The CatholiCity Message

Volume V, Number 13 – July 13, 2001

Dear CatholiCity Citizen,

Once again, our warmest welcome to all of our new CatholiCity Citizens. We've got several items for you today, a great quote, our usual group prayer, our always popular Inane Word Trivia, Our (Surprising) Rules About Email. (Surprising? We'll give up the ghost now, as our crowning advice is to stop using it.) Plus, an important reflection on Pixie Stix. We'll start with Pixie Stix.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"I know God won't give me anything I can't handle.
I just wish He didn't trust me so much."
Mother Teresa

1. GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS.
Our favorite candy growing up was the O Henry bar, which we've always felt was a lot less crumbly than the Baby Ruth. However, we have the most respect for whoever it was who invented Pixie Stix. Now here was a candy that didn't fool around: a straw filled with unadulterated sugar, allowing a hyperactive eight-year-old to basically "download" the drug straight into his stomach. No chewing–just throw back your head, open your mouth, and pour. Of course, there were a variety of "flavors"--blue, red, green, yellow and purple–and they all tasted exactly the same. We're only mildly surprised that the makers of Pixie Stix don't supply a needle, a spoon and a lighter so the more resolute sugar addict could freebase the stuff directly into his veins. We recall that Pixie Stix did eventually come out with an "innovation." The super extra-wide large version. What does any of this have to do with Catholicism? Absolutely nothing.

2. KEEP KNOCK KNOCK KNOCKING.
For our new readers, it's critical for you to realize that over 40,000+ families who read this join together in prayer for a particular general intention. It's powerful stuff, and important for all of us to remember to really recollect ourselves, to really pray with reverence. It's better to have forty people praying earnestly than forty thousand just going through the motions. In May, we prayed for our fallen-away friends and relatives and coworkers to return to the sacraments, and we're going to do it again, today. We all know someone who is very very close to coming back. No doubt we also know someone who seems far away, but is actually very close to converting or reverting in the order of grace. Like the woman in the parable who kept knocking on the door of the judge, let's keep knocking on the Gates of Heaven for these graces. We'll use the same prayer as we did in Message #10 in May. Let's begin in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit:

"Dear Lord, you ardently long for our friends and relatives to return to supernatural life in the sacraments. We believe that You are bombarding these souls with the grace of conversion at all times, and that our humble prayer to You will help accomplish what You have already planned. All is Grace! We are powerless without Your grace! We, too, long for our friends and relatives to receive Your Body and Blood, Your Mercy in the Confessional, and we beg You, RIGHT NOW, to break the dam that keeps their hearts' closed. All the angels, and all the saints, and all our Guardian Angels, and all departed CatholiCity Citizens in heaven, Pray for Us. Archbishop Fulton Sheen, you who converted so many souls during your priestly lifetime, pray for our friends and relatives. Amen."

3. INANE WORD TRIVIA.
What word in English is made plural by adding an "s" to its singular form but does not end in "s"? (Answer in Item 5)

4. STOP EMAIL
Alas, in the very first year of this Message, in the Paleolithic Age of the Net, now many years ago, we had the gumption to write our rules for email. Originally, we focused on how to write it well. Now we are pleased to realize it ought not to used at all, at least in most ways it is commonly used today (more below). It was one of the most popular things we ever wrote for this CatholiCity Message, and we only had a few thousand readers at the time. Alas, our first two years of Messages never got archived, so we're recalling these from memory, with revisions added as needed, but these maxims hold held up well. We hope none of you reading this, especially after praying with 40,000+ families above, underestimates how important email can be to our faith, to our relationships, even for saving souls. When used, email deserves excellence in order to glorify God. Feel free to copy this to your friends. Here goes...

-FORMAL IS GOOD. Begin your email message with "Dear" and the person's name, just like you would a realworld snailmail letter, no matter how short your message. Always end like a snailmail letter, adding "Sincerely," "Cordially," "Yours," or even "Yours in Christ," or our own favorite, "With Our Lady." If you want to add a quote or something nice in your signature file, keep it short. We are purists: We add no quotes or messages, and if professionally required, a job title.

-SIGN YOUR NAME. Help the person to whom you are writing by letting him know who you are, especially if you haven't contacted him in awhile. Use your full name if needed. We all know a couple dozen Marys and Johns. "Signature" files in your email software make this easy, of course.

-COPY BACK. We almost always copy back the message we're replying to by highlighting the text of the received message into the body of our reply. This is so helpful for the person receiving your response, and is one of the great advantages of email over snailmail.

-EVERYTHING COUNTS. We are professionals, and have therefor learned through hard experience that nothing kills communication more effectively than using poor grammar, bad spelling, hard-to-decipher abbreviations, lousy punctuation, and just plain unclear writing. As we were taught in grade school, use complete sentences, use paragraphs that illustrate one point, and follow the rules of grammar and punctuation. In short, be clear. Real English is English that follows the rules. We are not fans of abbreviations like "LOL" (Laughing Out Loud) or those emotive symbols such as :-), which weI've always found to be less than masculine for men, and we're pleased to observe these are becoming less popular as time goes by.

-CRIMES OF PASSION. Emotions are infamously difficult to convey in emails, so no matter how ticked off you are, don't hit that "Send" button. Write it, delete it, then write it again, perhaps later, this time with calmness and charity. Or just never send it. Better yet, don't write it all; that way you can't even send it by accident. Go for a walk. Visit a friend. Play with you kids. Eat a high-carb treat. Pray before the Blessed Sacrament. Use the phone, if needed, instead. Avoid correcting people by email, and then only in the most gentlemanly or ladylike terms. Corrections are best done in person, in the flesh. If face-to-face is simply impossible, use the telephone. Email is the worst possible way to conduct an argument or a correction. If they argue, don't argue back. As the song goes: They will know we are Christians by our love. Avoid using exclamation points unless absolutely necessary!!!!!

-BE PROMPT. Our goal is prompt responses, but only in a vaguely general sense depending on the context of the communication. Sometimes "prompt" is two months later. We have exceptions to the Be Prompt Rule: for legal matters (in which case, don't use email at all, even if you are contacted by email), for responses that require reflection, and when one is so backlogged that it would impinge upon our family or professional responsibilities. If our reply is late by more than a couple of weeks, we briefly apologize for our tardiness.

-PLEASE, SORRY, THANK YOU. Use the most wonderful words in English when asking for help: sorry, please, and thank you. Email tends to magnify the meanings of words, even compared to paper correspondence–so magnify charity. Rarely will irate emailers stay worked up if you stay calm. Often, the best response for an irate emailer is silence–that is, no response at all. Don't stir the pot, in other words.

-REREAD, REWRITE. Get into the habit of rereading and rewriting your emails before you hit the "Send" button. It doesn't take much time, but its helps avoid those killer typos (like when you forget to write "not" when writing "I'm not coming to the party."). Quick rewriting is best way to improve your clarity.

-BREVITY WORKS. Keep it short.

-AND THE WINNER IS... Several years ago, when the so-called "experts" were saying that email was degrading English and communication because it tended to be so jargony and informal, we predicted the opposite. We believed and still believe strongly that email would give everyone who used it a blessed opportunity to improve their writing, language, and communication skills. We've seen vast improvements in the quality of messages sent to us over the years, for example. Unclear writers don't get their point across and fail; clear writers do and they succeed. We've had one basic rule for communicating using the written word since we were tykes: always choose the best word for the job, every time. Over time, you'll improve.

-BIG PICTURE. Whether we realize it or not, whether we're Catholics or not, whether we like it or not, everything we do and say either helps or hurts the Father's efforts to bring His Son's Kingdom into this wonderful creation called the Universe. In our godless, baby-avoiding, mother-degrading, father-trashing, neo-pagan, sex-obsessed, materialistic society, we as Catholics have been given the glorious task of attempting to describe what invisible things look like to blind people. Through the mystery of the Mystical Body of Christ, Jesus is placing immortal, priceless souls of friends, relatives, and strangers into our trembling hands. The Internet is a terrible and woefully inadequate medium for communication precisely because it does not convey some of the most critical characteristics of human interaction: body language, facial expression, tone of voice, and emotion. Email is plainly merely words. Pixels on a screen. Life, on the other hand, is flesh.

-STOP WRITING EMAILS. It's perfectly okay to avoid email altogether. What law requires you to correspond using email? You may find it best to adopt a "default" on not answering the emails you receive. In the early years, email was an exciting new pleasure. We were seduced by its siren song of speed and instant gratification, as likely were you. Now, without even considering the acid-bitter reality of spam, is it not primarily an annoyance and feckless obligation? You have a right to your privacy and the option–in virtually all but a few cases–to simply not reply or not send anyone an email at all, ever. Consider that for a moment. Civilization existed without it. So can you, and perhaps without it, you shall remain all the more civilized in an increasingly barbaric world.

-MULTIPLIER EFFECT. Because everything in your message is now being transferred into a digital electronic format, it can be cut and pasted into just about anything–weblogs, email groups, chat rooms, webpages, sound files, and Lord knows whatever else is invented down the road. Your words will not be placed in a shoebox in an attic. Within a matter of minutes, they could be translated into hundreds of languages and then for years circulate endlessly before the eyes of countless strangers. It's virtually impossible to put the genie of your digital words back in a bottle.

Assume anything you write online might end up on the front page of the New York Times. In short, be extraordinarily wary that what you write might haunt you, harm others, or even destroy reputations in ways you can't even imagine by future digital-multiplication technologies which have not even been invented yet. Gossip is a grave moral evil. You ought not to gossip in any form. Gossiping in a digital format is a particularly virulent because your evil actions shall be multiplied, reformatted, distorted, and could survive for centuries. Something negative you write about your spouse, for example, could be read by your great-great-grandchild hundreds of years hence. That is why, ultimately, you may want to maturely re-evaluate the role email plays in your life, and whether or not it is proper to keep it in your life at all.

These heartfelt and serious warnings might sound strange coming to you, as it happens, via email (or perhaps another digital format years after it was written). Ah, paradox.

5. INANE ANSWER
To make the singular form of the word "passerby" plural, you add an "s" to make it "passersby."

DUMB JOKE OF THE WEEK
Question: Why did the monkey fall out of the tree?
Answer: Because it was dead.

BONUS QUOTE
"No thought is complete until it is written or spoken."
Saint Augustine, Word Guy

Thanks for reading to the end. Next time, we'll have at least one of our famous excellent super-discounts on a Mystery Item for CatholiCity Citizens Only. In fact, we're going to Clean Out Vinny's Basement. Our secret army of joke-suppliers throughout the earth is scouring the ether for an even more horrible joke.

With Christ,

The Folks at CatholiCity