Why is the Catholic internet so weird?

Here's a scenario -

You are a potential convert to the faith, having done some investiagtion into history or theology, and you look up a Catholic parish in the phone book to enquire about becoming Catholic. You go to the place and walk in the fornt door, and you see a man sitting at a desk behind the imposing title "Parish Administrator".

"How do I join the Catholic Church?" you ask him.

"I have no idea." is his reply.

"Well, should I even bother?" you further query.

"I don't see why, I'm not Catholic and I'm perfectly happy." is his answer.

Would your Bishop tolerate this situation in a parish in his diocese? Should he? How does it make you feel? Most regular Catholics, faced with this scenario, presume that our poor hypothetical convert must have stumbled into St. Joan or perhaps another of the most liberal wacko parishes in the world.

However, if you troll around the internet a while, you'll find a situation analgous to this going on at major Catholic websites. The website of a fairly-well-known conservative Catholic convert/apologist had, until recently, a Protestant administrator. I ask - how can a Catholic website supposedly focused on conversion hand the keys to the front door over to an obstinate heretic?

I think, although I am not sure, that the answer is this: Just like parishes will often hire people without any discernable Catholic faith to key positions to avoid hiring someone with a real Catholic agenda likely to cause problems, so these website owners place people without Catholic agendas in charge of the websites to avoid trouble.

Any vigorously Catholic person who takes a real interest in the faith will likely develop a definite agenda, be it liberal, conservative, or traditionalist. A Catholic website owner unable or unwilling to choose between these philosophies is in a quandry - I'm sure they simply desire that their website be "genuinely Catholic" - but the outcome gives lie to this bit of naivete.

Just like in the real world, it's almost impossible to ignore the fractures in Catholic America on the internet. The desire of Catholic webmasters to have non-ideological websites and message boards in this environment is simply an impossible dream. People of conviction inevitably take sides. As Chesterton said, "the purpose of opening one's mind is to close it again on something solid". To demand that the people who work in either the real or virtual Church avoid having a solid ideology is to condemn us all to be led by the least capable, the people who really believe in nothing. And, to again take a famous quote, "If you don't believe in something, you'll believe anything."