So Don Johnson, the maker of Convinced wrote me

Last updated on: July 12, 2019 at 10:37 am by Mark Shea

So Don Johnson, the maker of Convinced wrote me 2019-07-12T10:37:05-07:00 Mark Shea

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Convinced, in case you have not heard of it, is a film profiling a bunch of converts to the Catholic faith, including Yr Obdt. Svt. Here’s the trailer:

Here’s a clip of me chatting about the trustworthiness of the gospels:

Don is a really nice guy. He’s a convert himself from Evangelicalism who decided he wanted to get in contact with a bunch of other converts back in 2013-2014 and interview them, so that’s what he did. He rang me up one day and set up a time to come to the house. We set up in the back yard under the peach tree and with him, the camera, and the camera guy and had a free-wheeling discussion (most of which he wisely left on the cutting room floor). Eventually, he put all the interviews together into Convinced, which you can watch on Amazon Prime for free. Like me and many many others, he became Catholic because he was, ‘ow you say?, convinced of the truth of the Catholic faith and sought to serve Jesus Christ in his Church, not to co-opt the Church and use it to accessorize his politics.

Then the Catholic Right lost its mind and a) decided God had sent them to earth to destroy Pope Francis and save the Church from him and b) decided that God had called them to defend a grifting sex predator as God’s anointed and to begin the job of defending every lie and evil he commits from mocking the disabled to putting children in concentration camps to rape.

Don, like me and a number of other Catholics was astonished at this and, because he is an Israelite in whom there is no guile, has set about trying to create a film to challenge this incredible betrayal of Catholic witness. He’s been in contact with me now and then over the past several months and he has my full support. Recently, he wrote me:

Hope all is well! Just wanted to give you a quick update on the movie:

I was able to do a quick swing back East to do some initial interviews and have put together in a couple of teaser clips and an Indiegogo campaign to hopefully help raise some money to do the rest of the movie (including coming up to Seattle to chat with you!) You can see it here, and any help getting the word out would be appreciated, of course.

By the way, I achieved my first honor badge – I got censored and booted from Relevant Radio! I used to do a show for them and fill in all the time for Patrick Madrid and others, but they hadn’t really had me on since Trump got elected (They didn’t appreciate my coverage of the primaries). Anyway, for some reason I got the call the other day to fill in for 3 days last week, but I barely made it through the first day before the plug was pulled! Apparently you can talk about a lot of things on Conservative Catholic radio, but America’s history of systemic racial injustice isn’t one of them! They dropped about 20 calls that were waiting, made me switch topics, and refused to podcast the episode! I’m going to be writing an article about it this week hopefully.

Par for the course, as you know.

Thanks, Mark! Keep up the good fight.

I wrote him back and asked if he would mind if I quoted his note. He replied:

Not at all, Mark. And here is the email I sent to the producer of Patrick’s show on Tuesday (the show was last Monday), (who is a very nice fellow that I like a lot – I don’t think it was his decision).

“Just had a question about yesterday’s show. I notice that it isn’t archived in the podcasts, which doesn’t surprise me, but I was wondering if Relevant has an official explanation as to why not. For example, “Relevant Radio chose not to release that episode online because…[Don taught heresy], [Don did not exhibit a Christ-like attitude toward callers], [Don made too many people angry with his discussion of Toy Story (or perhaps another topic :)] [Don’s position regarding the statements of certain cable news personalities did not align with Relevant Radio’s position], etc.

Again, I’m not surprised at all by the decision not to release it, but I think it would be helpful for all going forward if I had a stated reason as to what exactly the main problem was.”

His reply was:

“We’re not giving a reason as to why the show was pulled. We’ve had a couple of calls asking for it, and our response is, “I’m sorry, that show isn’t available.”

So there you go. I guess we know who the real snowflakes are.

Indeed. The Trumpian-Conservative Catholic Industrial Complex marches on.

If readers are interested in supporting Don’s Indiegogon campaign and funding a witness to the actual Catholic gospel and not the Christianist Invasion of the Body Snatchers, by all means do.

Don Johnson tells the whole story here.

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