By Stephen P. White, The Catholic Thing - They say that in writing, “you must kill all your darlings.” For those who don’t fancy themselves writers, what this means is that a writer ought to ruthlessly eliminate pet phrases that, however cute or clever, might distract from the substance or argument of a piece of writing. It’s excellent advice, and hard to follow... For a long time now, ecclesial writing has suffered from a growing number of “darlings” – a multiplication of platitudes, swaddled in jargon, masquerading as prose.