Of blogs and blogging, a personal view.

There's been a good deal of chit chat about the efficacy of blogs and even the motives of those who undertake them. I could go on for ages, so here's my very brief take on why they are invaluable, why they are necessary, and why they're often perceived as an itch you just can't scratch.

Just as time and tide and buttered eggs wait for no man, so it is in the wide world of blogging, news and information move really rather fast, at least on the blogs I read.
Essentially I'm a blog reader, not a blog writer. I really like to read what other people think. I particularly like Catholic blogs (see blog roll) because they aren't mediated by the press and they don't for one thing have to be cringe-makingly PC before they are ready for a readership. There's already a common understanding. You can learn an awful lot from blogs, and can be reassured by them, as well as challenged.

While I knew intellectually there were people like me who loved the EF (the LMS proved that), I learned from blogs that I wasn't actually weirdly eccentric or alone as I thought in liking the EF - and having an affection for it can certainly and quite wrongly make you feel alone. I also learned that I am not retro, yearning for the romanticized days of the 1940s and 50s, of perms, pinnies, and Bing Crosby, of which I know absolutely nothing at all about, beyond watching 'The Bells of St Mary' on a wet weekend. I was reassured again that what I had been longing for was something legitimate, a true pearl beyond price. Blogs I think, can be invaluable resources in telling people about the EF.


Blogs put ideas -and facts- to the widest possible web audience which is part of the reason they are also an itch that can't be scratched, they are under no editorial pressure except that of upholding the Catholic faith so they allow what might by some be perceived as a dissenting view: The MP was all over the blogosphere when it was mentioned nowhere else. It's such an invaluable means of communication which isn't possible in any other medium, it's instantaneous and personal, and like buttered eggs, it's good.

PS, The Vatican has its own youtube channel well worth having a look at.