have reading lists for pro-choicers, Atheists, homosexuals, etc. You can check the reading list for pro-choicers: it attempts to very gradually lead people to a pro-life position. No "shock treatment" there: A Reading List for Pro-Choicers Second example: my web site has actually TWO names! The very same website has two names, one which you know and hate already, and the other one which is: www.jesus-eucharistie.org (Admit there is nothing nasty about that web site name!) I usually avoid "www.inquisition.ca" when reaching out to total strangers who hate the Church. For example, in your original blog entry, you quote a French-Canadian web site. That web site, as far as I can tell, copied its information from another website, called "Ya Basta!", which I won't refer to here, since it is filled with blasphemous language and hate-mongering. (But I did leave a polite message to its webmaster, inviting here to a public debate.) I don't know how "Ya Basta!" got the website "www.inquisition.ca". On the "Quebec Pro-Life" web site, I don't refer to any of my personal web sites, only to the local Christian Heritage Party web site (and then only on the Contact page). In other words, if you really look, you can find the web site called www.jesus-eucharistie.org, and from there, if you look again, you can come back to "www.inquisition.ca" All this to say that these people wanted to be angry, and wanted to present me as a "bad, nasty person", and they made conscious efforts to do so. >> lose the little baby feet lapel pins and >> plastic fetus dolls Don't have any. >> try appealing to the women you are trying to >> reach, rather than turning them off. See above-mentioned reading list. >> How have these strategies been working out so far? Hard to tell. I mostly stay home and work on my web site. >> I stayed pro-choice for years precisely because of sites like >> yours. Well, obviously, if you start out by locking yourself into your emotions, and shutting out facts and logic, such results are quite inevitable! >> We're the women you want to >> reach and I put it to you that it isn't working. Really? Let's see what this e-mail does! ;-) >> How's your traffic, though? Actually, it doubled from about 200 visits a day to well over 400 over the past few days. I guess I have to thank you for that! (Also, I've started to get hammered by some weird Italian ISP. No idea who that could be, but looking at the megabytes they are pulling, in very few visits, I would guess it is a LAN with many PCs on it. Something big, institutional...) >> Your good intentions don't matter as much as results. AMEN! >> As long as pro-lifers are more attached to their failed, off-putting >> tactics and self-righteousness than they are to really saving lives, >> abortion will continue to be a problem. AMEN! By the way, do I detect a hint of "self-righteousness" in your tone of voice? ;-) >> These are the same folks who form fringe political parties with the >> best of intentions, which espouse all kinds of stuff I actually agree >> with, but tactically all these Christian parties do is split the vote >> and give our opponents MORE power. That is a very important political issue, and I do have quite a few articles on that topic, but then you are not interested in my facts and logic! As Bjarne Stroustup quotes [The C++ Programming Language, Special Edition, p. 45]: "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" (I'm teasing you here, Kathy! Actually, I would appreciate your comments on that political article.) >> Again: good intentions are very often canceled out by bad results. AMEN! >> Rail all you like Hum? If you re-read our conversation, which one is doing the "railing"? Cheers! Stefan
Let's Adore Jesus-Eucharist! | Home >> Directory of sheep and wolves