Vatican Nominations announced today

Announced today:

Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sidney, has been nominated a Member of the Congregation for Bishops. So he will have a vote on the appointment of bishops.

And Dr Edward Peters, Professor of Canon Law in the "Edmund Cardinal Szoka Chair" at the Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit, USA has been appointed an "expert" for the forthcoming 13th General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops. He also blogs at In the Light of the Law.

New blog by young English school student

Brad Jacobs, a year 10 student (i.e. age 14/15) from St Helens, Hoyland, Barnsley, South Yorkshire (NOT Lancashire), has launched a new blog entitled Corpus Christi Catholic. He hopes to be a priest one day. Let's pray that God might be calling him.

Young catholic blogger looking for some publicity

Sean Gough, 21, Catholic, and discerning his vocation. Share in some thought's on faith and other things here...

New blogger - discerning his vocation

Bloggin as "CatholicDiscern" this young 20 year old is discerning whether or not he has a vocation to the priesthood and aims

1. To encourage the open discussion of Christian Vocation.
2. To provide people with information that may help them to discern their Christian Vocation.
3. To provide information of Vocation events that are going on throughout the UK.

He can also be followed on Twitter.

He writes a thoughtful reflection on his experience of World Youth Day, particularly the prayer vigil and Mass on the last day: In a Field with the Body of Christ.

He can surely be assured of my prayers.

Father Z defends himself

It seems that the National Catholic Reporter is planning an attack on Fr Z, author of the informative blog What does the prayer really say.

Fr Z gives a full account of himself in his post Waiting for Zagano.

I am certainly happy to assure him of my support in prayer. The NCR is a liberal "catholic" journal that takes many an opportunity of questioning the Church's teaching as you will find by reading Fr Z's account.

Father Finigan gets his 3,000,000th visitor!

Well, just visit and say "well done".

I'll be staying with Blogger

Thanks for the comments. I have had a look around Wordpress. Blogger seems to have more, and I'm more familiar with it. The recent outage was an exception.

To change blogsite or not to change?

Blogger was out of action for an extroardinarily long time yesterday and today. In my frustration, as I wanted to get something posted about Ecclesiae Universae I set up a new blog and posted there. By the time I had finished blogger was up again so I just copied the HTML and published here.

Any thoughts? I like to the Wordpress layout. Just wondering what (my few) readers think/advise.

The other Bloggers Meeting

Hilary White, the organiser, summed it up: We had a great time!

It appears it was all very civilised and totally charitable!

Their guest of honour was Michael Voris, famous for his Vortex webcasts from Real Catholic TV. Here's his address:



And here's the Vatican's report on the bloggers meeting the Vatican itself organised:

An error of judgement

I feel I committed an error of judgement in publishing a post about Life Teen Masses on April 28th. Although I think my views concerning the liturgy have merit, good people were offended. I regret this and apologise.

I have also received many supportive comments whether verbally, via facebook, etc. But because good people were offended, good people who put such a lot of effort into the formation of our teens, I am deleting the post. I shall probably re-work it into a better thought-out blog post on liturgy and teens/young people in general.

I should like to make it clear that my misgivings concern only the liturgy (I had already made some reference to this here), not the other formational aspects of Life Teen which seem to be pretty solid doctrinally. One may have one's views on style of delivery etc. but the content is solid, and all those I know who are involved in the Life Teen programme are unquestionably orthodox in their Catholic faith.

It's a glorious sunny day here. May the Light of the Risen Christ shine upon all my readers. Please remember me in your prayers as I remember you.

Charity the big challenge for bloggers

Today's National Catholic Register daily update reports on the May 2nd meeting for Catholic Bloggers hosted by the Vatican.

The report gives bloggers much cause for thought, reflection and examination.

Elizabeth Scalia, who writes The Anchoress, said that while the mainstream media tend to view blogs as “little more than a means of self-promotion,” the Catholic blogs generally are real sources of “Catholic clarity.”

But bloggers can’t claim to be purveyors of clarity unless they do so with charity, she said.

“Charity is one of the biggest challenges we face,” she said, because “freedom is both a gift and a source of temptation for our egos.”

Scalia said that the Catholic blogosphere is host to too much “us and them” based on views of the Church.

As Catholics, she said, “we have no business fostering enemies.”

“The Church needs us,” Scalia said. “It needs us for evangelization. It needs us to disseminate information and often to correct information.”

“The Church needs us to be where the sheep are grazing,” but at the same time, bloggers need the Church and its pastors to remind them that God’s mercy reaches out to all people and that Jesus wants his followers to be united, she said.

La Scalia's own reflections can be found at her blog.

Who hasn't been invited to the Vatican blognic

Now, I know not everyone can be invited but the list of 150 invitees has been published. Anna Arco (Catholic Herald), Hilary White (Lifesite news and her own blog), Sandro Magister, are amongst those invited. I was particularly pleased to see James Bradley of the Ordinariate Portal on the list. He is one of the clerics of the Sevenoaks Ordinariate group who was to be received into full communion this week.

But, we do have some big hitters in the English speaking world and I should have thought that at least one of Fr Z, Father Tim Finigan and Father Ray Blake should have been invited. And what about my good friend Owl of the Remove? They do say names were put into a hat and drawn out. Maybe that's why.

But there's an alternative blognic...

Statistics

My blog statistics are usually pretty modest - couple of hundred visits a day. I just thought I'd let my readers know about those for the past month. My posting on the reception of former anglican bishops appears to have been a bit of a scoop (thanks to having received a forwarded email from a friend of mine in another part of the world) scoring almost 3,300 page views so far. This is followed in second place by Bishop Sample's introduction of the Extraordinary Form Mass here at St Peter Cathedral scoring 1,,680 page views.

The big three referrers are Damian Thompson, Fr Z, and New Liturgical Movement. But if you join the two graphs of referals from The Anglo-Catholic, these outnumber those from New Liturgical Movement. Other referrers are shown below:

Thanks to all those who have referred.

Does anyone know what has happened to Sitemeter? It has stopped functioning (at least for me) since Christmas Day. Here's how it looks for the past month:

I have emailed sitemeter but have not received a reply.

New Blog from Marquette

Jennifer Heikkila, a parishioner at St Peter's Cathedral, started a new blog yesterday. It's called 'Leap of Faith'. Why not check it out and see how it develops?

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Canon Law Conference at La Crosse, Wisconsin, people

Just a quick post before I go off to Big Bay for the vigil Mass. Following on from my previous post (first, second):

Archbishop Burke was obviously the star of the few days, a remarkably humble and learned man, effusing great love for the Church and for the Law, truly embodying Caritas and Veritas. I was fortunate to have a number of brief conversations with him over the couple of days:

Bloggers were present too: the renowned Fr Z as well as Dr Edward Peters, author of the blog In the Light of the Law where you can read his reflections on the conference. I hope to write something of mine soon too.

More pics and comment to follow.

New blog from Stuart McCullogh

Stuart and his wife run Good Counsel Network. He's recently started blogging under the name Ecumenical Diablog. with some great posts: Bishop McMahon of Brentwood leading a pro-life prayer vigil, why one shouldn't buy The Tablet, etc.

Nice family photo - good Catholic blog

Thanks to Clare for leaving a comment on a previous post, I have discovered another good blog entitled Battlements of Rubies. Am not quite sure of the significance of the blog title. The author, being Irish, has written a significant appraisal of Pope Benedict's letter to the Irish Church.

Another new Catholic blogger

Entitled A Year with the Church.

Message from Jackie Parkes

At her request I publish this message:

In order to concentrate on Almighty God & my family & friends more I have decided to cease blogging for at least Lent. I received wise counsel & guidance from spiritual directors & trusted friends & family in making this decision. Thankyou so much sharing my blogging journey & God bless you all. Please pray for me as I pray for you. Mrs Jackie Parkes

Her blog is no longer. Prayers assured.

Supper in memory of Auntie Joanna

My host and I had a little supper tonight with wine from Bogle Vineyards so we thought of and toasted our friend the renowned Auntie Joanna.