"Mediocre people are always at their best." - Alice von Hildebrand

Dianah Vaughan, Leo Taxil, and "April's Mom".

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Who are these people?

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Leo Taxil lived in late 19th century France and was a contemporary of St. Therese of Lisieux, who for a time had been taken in by his scam. Taxil had stunned European society with his conversion from Free-Masonry to Catholicism, and subsequent pamphlets detailing the evil Satanic sect within Masonry. (Read more.) Later he invented a persona named Dianah Vaughan, whom he claimed also converted, with startling details of the diabolic cult. Taxil, an anti-clerical free-thinker from the start, delighted in deceiving and mocking the Catholic Church; the Lisieux Carmel and St. Therese just happened to be amongst those duped. It is said the following lament from St. Therese may be directly related to the farce.

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"I was unable to believe there were really impious people who had no faith... [but] Jesus made me feel that there were really souls who have no faith, and who, through the abuse of grace, lost this precious treasure, the source of the only real and pure joy." - Therese of Lisieux

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The recent discovery that a blogger who wrote under the name of "April's Mom" is likewise a hoax, reminded me of the Taxil story.

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The woman behind the hoax isn't "April's Mom" — a single expectant mother who lay awake at night terrified her unborn child would die at any time, according to the Chicago Tribune.
She is actually Beccah Beushausen, a 26-year-old social worker from the Chicago suburb of Mokenka who says she didn't know how to free herself from the web of lies she wove. "I know what I did was wrong," Beushausen told the Tribune. "I've been getting hate mail. I'm sorry because people were so emotionally involved." - Story

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Pro-life hearts had been touched by her story of carrying a terminally ill baby to term, only to have the infant die shortly after birth. Beushausen made the whole thing up - before long her blog was receiving 100,000 hits a week - she says she didn't know how to stop the lies. Good people cared about her, prayed for her, supported her, only to be scandalously betrayed.

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This stuff happens.

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Look at Fr. Maciel, the founder of the Legion of Christ. Not long ago there was a top blogger in California whom everyone believed to be an orthodox Catholic - it turned out he was a lot more liberal than his readers and contributors imagined.