As many postings on this forum (and in many different threads) have indicated, getting shafted on RC ran boards (and I include Byzantine Catholic forums in this) is not a rare or surprising thing. I'm not saying that out there, somewhere I've never been, there is not a good RC forum to be had. I'm just saying I've yet to see it.
However, I don't think the problem is one Orthodox Christians should feel is unique to them, as if they're the only targets.
Anyone who dissents from the "party line" or the cult of "John Paul II the Great", or who is not convinced that Cardinal Ratzinger is
really the greatest thing since sliced bread, etc. is almost sure to be treated like a menace to society (with cooties) - and this is true, no matter how well argued, or
civil your tone may be. All that you can count on, is that you'll be remembered for the few times where you fell from perfection, and (in your frailty) responded to the abuse with equal rancor. I've seen this many times, and in a previous online life (back when I was a Latin Traditionalist, and supported the Society of St.Pius X), was the victim of it myself.
The problem, is that these boards (which are invariably ran by Americans; not a slight to my American friends, but really to a certain variety of politicized Americans, and a certain type of American Catholicism) are ran by "neo-cons". The term "neo-con" refers to the "new conservatives" which in both political and religious terms (it's amazing how the two line up so well; scary actually) are
really just
yesterday's liberals - both are in want of clear thinking, victims to all sorts of modern philosophical fashions (egalitarianism, feminism "lite", etc.), and both are quite totalitarian despite cries to the contary. That "spirit" fills the "new Catholicism" of these American Catholic "conservatives", and of course it's going to find it's way onto message forums which are ultimatly derivative of the apologists of this movement (in fact the one that is being spoken of here right now is personally owned and operated by one of these apologists.)
A couple of "good" case examples of what I'm talking about (a situation involving non-Orthodox; in fact both of these people are "ultramontane" in the extreme) are what happened to both Gerry Mattatics and
Robert Sungenis. Both were well known RC apologists (Mattatics in fact used to work for
Catholic Answers, and is himself a former Presbyterian minister), but both in various ways ended up going from "neo-con Catholic stardom" to the sh*tlist. Why? Because both (in slightly different degrees but for very similar reasons) ended up concluding that everything
isn't peachy keen in Rome, that the anarchy in modern Catholicism is
not something the Vatican or the Pope can be totally absolved from, and that Vatican II itself was not the beginning of a "new spring time" but a collosal disaster. Well, this pretty much ended their "careers" in the neo-con/EWTN complex.
So, if these "new Catholics" will eat their own, it shouldn't be surprising that they'll treat Orthodox like crap*.
(* except for gooey, falsely ecumenical Orthodox, who basically don't raise any serious objections to distinctly Roman Catholic doctrines, or who do not interpret "re-union" in any terms other than the Pope renouncing those distinctly RC dogmas - so long as you're willing to be a "Catholic minus the Pope", you'll
probably be ok...probably.)
Edited to changed a few words that some may take offense at even though I do not believe that was their intent.