The patron saint of the canceled.

Yesterday was the feast of St. John of God, a Portuguese born in 1495, of whom many interesting stories are told. By some accounts he went to war in the army of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, fighting the French and later the Turks. He fell away from his childhood piety and lost his moral bearing. Eventually he decided to mend his ways, and went all in for the Lord, devoting himself to helping the poor and the sick. 

There was one story about him that made me think he would be a wonderful patron saint for those facing public cancellation in these strange and wicked times. We are supposed to be a society of the free, but as you well know, making a public statement of a sort that everyone believed a decade ago (such as, riots are bad, men can't be women just by wearing a dress, all lives are important) can get you fired from your job, blackballed from your industry, doxxed, attacked at your home, blacklisted from "social" media, and if some asshat is feeling particularly asinine, maybe SWATted while you sleep. 

My use of the term "blackballed" just now might be enough to do me in, but fortunately I'm a nobody and I don't use Twitter. If I were to get the attention of the social justice orcs, I would know better than to apologize -- apologies are never accepted by the mob, and just motivate them to keep burning and pitchforking.

Modern mob justice has no interest if its victim even really did anything wrong. It just likes to collect heads. If I offend in this blog, it's probably a joke, and if they don't like it, the humorless dweebs should try telling a joke themselves; if I say something true that they don't like, I'm not apologizing for the truth. Of course, we know for the mob, truth is never a defense. 

According to the Catholic News Agency, John of God did not make a secret of his often disreputable past: 

The Bishop of Granada approved his work, and gave him the name “John of God.” A group of volunteers came to accompany him in his work, many of whom had first come to him while in dire need themselves.

      Others, who resented his work, assaulted John's reputation by focusing on his past sins – but John, unfazed in his humility, would acknowledge the truth of what was said, as a testament to God's grace in his life. He once offered to pay a woman to tell the entire city what she had been saying about him in private.

And that's why I suggest John of God would be a good patron for those who have come under attack by Internet mobs. He was repentant of his past, and he did not apologize to those who tried to ruin his reputation. He had already repented to the One who mattered, so he knew the truth wouldn't hurt him. If others attacked him anyway, he was humble enough to take it and man enough to see it through.

St. John of God, pray for us! The whole world's gone batty and everything is upside down. Help us be humble and faithful enough to endure, help us be brave, and help us not to apologize for telling the truth.