Shall we use our words to heal or to hurt?

There are days, many days, when I read fellow Catholic bloggers- whether of the more traditional or less so variety- and I am disgusted and embarrassed by the amount of bile and hatred and snark they publish. I am not going to print names or cite examples. There are too many.

I know most of them are unaware of the existence of this blog, and almost none of them would read these words. On the occasions I have tried to speak to them, I have been dismissed and deleted. I have all but given up on trying to speak to them. But if I were to try again, I would say this: Many of you were not Catholic originally but converted to the faith. Many of you were lapsed Catholics who came back. Did you convert or return to the Church because someone called you an idiot, or mocked you, or called you a heretic or a pharisee? Did you come back because they posted your errors for all to see? Was it their talent for snark that convinced you this faith was the true one? If it wasn't, then ask yourself if you would be convinced by such tactics. If, as I suspect, the answer is no, then ask yourself why you would try to persuade people using tactics which at best you yourself would not find persuasive, and at worst, would drive you further away?

Who is served by all this snark, by dismissing the opinions of those who disagree with you in a way that denigrates them and elevates you? Is it done for the glory of God, or for your greater glory? Have you served the new evangelism by bringing people closer to the Truth, or have you betrayed its goals, and driven them away?

I, for one, would never be convinced of the existence of Christian Charity from reading the bloggers. Our actions towards each other are scandalous and a stumbling block for others. It is time, it is past time we set them aside, and acted like we believed our faith to be true.

Does blogging and commenting do us any good?

It was something I thought about when I was reading some posts on blogs I read irregularly that dealt with the American HHS policy, and the bishops statements.

First, I read a few prominent conservative blogs which said, more or less: "Oh, now the bishops want to act. If they had only listened to us or done their job back then, we would not be in this mess now..." Some of these blogs are very popular with large readerships and followers. They could have thrown their support along with their followers behind the bishops, but instead chose to use this as an opportunity to say "See? I was right."

I read this post of Fr.Z's the other day, wherein Fr Z shreds Doug Kmiec's letter to Obama, not because he disagreed with the letter and what it said as such, but because Kmiec had supported Obama and had helped cause the current mess. Apparently, the whole "there is more joy in heaven over one repentant sinner..." thing doesn't carry much weight. As usual, Father's combox went nuclear in a short time, with comments ranging from full agreement, to saying that Father did not go far enough in condemning Kmiec.

Then I read this post over at Mark Shea's, wherein he said something similar to what I thought- namely, if American conservatives and faithful Catholics hope to defeat this issue, they need to increase their voting power, which means they need to draw off some people who supported the president. If they reject people simply because they once supported Obama, they will certainly lose again.

And then the debate started in the comboxes. It quickly grew contentious, with Shea himself getting rather dismissive. As others have noted, Shea, when responding to comments, will resort to ad hominems and non sequitors to dismiss and belittle negative commenters.

My question, which I asked in Shea's combox, is this: How does any of this get any of us closer to heaven? How does being angry with the wrathful,  or passing judgement on the judgemental, or envious of those who covet power, or proud that in our humility we are not like the arrogant, do us any good? 

I see this quite often in blogs.  With no filters, no editors, it is too easy to just spout off anything at all, off the top of our heads, or when we are angry, or frustrated.  Are we not going to be called to account for all our idle words?  To put it simply: how does being a jerk with a keyboard make us better than other jerks with keyboards, or even jerks without keyboards?

While I admit that this battle needs to be fought and won, will it be any of any benefit to bloggers and commenters to win what will be a most bitter battle if it costs them their souls?

Toppled idols

By now, most readers have heard about the Michael Voris story.  Stories such as these bring out the best in some people, the worst in others.  I was not a great follower of Voris, although I did watch a few of his videos.  He said some things with which I agreed, others with which I did not.  In general, I tend to avoid people with a large personal following.  I have too often seen such people fail and fall, and the followers find their faith shaken.  Why? I wonder.  What is a blog and a blogger that people have such a large investment in seeing them succeed, or in seeing them fail?  Why would a blogger's failure to live up to his professed faith cause people to doubt their own?

At the heart of this is the question:  what is a blogger?  What are these self appointed Catholic apologists?

Most of us bear witness to our faith on the Internet.  Some of us try to explain the faith, or push our version of it.  We do so of our own accord, with no oversight.  We exist within a vacuum, and the Church does not yet know what to do with us, or what to do about us.  We have next to no guidance from the Church in our endeavors, and we are making up the rules as we go along. We try to speak for the Church, and to defend the Church when we feel it needs defending, but we are doing so outside the auspices of the Church.  We give our opinions of how the church is, and how it should be run.  We have no authority to do so.    

Constantly voicing our opinions seems to me to often lead to pride, even if not so intended.  I often see many of our prominent bloggers say things like: "I agree with the Pope in this" which seems to me to be tending to pride, for, even though we say we agree, presuming the power to agree only makes sense if one has taken upon oneself the power to disagree.  We do not have that power. To say we agree with the Magisterium seems to say that the Magisterium needs our agreement.  We may as well say the sun shines by consensus.

We bloggers sometimes need to remind ourselves that our opinion does not matter, and, if we should on occasion speak the truth, even if only inadvertently, it is not our truth we speak, or, if it is our truth, it is so not because we have made it so, but because we have submitted ourselves to it.  On our own, by ourselves, we have no more authority than a pack of barking dogs.

My first encounter with both the world of blogging and Catholic blogging in particular was Gerald Augustinus' "The Cafeteria is Closed."  I must have visited that site ten times a day back then, to find the latest news, and to read the comments.  Gerald was a convert who ardently and stridently trumpeted his version of the faith, and one reader after another piped in to say "Amen!".  Then, after some years of being one of the foremost, if not the foremost, conservative Catholic bloggers, he did a very abrupt about face, and became a liberal blogger, becoming everything he once hated, and hating everything he once was.  His readers were shaken.  How could someone who believed everything so strongly, so much stronger than they themselves believed, turn so completely?  What did it mean for their faith, if someone with a seemingly stronger faith could turn so completely?

These questions should never have come up at all.  The Cafeteria spoke for Augustus, and not the Church, just as Bear speaks for Bear.   A blogger changed his mind, and went in a different direction from his followers.  Nothing more.

In the case of Voris, I will wait to see what comes of this, and see what has happened, and what lies at the heart of this, whether hypocrisy, incompetence, or simple misplaced trust in others to handle affairs while he concentrated on other matters.  Perhaps these revelations will mean the end of him, perhaps he will come out of it again.   Perhaps he will come out of it a better man, and show a little charity towards those who similarly slip up. For now, it seems that people are disappointed in their champion.  They expected better of him than this.  Now those expectations are salt in a wound.  Voris has not fallen so much as been diminished in the eyes of his fans. Few people forgive their heroes for being mortal.  He is, in the end, a fallible man.  Men make mistakes all the time.  If he spoke truth before, it is not lies now.  If he spoke lies before, they are so still.  Little, if anything, has really changed. Those who expected more Voris, who thought his infallible, are at best partaking in wishful thinking, at worst, deceiving themselves.  Whatever he has or has not done, he is still a man, and we are still Catholics. Our response is neither gloating nor tears, but prayers for a fallible man, like ourselves.

A difficult decision

I recently decided to remove a blog from my list of links.  Normally, this is a matter of small consequence and of no import, but this one is a little different, and may cost me a few readers and followers from my small, small list of readers and followers.  The blog I have deleted is What Does The Prayer Really Say.

It was not a light decision, nor an easy one.  I do not set myself in opposition to his blog- I generally agree with him- as opposing his juggernaut of a blog with my own insignificant one would be about as effectual as a flea opposing a locomotive.  It was a decision that I made due to a sense of unease about his blog that has been growing for quite a while.

I have read his blog for years, and found it to be informative and enlightening at first.  But over time, the tone of it changed.  I suppose the first time I began to feel a little uneasy about his blog and the direction it started to take was a time when, in fisking an article in his usual black emphasis and red comments, he quoted an article which stated that a priest had been found molesting a girl, to which he commented in red "For a change." I thought of my own two daughters, and my reaction had someone written of them that a priest molesting a girl, my girl, would have been "for a change".

While in Church matters I am Conservative, and I recognize that Fr. Z. is a leader in the conservative movement,  there are ways he seeks to defend the conservative movement that gave me pause, and ultimately lead to the decision to not to link to him any longer. A while back I posted about a prominent liberal priest in Canada who attacked bloggers as Taliban Catholics, and attacked us in the most vitriolic terms possible, all the while accusing us of lacking charity.  The hypocrisy of demanding charity and showing none was completely lost on this priest.  For this reason, this man's blindness, his vitriol, I will not link to his television website. I find that, while in politics Fr. Z. could not be further from that liberal priest, in tactics he was quite similar.

To cite just a recent example, there is this article about an article about recent events concerning Bishop Finn.  Fr.Z. repeatedly demands that the National Catholic Reporter apologize for their vile insult to Bishop Finn, while at the same time repeatedly calling the news paper the "fishwrap" and even starting off the article with the line "Columnist Phyllis Zagano, whose skills in reading carefully and thinking through argument haven’t been entirely evident to me..." and concludes with the line that the entire article was"an insulting personal attack."  I agree with him, it was an insulting personal attack, but so was Fr.Z.'s article.  Like the Canadian priest showing no charity even as he demanded it, I doubt Fr. Z will teach anyone the wrongness of personal attacks by launching his own.

Similarly, what good is it for Fr. Z. to call the Pope the "Pope of Christian Unity" for his attempts to bring those who disagree with one Church teaching or another back into the Church, while at the same time demanding that those with whom he personally disagrees should just pack up and leave the Church?  Or rather gleefully claiming that "the biological solution" (i.e. old age and death) will take care of the dissenter problem (it won't, the church always has and always will have dissenters, but I digress) even when they make the same claim about the Pope?  It does not honour the Pope's intention that all may be one under Christ. It also makes us no better than them.

There are other things.  The blog did once explain carefully the prayers of the Church, and patiently and carefully correct the errors of others.  Now, he does not correct, he only mocks and dismisses.  Even though I agree with him, I cannot agree with that tone, that way of treating one's enemies.  I condemned those I opposed when they acted this way.  I cannot condone it when those with whom I agree do it.  Father Z. is gone from my links.

Reductio ad ???

In 1990, professor Mike Godwin humorously noted: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1," which is now referred to in Internet circles as "Godwin's Law."  The comparison to Hitler, or to the Nazis more generally, is often referred to as the "reductio ad Hitlerum", a phrase coined by ethicist Leo Strauss.  It is a formal logical fallacy, an ad hominem or ad misericordiam argument.  It is the fallacy of irrelevance, or guilt by association.  Among the examples of false logic comparing various people to Hitler are arguments such as "Hitler preferred Classical Art, so anyone who prefers classical Art is just like (or as bad as) Hitler." or "The Nazis supported family values, so anyone who argues in favour of family values is just like (or just as bad as) the Nazis" and so on.  In the Internet discussion forums, Godwin's law is often invoked when one side in a debate invokes the reductio ad Hitlerum, and the debate is then closed, and the one who invoked the comparison has automatically lost the debate for invoking a fallacy.

One of the reasons why the comparison is made, and why Godwin and Strauss both thought the comparison should be used only in extreme and accurate circumstances, is because it is so powerful, or, at least it was so powerful.  The continued use of this hyperbolic attack weakens the comparison:  if everyone is like Hitler, then Hitler was nothing special.  Accusations of Nazism simply become part of the background noise of the Internet:  meaningless, and powerless.

I thought of this in recent diatribes between Catholic groups.  I have had dialogues with Traditional Catholics, and I have had praise for them as well as the occasional criticism in the past.   The debates between Traditional Catholics and Liberal Catholics can get acrimonious, and there is much mudslinging on both- yes, both-sides.  I took part in the debates for a while, and then walked away, preferring to be a non hyphenated Catholic.  I generally don't have a dog in these races. 

So, why am I bringing this up now? Because a new comparison is making its way around the Catholic blogosphere: "Taliban Catholics". Like the reductio ad Hitlerum, this new attack, which I shall dub "the reductio ad binium ladenium" (patent pending) (yeah, I know.  Father Z. would be appalled at my latinization.  But he doesn't read this blog, so I feel secure.) is powerful because it is shocking: it calls forth images of Catholics with bombs strapped to their chests, blowing up those who disagree; Catholics calling out fatwas, or Catholics flying planes into buildings and engaging in terror.

None of which has actually happened. The comparison is a logical fallacy and a formal error. People who sit at their computer screens who occasionally vent their spleens and rage at perceived wrongs may be, on occasion and with justice, called uncharitable.  They are in no way terrorists.  So while I generally avoid getting into these debates, I have to say, Michael Voris is correct in his assessment here: being called Taliban Catholics is wrong, and embarrassingly so for those who say it.  In resorting to calling names, those who use it are tacitly admitting they have no point: they can only resort to slinging mud.  It is the last refuge of a child on the playground.

Though I usually stay out of these debates, I can say with the authority of this new derivative of Godwin's law: Those of you who use this term as a substitute for debate: You have just lost.

The Sun and the North Wind

Ever hear of Aesop's fable of the North Wind and the Sun? It goes like this:

One day, the mighty North Wind and the Sun had an argument over which of them was the stronger. While arguing, they spotted a traveller on the road below, and they came to an agreement: Whichever one of them could get the traveller to take off his cloak would be the stronger.

The North Wind went first. At first he blew softly, but then blew harder and harder still. But no matter how hard he blew, the man would not take off his cloak. Instead, he gripped his cloak ever more tightly. Finally the North Wind gave up. Then the Sun smiled gently upon the man, and, after a few minutes, the man took off his cloak.

I thought of this little story when I saw this. I knew the winds were about to blow. Father Z, to his credit, tried to quiet the winds with his own version of the fable.

If we are ever going to change people's hearts and minds, we need to smile more often, and try not to blow so much.

On the announcement regarding the TAC

There's been a lot of talk the last few days about the coming over of the TAC. It seems almost obligatory for bloggers to chip in their $.02, so here's mine: I think it's fantastic that they're coming over, simply wonderful. Heck, I hope a couple of the parishes in Toronto skip over, although I am not counting on it. They have some stunning churches and Anglicans in general pay far greater attention to their music than do Catholics. I would love to go to one of their services from time to time, were it licit. I think their presence within the Church will be a great asset to those who are working on a 'reform of the reform' and a renewal of the liturgy. The Anglicans, those I have met, tend to be very exact in their liturgies.

All that aside, the announcement from the Vatican is bringing out a lot of the worst in people on both sides of the political fence, both liberal and conservative. The liberals are arguing from the perspective of pragmatism, desire, and expedience, all of which they seem to see fading away now. Many of the conservatives, while I tend to agree with them, are doing a collective 'nyaa nyaa' and a 'take that, you liberals!'

I wonder what form the Anglican liturgy will take. Apparently that question has yet to be settled, although the Vatican has said the Anglicans are invited to keep many of the traditions they hold dear that do not contradict Catholic teaching. However, I doubt they will suddenly take to the Extraordinary Form, so those who are blending the news of the TAC with Summorum Pontificum may be mixing apples and oranges on the liturgical front.

Finally, while I generally agree with the man, I found this line rather risible in Father Z's blog today: "Liberals want ecumenism only with those whom they want in their sort of church." While perhaps true, this is a real 'pot, meet kettle,' kind of moment.

Father Z is much better when he says: "True ecumenism requires that we be stretched, to be sure, but that we submit. We stretch, but we give nothing essential away." Ecumenism is rooted in Truth, and we must submit to Truth, and be framed by it, not seek to frame it to our own ends. To live in Truth, therefore, requires humility. Wherefore, then, is there so much anger and hubris out there? If this continues, there are those who will need to contest the will so that the arrogant might inherit the earth.

There must be a better response to magnificent news like this than reaching for one's keyboard to electronically flip the bird at one's foes.

Another Happy Fun Omnibus Posting.

Once again, I haven't been blogging much, in spite of my good intentions to spew random thoughts at regular intervals out into the Internet ether. So here is another post rounding up various things that have struck me over the last little while.

I see dumb people. No, really dumb people. And they're in office.

My disgust with the Canadian government continues to grow. In recent weeks we have had various parties threatening to force another election (our last was less than a year ago) which of course creates silly season all around. On the one hand we had Conservative leader Harper accusing Liberal leader Ignatieff of political opportunism for trying to force an unnecessary election just because it looks as though the Liberals might win. Which is true, but it is also exactly what Harper did when he forced an unnecessary election last year. In Harper's case, it didn't work, and he came back into power with another minority government. And then, when Harper forms a loose alliance with the left wing party of the NDP, Ignatieff accused the conservatives of getting comfy with the socialists. Which is true, but it is also exactly what Ignatieff and the Liberals were doing when they were trying to force the election.

But, as odious as this rank hypocrisy may be, it is not the reason why my disgust has climbed past the stratosphere. No, it was the news that the Canadian Federal Government was suing the tobacco companies for fifty billion dollars to try and recover the costs to the medical insurance system for treating smokers.

Let me say this about smoking before I continue: I hate it. I hate the stench, I hate the feel of second hand smoke in my lungs and on my skin, I hate everything about it. Thirteen years ago I sat beside my father as died of lung cancer. That is actually a very clinical way to describe what happened. What I should say is that I sat beside him as he drowned in his own mucus- or I could say snot if I feel like being shocking. I loved my old man, (and I use that term with respect) but no one ever held a gun to his head and forced him to smoke a cigarette. He did that to himself, of his own free will, and he paid a heavy price. He barely got to see one of his grandchildren, and he waited a long time for us to give him grandkids. All his plans and hopes for the future were, literally, up in smoke. And we pay a heavy price without him, and he left a big hole. Smoking robbed me of a father and my children of a grandfather, but I do not blame the tobacco companies for that. I blame my father.

So why are the federal government going after tobacco companies? They are already very heavily taxed, also for the purpose of paying for the health insurance. Have they not collected enough in tax already? The government revenues from cigarettes are enormous. Are the people who start smoking unaware of the dangers of smoking? I can hardly see how that is possible. This move makes absolutely no sense. Smokers already have more restrictions put on them than the people who smoke pot. Can anyone explain the sense of that to me?

The government is suing companies for selling a product the government has deemed to be legal and is allowed to be sold in Canada. This case should be found to be absurd in its face and thrown out of court. In fact, there should be a class action counter suit filed by smokers- against the government. If smoking is so dangerous and so costly to the system, why isn't it banned? By allowing the sale of these products the government is directly responsible for the deaths of thousands every year. That makes as much sense as suing the companies.

The News From the Church in Canada.

A few different things gong on here. First, we have one of the most public faces of the church in Canada- Father Rosica, head of Salt and Light tv- accused bloggers and EWTN of doing the wrong thing when they all condemned the public funeral of Teddy Kennedy. Both the bloggers and EWTN were condemned by Rosica as "Satanic."

And then, just recently, the bishop of Antigonish in Nova Scotia was found to have child pornography on his laptop. The way the airport security found the pornography can only mean one thing: They had been tipped off by persons unknown. Father Rosica weighed in on this one, and the bishop got off lighter than the bloggers and EWTN. Was he Satanic? No. Was he evil? Bad? Naughty? No, no and no. He was misguided. Such a nice man, it is hard to believe how this happened, says Rosica.

And now there is going to be a general meeting of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, and guess what is on the agenda, scheduled for a closed door meeting? Is it the issue of the continuing problems of paedophilia within the clergy? No, they're going to discuss bloggers. Bloggers are the threat, bloggers need to be brought under control, after showing they have opinions about Ted and about the Canadian bishops giving money to groups that support abortion.

Some bloggers are worried about what may come of this meeting. I am not very much concerned. I imagine one or two of the more sensible will point out the bishops have no way of controlling the bloggers, and what is most likely to come out of the meeting will be a set of recommendations, directives and guidelines for the bloggers. Bloggers should follow our shepherds' example and read the bishop's recommendations with the same care and obedience these self-same bishops regard the recommendations, directives and guidelines which come down from Rome.

Education Stamps Out Creativity

Hat tip to Roving Medievalist for this video.

I agree with much of what he says. I mean, isn't it obvious education is designed to stamp out creativity? Look at how we begin and how we end. We go into school with a box of brightly coloured crayons, and we draw, write and scribble on multicoloured papers. We graduate from that school system with a single pen (usually either blue or black) and write solely on white paper.

Quite frankly, I have no idea what we should do. Right now, the world is changing so rapidly we have no idea what to teach our children. What knowledge they will need in the future is impossible to say. When I went through school, no one had any idea that computers would be running everything in a short time. However, by the time I was in high school, it was clear that computers were going to be a Big Thing, and people started jumping into that field. For some reason, many also started taking business courses, perhaps believing that there would be an acute shortage of middle management bootlickers in the future. Because of this, many of our shops got closed. As a result, there is now a shortage of plumbers, electricians and bricklayers.

On the whole, I am wary of people who propose one over-arcing solution. My main problem with the school system is that it is a system- we take all these children, whom we apparently believe are all individuals, run them all through the same system and expect them all to turn out more or less the same. Where is the sense in that?

Of course, education is a government affair, brought to us by the same guys who want to sue tobacco companies. Sense is in very, very short supply.

Thanks Dim,

I would like to take this opportunity to thank DimBulb for his kind award. As a matter of fact, I should apologize for not expressing my gratitude earlier. Even better, Dim Bulb has kindly released me from all obligations of the award, and therefore i don't have to come up with ten honest things about me. I tried to come up with a few, but the only one I could get was:

1. I wear size thirteen shoes.

Stunning in its honesty. I might have also confessed that I prefer to watch kids movies by pixar over so-called adult fare, but doesn't everybody?

At any rate, thanks for the thought, Dim. In appreciation I will publish another war story tomorrow, since that is one of the things you said you liked about this blog. This one, however goes back a little farther than usual, to the war of 1812.

Been busy, again

I've been too busy with other considerations to go about blogging lately. Right now I'm tied down on a couple of writing projects that I've been meaning to get done, plus a cousin of mine has asked me to write a piece for some periodical detailing the Battle of Beaver Dams. All pro bono, of course.

I'll get back to blogging at some point. I had planned to write a few posts that ought to give you people your daily dose of tedium, as you've come to expect.

Blog housekeeping

Puff has informed me that our hits are falling again. Feedburner has taken another drop after a brief spike which seems to have coincided with my Week of Remembrance series. This would seem to indicate that there is a desire, albeit small, for a Canadian history blog, or a Canada at War blog. Or it could simply have coincided with the build up to Remembrance Day. It's hard to say. Those type of posts don't attract many comments, nor did I expect them to.

I'm not all that disheartened by the small readership here. I never expected the blog to attract that many readers. The most successful blogs seem to be news oriented, and I hate news. I have also commented in the past that many of the more successful blogs seem to be a monument to the author's spleen. Rage has always been a problem for me, and writing constantly from the point of anger would only feed my rage, not vent it. A perpetually angry father, especially one of my size and strength, would be dangerous for my family. I will not walk that path again. At any rate, I like to think that what we lack in quantity of readers we make up for in quality. In short, we may not have the largest readership, but we do have the best. Pat yourself on the backs, people.

It also seems to me that the Catholic blogger phenomena may be burning out, but perhaps that is simply me.

Puff also asked me a difficult question: "Is this still a Catholic blog?" I don't have a ready answer for this question. Looking down the list of recent posts I see I haven't posted much on Church matters. I have some reasons for this, mainly is that I don't feel all that competent to comment on a lot of the things going on out there. Anything I have to say would simply be an elaboration of "I adhere to the teachings of the Church on all issues." Perhaps I should say that more often.

There seems to be a difference between a Catholic blog and a blog by a Catholic. At the moment, Spirit's Sword seems to be more of the latter than the former. However, I think there is a fair amount of overlap. If I am truly Catholic it should show in my life and in my blog, even if I do not always address matters of the Church.

medium

I've been wondering: What, in general terms, constitutes good writing in a blog context? I ask myself this because I have had many people recommend blogs to me because the authors of said blogs had a good style, yet when I read those blogs I find their writing sadly lacking. Not to name names, but several of the ones I am thinking of are among the most popular Catholic blogs on the net. There was one very popular blogger who was complimented time and again in the combox for their "kick-a$$ prose style" whose writing, in my eyes, was the stylistic equivalent of counting from one to ten. There is another writer I know whose blog is nothing but a monument to their spleen and a documentation of their contempt for all who do not see things as they do. Their writing is also praised, and praised mightily.

Perhaps I am heading in the wrong direction, or perhaps I am merely showing my preferences, but I think there is more to style than disdain. Oscar Wilde once famously said that "Any style will do, except the boring." I find this "The World as I Hate It" school of writing got boring quickly, and I also find those who like the writing generally agree with the message completely. I think possibly the reason why anger writing is so common is because it is so easy- it is really not hard to rage on paper, or on the computer. What is much more difficult, however, is humour, real humour based on joy, rather than ironic splenetic posturing.

So I don't really have an answer to my own question. Unfortunately, over the course of the twentieth century, if not a little before, the question of good writing went from being an objective judgement to a subjective observation, and I, for all my attempts to be otherwise, am still a man of my time. When someone tells me so and so is a good author, I take it with a grain of salt. That's their opinion. It doesn't have to be mine.

tonight, at vespers

Went to Vespers at the Oratory tonight for the first time in a while. As I was hurrying towards the church I found myself behind a woman who appeared to be from the area. She paused and snickered in front of the church, as if she couldn't believe it was still there. As she saw me entering she chuckled again and said to me: "You're never alone when you can talk to yourself, eh?" I said nothing and went in.

The service was beautiful and wonderful. I wish more churches would have a Vespers and benediction service.

Afterwards I ran into a few old friends and new acquaintances in the narthex. The gathering in there amounted to a convention of Toronto bloggers. There was Sheepcat, Vox Cantor, some fellows who comment frequently over at Friar Rick's and New Liturgical Movement, and unless I am much mistaken, I think I also saw James and Joseph from Toronto Catholic. There were about eight of us standing there, of whom five were converts. The conversation turned mainly on issues of the Church and such. These were good people, so I heard neither heresy nor even borderline heresy. While there, though, I wondered a few things: 1. Why would that place have so many bloggers? I know of no other church around here that has one, let alone several; and 2. why would so many converts become bloggers? Not just these fellows, but in other places as well, it seems that many of our most prominent bloggers, for better or worse, are converts. I wonder if the enthusiasm of the new, or the complacency of the old, that seems to tilt the scale somewhat in that direction.

At any rate, a lovely evening with some very nice people. I hope to be back again soon.

Question

I've a question, particularly for my fellow bloggers. I've noticed quite a few bloggers will have a set of links on the sidebar entitled "Best of..." the writings of the blog. My question is: what method is used to come to the best of conclusion? Is it your own opinion, your impression that you've just written a really good piece, or do you gather it from the responses in the comments column, or the links, or some combination? Or is it some other method entirely?

For those of you who like Toronto...

... and your numbers probably run into the, oh, ones, James over at Toronto Catholic Blog has continued his writing on the subject of Toronto's Catholic history. His latest entry is mini biography of our first Bishop, Michael Power.

I never understood why no effort was made to declare that man a saint. Power, I mean. Not James.

The Votes are in and the winner is

Church Militant 'Blog 2008

most apparently not this 'blog. Actually Orthometer won in this category. Click on the image LOSER's badge to see the winners of each category

-- Puff

Coolest. Mary. Ever.

I found a few images on-line of St Mary, Exterminatrix of Heresies.

BroAJK has listed Mary, the Exterminatrix of Heresies, as a patron of his blog, and requests her aid in keeping him from heresies. I request such aid from her as well.

In a lighter note, I'm tempted to have a caption contest for these two images. I'll start: "Back off! I'm a Virgin with a stick, and I'm not afraid to use it!"

Any else has any ideas, add them in the combox.

Welcome

I've just seen that we are in the midst of a huge spike in hits on this site due to a link from The Cafeteria is Closed. I'd just like to take this opportunity to welcome any of the people who are coming over, and invite you to have a look around. Thank you for stopping by.

Give a Monkey a Keyboard....

James over at Toronto Catholic Blog is continuing his series on the early history of the diocese of Toronto.

The Spirit's Sword has just evolved into a Marauding Marsupial

at the The Truth Laid Bear, a move up from the Multicellular Microorganisms I thought we were just a few weeks ago. Thanks for the links in and coming to visit us.

Then I read this:

"Notice 12/21/07: An error occurred corrupting the Ecosystem listings this morning; a fix is in progress. Please Stand by..."

Why does that make me feel like we are going to de-evolve back down to Multicellular Microorganisms again. Well, I am going to enjoy it while I can.

UPDATE
Oops it won't last for long, we've dropped to a Slithering Reptile.

But the above notice is still in rigeur.