By Ray Cardello for May 12, 2025, Season 31 / Post 10

I do not often write about personal topics, but there have been occasions where my personal experience tied into the day’s conversation. Coming off of Easter, Passover, the election of a new Pope, and the coming to a crossroads in religion for myself, today’s article is an exception. I enjoy reading comments in response to a post I published, good or bad. I have always said I write to start a dialog. I do not want to write just to conservatives. That would be preaching to the choir. I recently wrote an Op-Ed about Trump’s first 100 days for a group of Maine newspapers. I knew the readers were left-leaning, but I was shocked at the vile comments. They were not attacking my work, but me. It did not offend me; I found it funny and interesting.

I found a renewed relationship with God this January. On January 28, I was diagnosed with Esophageal Cancer. I did not shed a tear or feel any fear. I took Shay’s hand, looked into her eyes, and gave myself to God. Whatever happened with the cancer and my future was in his hands, and I have been able to accept my fate since with relative ease. Shay and I have returned to Sunday services, but I drifted from the Catholic Church years ago, and we found an incredible community in a local Baptist Church. We feel at home there, as do many in our circle.

The reason I left the Catholic Church was they abandoned much of the tradition and mystery that made the Church attractive to older Catholics. With Pope Francis’s passing and Pope Leo XIV’s election, I wrote that I was hopeful the Church would return to its more conservative roots. The critics came out of the woods and attacked. Not so much for my views but the fact that I chose a Baptist Church instead of the Church I grew up in. Below is one of the more pointed comments:

I’m curious. You say, “a Pope who believes in the tradition of the Church and the Word of the Bible…might drift [you] back to the Church.” And yet you attend a Baptist Church, a denomination that believes in a conscious affirmation of faith in order to be baptized, not the Catholic paedobaptism rite; a denomination that believes in a believer’s direct relationship with God, not through the mediation of a priest; a denomination that has two sacraments, not seven; a denomination that sees Scripture as primary while Catholicism emphasizes tradition. Why not join Opus Dei in Boston?

This person chose my writing about the election of a new Pope and the decision to attend an alternative church, to put down the Baptist religion, my choice, and suggest I join a secret offshoot of the Catholic Church as a means to achieve sainthood. I am not looking to become a saint, but I am looking for a better relationship with God and guidance from Him to lead a better life. His words were well past opinion, as mine are, and he chose to be judgemental. This tactic is the habit of the Left and brings us identity politics and the divide we suffer.

Until we can get past this judgemental phase, we will not bridge this divide that is preventing us from making progress and solving some of our issues. We on the Right criticize the Left but more about the way they act and think than who they are. That is a big difference. As long as the first argument in any conversation is that Donald Trump and his supporters are Fascists or Nazis, the conversation is over.