In Defense of Larry D.

Let me go ahead and get this part out of the way; I've been a fan of Larry D and his actsoftheapostasy blog for several years now; long before his recent arrival at patheos.com or even the wordpress version. I go back to the days when he was using blogspot.com to host his blog.

In all those years, I don't think I've come across any post he's written that has generated as many negative comments as his post entitled Getting Men Back To Church: It’s About Discipleship, Not Dickscipleship. Several of the comments were downright nasty.

Larry D had given us six signs of what he believed to be unproductive forms of evangelization, which he called Dickscipleship - as in being a dick. That's not the way I would have gone about it, but the six signs were pretty accurate and I believe most of the criticism directed toward him was over the top.

Larry D has always tried to inject humor into his stuff. Like all humor, sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. Although many of the negative comments referenced his "vulgarity", I suspect it may have been his remarks concerning the Extraordinary Form versus the Novus Ordo that actually struck a nerve with the folks who wandered over from Pewsitter.com.

One fellow named Stephen wrote in the comment box, that Larry D's blog post had been linked to Pewsitter. Stephen believes that the link brought "tens of thousands of people" to Larry's "diatribe". That number seems a bit high to me, but it does go a long way in explaining why so many of the comments were hostile.

It'll all blow over in a day or two. Pewsitter will upgrade it's page, removing the link and their storm troopers will have forgotten all about Larry D. Things will soon be back to normal.