I refer to the first method as "catholic prompting" - shame, fear and guilt.

As someone from a traditional Boston Catholic family who graduated from Catholic grade and high school and who has since moved away from religion but still has a lot of family and friends who are Catholic, the fact that someone found the idea that Catholics are prone to shame, fear and guilt offensive almost makes me doubt they are Catholic.

I've yet to meet one Catholic IRL who wouldn't have a laugh about that, regardless of the current state of their faith.

I think the proper thing to do is if someone is offended is "alright sure, whatever, there you go".

Others being offended isn't something you control, responding to it is

Giving in to people who are truly unreasonably offended (by proxy, for social validation, and so on) rewards and incentivizes the behavior, and in fact I believe you have an ethical obligation not to allow people to do this. Promoting antisocial behavior is antisocial.

It's worth having some grace about it though.

To be fair, gundmc's original comment was rather prosocial as these things go:

>I find this use of "Catholic" pretty offensive and distasteful.

They didn't claim their preferences were universal. Nor did they attempt any personal attack on the person they were responding to. They simply described their emotional reaction and left it at that.

If everyone's initial default was the "gundmc approach" when they were offended, the internet would be a much nicer place :-)

So yeah, as far as I'm concerned, everyone in this comment chain is simply lovely :-)