You know what's weird about Catholics -- or maybe not so weird? It's all that "one true church" nonsense. Here's this wonderful Commonweal article by Valerie Sayers, "Being a Writer, Being Catholic," and much as I like the spirit of it I'm just so pissed off by the insularity of it all. They're such a nauseously clubby little group; there's us and there's you, the wanna-bes. There's not one thing she says about Catholic writers that couldn't apply to Christian writers in general -- which is, of course, the same thing everyone says on this matter, the same thing Christianity Today and The Christian Century are all about -- of feeling outdated, of feeling besieged by the rationalist zeitgeist. But for her it's just a Catholic problem experienced by all her little Catholic writer friends. No one else, just Valerie and Evelyn and Flannery and Walker. The Dead Popists Society. Oh no, little Protestant, our pain is so different, because it has so much history and culture and painting and blah-blah-blah. There's a disgusting sense of entitled specialness behind every bloody word. Fine, Valerie, go wear your cilice, go flagellate yourself, go wallow. I'm tired of feeling your pain.