Who is Tsirhcitna?
One day last week, a Facebook friend added me to a group. Immediately, I went to the group to investigate who they were and what they were about. I found the page to be critical of the Catholic Church. One of the links listed on the page pointed to a website called Godlike Productions. The site deals with “UFOs, Conspiracy Theorists, and Lunatic Fringe”. The link on the Facebook Page, directed to a post entitled “Ermm….you know what’s the official site of the Vatican??? Tis is really weird…”. In the post, they go on to write: “But, if you write the name antichrist (yes, you heard that correct), guess to what page you are also transeferred:”
Instead of following the link, I typed the word antichrist backwards and added the .com, so I typed: “tsirhcitna.com”. The domain directs one to the Vatican website. I was very disturbed that someone would try to attack the Church in such a hostile way.
Later that evening, I did some research. I did a Who Is search on Networksolutions. The result is who owns the domain, who the registrar is, where the domain is hosted and contact information. I made copies of the results in pdf and jpg. The registration is set to private, so there is no way of knowing who owns the domain. I next called Godaddy.com to see if they could help me out. The person I spoke with confirmed that the domain was on their servers, but he could not tell me more and suggested that I eMail spam@godaddy.com. I sent an eMail out to them July 25, 2011 at 9:57 PM, but have not heard back and the domain still points to the Vatican.
Maybe if enough of us complain something will be done. I wonder what they would do if someone did something similar to Muslims, Jews or against a minority group? My eMail to Godaddy was sent out almost 6 days about with no response, so I felt that more voices would help.
You can contact Godaddy here.
View the Whois search here.
My eMail to Godaddy.
Hello, Father. Unfortunately there isn’t much that can be done about this. Anybody can buy a domain name and redirect it pretty much wherever they want. If you wished, you could redirect your domain name to take users to the White House, or anywhere else on the web. It is up to the owner of the domain to decide where it takes people.
Savvy users can identify quickly that it is very unlikely that the Vatican actually owns or operates the false domain in question…usually businesses and reputable organizations don’t use ‘private registration’ services to obscure ownership information in the whois registries. That’s usually something that individuals do (since they don’t want their home addresses publicized).
Anyway, I doubt you will get anywhere with GoDaddy (or anybody else)…they have no authority to tell their customers where to point their domains, nor does any other domain registrar. I think the best thing we can do is pray that the owners of the domain come to see the error of their ways.
(Full disclosure: I am an employee of Network Solutions, LLC. The views I am expressing here are mine and mine alone. They do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer or its clients.)
God bless!
You must be fairly new to the extreme Catholic bashing online. i wish a few priests and religious would start posting in some of these big forums and defend and correct. Catholics are some of the worst offenders. There’s a thread on the Catholic Answers Forum about bodily resurrection that is straight out of your local semi-pentacostal Televangelist superchurch.
The hatred they have for us is so deep, I’ve come to believe these “pastors” could actually get their parishioners to kill us. The new line seems to be that if the Pope told us to go kill the other Christians, we all would. Here’s a forum and a thread for you: http://www.theologyonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=75697
We’re out here in the trenches, Father, fighting “Mid-Acts Dispensationalists” who disregard everything before Paul, including only a passing nod to the Gospels Fear-mongering and ignorance at it’s most effective. We could use some help.
Here is the response I received from them. And yes, Catholic bashing online is not new and is very common.
Thank you for contacting Go Daddy’s Spam and Abuse Department.
GoDaddy.com does not allow illegal content on our customer’s websites. However, as a hosting provider, it is not our place to determine if the site you have mentioned is actually engaging in illegal activities.
GoDaddy.com regularly works with courts and law enforcement from the local to the international level. If you suspect any of our customers are using their website to engage in any illegal activities, please help us by contacting your local law enforcement agency, and asking them to investigate this situation.
Law enforcement can contact us at Abuse@GoDaddy.com if they need the website(s) taken down, or if they need more information pursuant to an investigation. We have a long-standing history of cooperation with law enforcement and the courts.
If you find that you are unable to contact the registrant because the contact information given on the Whois database is invalid, please write to invalidwhois@secureserver.net and let them know.
Regards,
Spam and Abuse Department
GoDaddy.com
ARID1027
GoDaddy never responded to my eMail.
Fr. Jay — these sort of things are becoming more and more common. There are bumper stickers that state, “So many Christians, so few lions”. I grew up in the deep South where belief in God was a given (think 1970s and 80s). Now though, I live in Godless new england and have started experiencing persecution first hand. There’s the anti-family workplace. Wife gets a migrane or the flu? If you take off work to help with the kids while she is sick, your live in nanny paying bosses get bent out of shape and come up with the most clever HR-Approved ways to tell you so. I have 4 kids (we do /not/ use contraception and welcome however many kids God gives us). I have caught more flak for this at work than is imaginable.
“So, are you going to stop [having kids]?” Umm… not that its any of their business what goes on inside of my marriage, but NO. My stock answer is, “Thats not really up to me.” Noone really understands that answer — including fellow Catholics with vasectomies. I find that these Catholics can be the most threatened by my large family and how I don’t pull punches when asked if I am going to go on birth control. This culminated in a neighbor who has been sniping at my family for months. She sent a nice passive aggressive email about how my 15 MPH drive down the road to the house was speeding. So I went over to talk to her about it. She immediately threw Christianity in my face in a very nasty way. It turns out that she was annoyed that I am actively involved with the Church.
Anyway, the list of persecutions I have endured in Godless new england goes on and on. You are brave for being a priest out here and for your podcast.
Nazi Germany started out very similar to the united states’ anti-christian ways. The first steps are criminalizing Christianity (think Catholic Charities having to give up working with adoption in same-sex marriage states, requiring Catholic schools to provide contraception in their health plan coverage, and Mary portrayed with elephant dung on her being ‘art’ yet anything said about other religions is a hatecrime). The next step is to blame all of the us’ problems on Christians. Then, well, we will be celebrating mass in secret again.
I don’t think God will be blessing america much anymore…
Petit Sourice
I’m sorry you are finding New England “Godless.” I live in a small Rhode Island beach town and it’s very Catholic here. But I agree with what you say: hatred of Catholicism is the last, or maybe newest, acceptable prejudice. I also agree it’s like living in Germany in the 30s.
I think we tend to be a bit insular, our lives revolve around our families and our Parish and I think the clergy are more insulated than we are. I so wish the hierarchy in America would realize the power and presence of the internet in people’s lives and our priests and religious get online more. Not to talk to us, though that’s appreciated, but to be present all over to make the truth known. I don’t know. Maybe I am fighting this fight the wrong way. Maybe it needs more prayer and less talk.
Hello!
New media is a great way to spread the belief and i have seen my pastor even start down that road. Sadly, I have found new england Godless. To the point that I think its actually a good example of what will happen to the US if you take God out of everything. Its at the point where we have to scrape by to afford tuition for one of the (thankfully) affordable Catholic schools in the area. We will never be able to pay for the Catholic High School here but we can at least get the kids to 8th grade.
We ARE close to maybe 1930-31. I don’t know what will happen but I am expecting the rift between all Christians (Catholic + the Protestants) and the non believers to come to a head in the next 10 years. The scary thing is that times are right to point the finger at someone given the us dollar is about to go down and that real unemployment is more like 25% and not the 10% that keeps getting reported. 1/4 people i know are out of work and another 1/2 of the people I know who have jobs are not making enough to survive much longer as inflation squeezes the last dollars out of our usury-laden country.
Given that, the times are right to blame someone and it seems Christianity is the target. I do wish that there were more ecumenism because we are all going to need it come 2020. Think about what public schools are going to teach now that gay marriage is here to stay and now that talking about God in school is reprehensible. These kids will start voting in 10 or so years… and start running things in another 20.
At least my 5 year old recently stopped a birthday party to say grace before the cake. =) You would be amazed how many people didn’t know what was going on as she said her prayer.