Go forth and blog?

The Catholic blogosphere has mushroomed over the past five years or so and even the Holy Father has paid tribute to the potential value it has as an evangelising force.

But, is it me or are Catholic bloggers just a little bit spiritually retentive?

We relish the snippets of outrage and enjoy the odd internet spat and the learned posts but, we are preaching to one another are we not?

We indulge ourselves and not the masses.

That is a shade overstated; there are, of course, quite a few readers of blogs out there but I do mean quite a few, I do not mean many.

Ask the average Catholic man on the Clapham bus when he last read a Catholic blog and you will be met with a stare of bafflement. Blog? Catholic? What?

Stand in a roomful of Catholics with a glass of something alcoholic in your hand and tell the group you are with that you are a Catholic blogger – and watch their eye movements as they mark the nearest emergency exit.

Blogging, to the uninitiated, still carries a faint twang of something not quite nice; something that Uncle Rupert did on his own in an upstairs room before he emigrated to South Africa in a hurry.

So, the first step must surely be to bring the Catholic range of blogs to the attention of the faithful – we are not (I assume) setting out purely to evangelise when we commence blogging; I am sure that there is a diverse and varied range of reasons for this self inflicted wounding. But, whether we like it or not, there is a strong evangelical element to all that we do and that is a good and fine thing.

Provided that we open ourselves up to all and not to the select few.

I hesitate to speculate as to how many thoroughly decent, everyday Catholics know nothing of Summorum Pontificum and all that accompanies it; most of them do not even know whether an Extraordinary Form Mass is said in their parish (most parishes appear to leave it off the notices) and, as far as the Diocese is concerned, the old Mass is precisely that. It no longer exists.

And then, of course, there is the stigma attached to the Latin Mass – “it’s banned” “it’s turning the clock back” – there is much work for the blogosphere (and for Guild members) here.

At the recent Guild meeting at Blackfen there did not seem to be much enthusiasm for spreading the word with regard to Catholic blogs – or did I read the mood wrongly?

But I believe that it is incumbent upon us to do so. Did not Our Lord tell us to go out and teach?

This concept, I confess, is not my own; it came from another blogger, A Catholic Gadfly. But, I support it totally.

Gadfly’s view was that the Guild should produce an online poster with one or two lines of copy explaining its purpose and the blog address.

This could then be posted up on parish notice boards with the agreement of the PP.

That seems very reasonable to me.

Posted by Richard Collins – Linen on the Hedgerow