YOU JUST PULLED A "CUPICH" -- HOW AWFUL FOR THE CHURCH AND HIS EMINENCE

Here’s a bit of trivia readers may find upsetting but only if they can endure and read the entire article.

The Urban Dictionary is a crowdsourced online dictionary for slang words and phrases, operating under the motto "Define Your World."

The site was founded in 1999 by Aaron Peckham while he was a freshman computer science major at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. He launched the site to compare urban slang used by university students in different parts of California.

He created Urban Dictionary as a parody of actual dictionaries, which he thought tended to be "stuffy" and "take themselves too seriously".

In 2003, the website gained wider attention after a news article revealed that United Kingdom high court judges had used Urban Dictionary to assist them in a case involving two rappers (the judges having unsuccessfully attempted to comprehend slang language that the rappers used).

By 2009, the site listed around 4 million entries and received about 2,000 new submissions per day and had  registered 15 million unique visitors.

The website was referenced in a 2011 District Court complaint by Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives  agents to document the meaning of the vulgarism "murk", as used in a criminal threat.

Over a 30-day period in March and April 2011, 67,000 people wrote 76,000 new definitions for Urban Dictionary. 

As of January 5, 2014, 50% of the site’s traffic was mobile, the iPhone app had been downloaded nearly three million times.

So why all this information about Urban Dictionary?

Well, Cardinal Cupich’s name has been added to list of definitions in what the website itself has described as apropos.

The Urban Dictionary defines “Cupich” -- It says: Cupich — as in "that's a real Cupich": a remark unparallelled in its combined stupidity, arrogance and insensitivity. Did you really just say climate change was a bigger issue than sex abuse in the Church? You just pulled a Cupich!"

I refer to this latest sad state of affairs to highlight how much ridicule has been level against the Church and how likely it is to continue as a result of the terrible crisis which the homosexual predation of young males by Catholic Clergymen continues to be reported as well as the hapless responses the hierarchy are making in its wake.

Ridicule is a most powerful weapon, perhaps one which people fear more than any other.

Few would want to be associated with a person or an institution which is publicly ridiculed and mocked for its arrogance, incompetence or just plain foolishness.

The fact that Urban Dictionary has found it appropriate to associate the Cardinal-Archbishop’s name with such ridicule is disconcerting, especially in view of the fact that hardly anyone has expressed outrage in the deed.

And who is more likely than anyone to view or be aware of such ridicule but the millions of young people whose cultural contact with the Catholic Church is influenced by website such as the Urban Dictionary.

The faith of millions of young people cannot but have been jeopardized not only by cynical and satirical wit of Urban Dictionary, but by the statements of Cardinal Cupich himself which inspired such ridicule.

Oh my!