Fr. Tim Finigan rallies the Catholic blogging troops: Response from the French Oasis

The dissenting, heterodox wing of the Roman Catholic Church does not need or want blogs. It's been in control for forty years and The Tablet has been its chief mouthpiece for the same length of time. In England and Wales this movement managed to silence the voice of orthodoxy almost completely. The blog has re-enfranchised that voice. This is why the 'non-Benedictine' camp (to put it kindly) is running scared and thrashing around in a pathetic effort to discredit and even to censor blogs whose authorship and following are quite clearly in approval of Pope Benedict's attempts to reform the reform. It must be said however, that their rage is not only to do with Liturgy. When the supporters of the Tridentine rite could be dismissed as a tiny group of mad relatives in the attic who were only concerned with rubrical exactitude, it was easy to continue their marginalisation. The blog has made it clear that this image is an outdated caracature. Orthodox Catholics show themselves through their blogs as being highly educated and well read, not only liturgically, but in every other aspect of Church teaching, practice and evangelisation. Not to mention that the best ones of these have a sense of humour and realism.

There is another reason why the Tablet is behaving as it is. It can be expressed in one word - CIRCULATION. I cannot put my hand on the most recent figures I saw published, but the TABLET has begun to trail the Catholic Herald. It will be very worried about that. It has shown weakness, and partisanship, first in its dealing with 'Blackfengate', the backlash of which came as a most unpleasant surprise, and now with this mean-spirited, intolerant and rather ignorant editorial. Clearly it is rattled. The power of 'the print' is passing to another medium.

I trust that if the Tablet wants to encourage the Bishops to speak out against Catholic blogs, or even to attempt a muzzling of priest bloggers, that the Conference will realise how foolhardy this would be, and indeed how damaging to their own image as supposed upholders of freedom of speech and of the Catholic Faith.

Several of my blogging colleagues have posted about the informative, educative, and mutually encouraging nature of the Catholic blogosphere, and also of its powerful support for Pope Benedict, an area in which there would otherwise have been a deafening silence. But there is more ... Daily, on orthodox Catholic blogs, is to be found spiritual and aesthetic nourishment, (often direct from our Holy Father's own words and actions), and international, trans-continental support of our brothers and sisters in extremis. I will reserve these aspects for another post tomorrow and will close now with the thought that the Catholic blogosphere is a 'personal parish' in cyberspace to which everyone with a computer has access, and through which they can and do, distribute information to those who are without one.

In Christo pro Papa
God bless all here,
J

P.S. Special thanks to you Father Tim. Yours was the first blog I ever read. I still read it at least once a day!