AKIN TO WORLD: "I Don't Have To Take Your Crud Anymore!"

I'm writing this on election night, before the winner of the presidential election is apparent (if it will even be apparent tonight). Nevertheless, I have something to say to the world (that's the world in general; not readers of this blog):

"I DON'T HAVE TO TAKE YOUR CRUD ANYMORE!"

Let me explain what I mean:

This year Catholic Answers produced its famed Voters Guide for Serious Catholics. It was wildly successful. Over five million copies in print. More than ten million estimated readers.

You don't do that without attracting a lot of attention. So we've been getting TONS of calls, from a wide variety of people: people who like the voters guide, people who don't like the voters guide, and the media (who don't like it but don't want to admit this to you on the phone).

In accord with its non-profit status, Catholic Answers has a very firm policy against anyone making a political endorsement while speaking in a representative capacity for the ministry. We have gone to great lengths to avoid anyone saying anything that even might conceivably be misconstrued as a political endorsement. One technique for doing this is to funnel all calls of a substantive nature that deal with the voters guide (i.e., where the caller wants do discuss the guide itself rather than place an order) to a limited number of people who have extra background on where the legal lines are for the ministry.

The practical upshot of this is that as time has passed, more and more calls regarding the voters guide have been going to me. Toward the end, I became the pointman for almost all of these calls except those in which people simply wanted to place an order for it.

This made me the official crud-taker of Catholic Answers.

I can't tell you how many hours I've spent on the phone listening and responding as reporters and others tried to trick me into saying things I wasn't going to say, which is very frustrating to deal with. I can't tell you how many more hours I've spent on the phone listening to people vent their political rage while I firmly answer with excruciating calm and politeness that Catholic Answers is not making a political endorsement of any kind, that the ministry teaches Catholic moral principles that must be applied to particular races by individual voters, that I cannot comment on particular candidates or races, that war and the death penalty aren't in the voters guide because they are not non-negotiables (and why), etc., etc., etc.

Some people would do things just to be snarky, like saying their name and phone number just once and incredibly fast to my voicemail, when my voicemail message specifically asks for these to be given twice and slowly.

Some of the things that people have been saying (or yelling) at me are amazing. It's not that surprising to have a reporter for a homosexual newspaper screaming at you that you're "beyond despicable" and that you are "making life harder for people like me." It is more surprising to have an elderly, grandmotherly woman spitting into the phone that you are a "whore" for a particular candidate. Other people call and try to find things to say that will hurt you, for example, that they were going to join the Catholic Church but now are not because they are appalled by the voters guide. Others will try to scare you by saying that they have reported you to the IRS (which isn't much of a scare since we're well within what the law allows, but they're trying to scare you).

So I've been taking a lot of crud lately.

At first I tried to answer every call, no matter how angry the person sounded in my voicemail, but eventually I concluded that this wasn't productive, so I stopped answering the really hostile ones. This didn't result in getting rid of hostile calls altogether, though, as if a person was able to control their emotions while leaving voicemail such that they weren't shouting and their voice wasn't trembling with rage then I called them back, often to have them start shouting or getting creepy-hateful-venomous-cold on me.

That kind of thing takes a toll.

It may have even come out somewhat in my performance on Catholic Answers Live of late. I normally try to answer people's questions in an efficient manner that keeps things moving so that we can get to as many people as possible. As a result, I sometimes ask people what their question is if they are giving a lot of backstory and aren't getting to their question promptly (which is unfair to all those waiting on hold and trying to call in). I also get firm when people call and start ranting (rad trads do that a lot).

A couple of weeks ago I got a couple of ladies calling on the show who were going off in rad trad directions and I ended up having to be rather firm with them. I thought that this was more or less a continuation of my normal procedure, but one co-worker--knowing what I had been going through taking people's crud--thought that I was a little shorter with them than I normally would be. In her words, "You looked like you had taken enough and didn't need to take any more."

Maybe. I've certainly been burdened by the load people have been dumping on me of late, and it may have showed on the show. Afterwards I was tickled to see that somebody on the Catholic Answers forums started an "Is Jimmy Akin Too Testy?" thread. (The moderators asked me if I wanted it closed, and I said naw; I don't mind if people take issue with me, and seeing what people are thinking is useful feedback; I also was glad to see that most responders on the thread understood the approach I try to take with callers.)

In any event, that should be all over now--or at least almost.

With the passing of this year's election, I won't be having to take such calls any more (or at least not in the same numbers), and that means . . .

I'M NOT THE OFFICIAL CRUD-TAKER ANY MORE!!!

YEE-HAW!!!