I looked over the Catholic Blog awards winners and came across a timely post at NLM: "Should Catholics Blog?"

See also the original from last spring at Oriens.

I say "timely" because some conscientious Catholics have given up blogging for Lent.

On the question, every thoughtful person, Catholic or not, has likely weighed the effect of blogging. For myself, this blog began as a place to piece together scattered thoughts and work through charged emotions. No different from a personal journal. To satisfy the wannabe writer and tinkering techie. To not feel too isolated.

Obviously, those of us still at it have concluded that our immortal souls can withstand the damage. No hint of flippancy.

Some observations on the Oriens piece:

"(See the recent Oprah-like blog whining of one columnist, who is so upset by America’s Catholic sacerdotal scandals that he thinks he’ll join the Eastern Orthodox Church, so there.)"

A reference to the Crunchy Con, Ron Dreher? I just took a peek at his recent posts; he's rubbing our noses in it. I thought he promised to be more humble.

"It is impossible to imagine a more effective, or pernicious, method than these blogs of spreading, among foreigners, the false but understandable belief that American Catholics are merely American Calvinists who get drunk."

Can someone please explain that to me?

Lastly, anticlericalism?! This is America!! It was bloody founded upon anticlericalism!¹ Give us a break.

Anyway, you might just as easily ponder, as some have², whether Catholics should go to the cinema or watch TV or drive luxury cars or have internet access or take vacations or retire.

¹ anticlericalism: opposed to clericalism or to the interference or influence of the clergy in secular affairs. Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary.

Doesn't mean "despising clergy".

² "But the whole point is that he is abstaining, for a good reason, from something which he does not condemn and which he likes to see other people enjoying. One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting every one else to give it up. That is not the Christian way. An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons--marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning." Chapter 12, "'The Cardinal Virtues,'" Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis