Anonymous

Rev dear Rev: How did the Church feel about poisoned pen letters sent up to superiors and bishops in the past, is there any information about these sorts of things in our distant history?

Funnily enough, the early Christians were not averse to spotting such things, they were called in that time “anonymous denunciations”, where poisoned pen letters gave no genuine name and no genuine address so that the person doing the damage to a canon’s good reputation was not contactable and traceable, and though some modern dioceses insanely still process them to suicidal degrees, the early Christians always rejected them a limine, ipso facto, because they were anonymous and poisoned, and they did this right from the very beginning though written records record this from the time of Pope Victor the First in and around 190 AD with his fundamental legal maxim - “De rebus incertis nil iudicandum” - anonymous denunciations should never even be admitted to process and never never to judgement. Early Christians - much wiser than the modern lot of canons and bishop’s secretaries and theologians that poor parish priests have to put up with - it is a crying shame and crying game that poor overworked parish priests have to stand before bishops and bishop secretaries responding to anonymous denunciations from secretive well-poisoners who have not bothered to check the early Christian traditions regarding church procedure (from the manual of decretals and judgements of the early Christians, in the Regesta, Vol I, Ab Ecclesia Condita, no 74).