On a silent spring night two weeks ago a husband and father of two healthy boys strangled his wife and sons in his suburban St. Louis area home, a crime he had premeditated weeks in advance, having concocted fake death threats he claimed were sent to him because of his work as head of security for Joyce Meyers Ministries, and having spray painted messages on the walls of his house after the murders, messages he hoped would appear to have been written by the “real killers”.  His story was bizarre and transparent from the first, and though he’s only just now been arrested and charged with the crime, it’s been obvious from the beginning that he was the only legitimate suspect.   I won’t dwell on the details, which are lurid, and which throw into doubt not only the state of the killer’s soul, but the puerile thought processes that led him to come up with the plot and the alibis he concocted.

But what has interested me in this sad and disturbing story is how the reactions to it tell us about our culture, about human nature, and about our need for redemption.  The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, once a fine newspaper, and now a shadow of its former self, has been posting on its website superficial and vapid stories about this case that are as unsatisfying as the reporting is listless.  The Post, as we call it, is now known for its mediocrity as much as for its bias.

But thanks be to technology, the Post lets readers comment to its stories in “comboxes” on its website!  And these comments are fascinating.  For while the Post-Dispatch apparently feels compelled to take a safe and what I would call “indemnified” stance on the case – neither committing to any details nor casting any hasty judgment (the sort of stance most of our bishops take on things) – the readers are, by contrast, actual living men and women and they tell it like it is!

For instance, early this morning, after the Post reported on the arrest, the combox was filled with almost 200 comments.  The commenters felt no obligation to be circumspect or balanced.  Most were calling for the suspect’s immediate execution and bewailing the moratorium on executions in the state.  Many were able to work in jibes against religion and Joyce Meyers, who hired this fiend to begin with.  A few rather flaccid souls spouted platitudes about presumed innocence and the possibility that someone else dunnit.  Many were worried that the suspect’s high profile defense attorney would get him off on a technicality.  A hearty dose of commenters eagerly proclaimed the violent persecution that awaits the killer in prison, some going into graphic detail.

And I had a feeling reading these comments that I had had before, a feeling I once had on a parking lot at our son’s Catholic grade school many years ago.  I spend too much of my time, since my conversion, bemoaning the casual way most Catholics regard their faith, and perhaps not enough time praying for their sanctification.  But what I realized when I saw the gathering / gossiping / drinking / adulterizing secularists picking up their kids and socializing at the parking lot of a not-really-Catholic grade school that day is what I also saw in the combox this morning.

These people, God bless them, are real people.  They have common sense.  Grace perfects nature, and their nature is clearly fallen nature, but it’s a nature more real, vivid and lovable than that of many of the prigs and prudes who are devoutly Christian.   In this case, the case of the rabble who comment on the murder stories in the Post-Dispatch, much can be said in their favor.  Their thirst for justice is a virtue, though their desire for revenge may need to be tempered.  Their cynical view of lawyers is probably quite accurate, if uncharitable.  Even their distrust of Christians is, in its way, commendable.  It is based, more than likely, on actual Christians they have known.

In short, these are the dirty smelly fisherman and prostitutes Our Lord hung around with, the folks who saw Him for what He was, mobbed Him to heal them, ate from His miraculous loaves, and in the end cried out for his bloody execution.

And Chris Coleman –the accused – the father and husband arrested for killing his wife and children – though with far less common sense than these blessed sinners, and with depths of labyrinthine evils that we cannot fathom, is also one of those Our Lord came to save.

May he confess, repent, and beg the Lord for mercy.

And so may we all.