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A blog entry about blogs
by John L Allen Jr on Nov. 12, 2009
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Printer-friendly versionSend to friendPDF versionAs a rule of thumb, I don’t respond when people go on-line to offer either criticism or praise of something I’ve written, or something I've said on TV or radio. I’ve already had my say, and anyway, the focus ought to be on the story rather than the story-teller.
Recently, however, I tossed a throw-away line about blogs into the middle of a column on an unrelated topic. That line made the rounds, and some people either still wonder what I meant (in which case they’ve asked for clarification) or they’re pretty sure they know what I meant (and some in that crowd want an apology.)
Since this subject indirectly connects to some of the themes in The Future Church, I thought I’d take it up briefly here.
To recap, my "All Things Catholic" column two weeks ago was about the next generation of Catholic leaders, meaning priests, sisters, theologians, lay activists and so on. I wrote that I’d recently had some insight on the subject while out on the lecture circuit, and, as an aside, I opined that there’s no substitute for a live audience to gauge what real people are thinking. The blogosphere, I added, often seems populated by what Homer Simpson once described as “alcoholics, the unemployed, angry loners …”
I had thought the reference to Homer Simpson might be enough to flag that line as a joke, but a couple bloggers (so far, I’ve had e-mails from two) obviously didn’t find it funny, demanding that I apologize for the slight to their craft.
For the record, I didn’t really have in mind “bloggers,” in the sense of people who create blogs, feed them with content, and moderate their on-line discussions. As regular readers of mine know, over the years I’ve often cited the work of bloggers such as Rocco Palmo, Amy Welborn, and Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, as well as collective endeavors such as the Commonweal blog. They’re all tremendous gifts to Catholic conversation, and if any of them felt slighted, I am sorry.
What I actually had in mind were instead those “comments” sections you often find at the end of blog entries, which are legendary for veering wildly off-topic, and which often seem to elicit a degree of rhetorical viciousness to which most people simply wouldn’t succumb in real-life conversation. That’s what I meant by blogs not representing the vox populi; I simply refuse to believe that most people, most of the time, are quite that angry.
Here’s how all this connects the future of the Catholic church.
The Internet is both the leading symbol of the globalized world as well as one of its primary drivers. In 1995, according to the Web site “Internet World Stats,” there were 16 million Internet users in the world, representing .04 percent of the global population; as of June 2007, there were 1.13 billion users, or 17.2 percent of the world, remarkable growth in little more than a decade. According to the Worldwide Online Population Forecast, by 2011 roughly 1.8 billion people will be logging on, representing 22 percent of the global population – almost one-quarter of all people on earth.
All this can’t help but affect the church. The growth of the Internet, blogs in particular, is aggressively democratizing Catholic conversation – providing an outlet for alternative points of view, and in some cases becoming the meeting place for what are virtually “cyber-parishes,” or at least small Christian communities in cyberspace. We are an ever more global family of faith, and the Internet allows that family to communicate in real time, so that a Catholic concern in remote northeast India can be picked up by bloggers in the Philippines, Argentina, and Dubuque, thereby giving tangible expression to the notion of solidarity.
All that sounds great, and it is. The shadow side, however, is that the polarization and tribalism we all know from other spheres of Catholic life are also being replicated on-line, this time shorn of the natural limits imposed by the conventions of face-to-face communication. In other words, cyberspace can become just another forum for Catholics to yell at each other, with the nastiness turbo-charged by distance and anonymity.
The extent to which blogs and the other features of the new digital landscape help to carry the church into the future, rather than keeping the church stuck in its present pattern of division, thus depends upon how Catholics choose to use them – and right now, there are some worrying trends. That observation, I suppose, was the background to my (admittedly sloppy) citation of the Homer Simpson line cited above.
In other words: I come to praise blogs, not to bury them!
Thank you for explaining your
Thank you for explaining your comment in the previous article, Mr. Allen. Since I'm among those who took exception to the remark and asked that you consider apologizing for it, I'm grateful that you published an explanation.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Thank you very much, Mr. Allen, for your usual thoughtful and thought-provoking, even challenging writing, a tremendous asset to NCR and to Roman Catholic discourse, always thorough, and thoughtful.
I pray we may develop the recently suggested reconciliation and engagement rather than confrontation which has so driven these past years. Freely tossing terms such as heretic and dissident without Vatican approval serves no one. Bearing one another's burdens fulfills the Law of Christ, as we have sung daily in monastic choirs for centuries. Dude, it's traditional!
I found that unusual and incisive comment, the famous Homeric citation, an opportunity for reflection. It was kind of like hearing Ned Flanders finally express himself outright, and it brought reason to measure. I was glad not to be (now?) an alcoholic as I have witnessed in so many loved ones (could I simply be not a practicing one?), as years ago a barmaid in Mexico screamed at my curious initial desire to discover what is this thing, tequila, and since then I have drunk no (unconsecrated) alcohol (and then only when the priest dips the host in the cup), by the Grace of God alone and Deo Gratias. For the moment also I am gratefully employed (who can tell for how long!), with the best students the world has ever seen.
Missing for the moment the first two categories, therefore, I confess to falling into the angry loner category of commenters (as you clarify so well here); I confess the grievous and great sin of anger, at others who offend those I love and cherish, both now and in the past, suppressed anger from my job (not at all related to the students but the grown-ups) which infests my comments here in the most uncharitable way, anger at all, and all.
I came here to spread the peace and love and wind up selfishly, proudly expressing my anger, and solitude. I am an angry loner, as charged, and comment very freely in anger, offending above all my beloved Rule for Monks from Our Holy Father Saint Benedict, which speaks so clearly on such matters.
Yet I discover within this process of blogging solace from my anger, joy even, comfort, companionship, a community of prayer, of fellowship (what is the gender-free term?), a Communion of Saints. As Mr. Allen brilliantly writes, we find here together the Universal Church, on the march to the Reign of God.
Let us speak then most softly in this Church, if speak at all. Let us not step upon one another's toes so much, but walk carefully in this procession, please, unto God's eternal peace.
If you are going with a gift to the altar of God and remember at the gate that someone has something against you, leave your gift at the gate and run back and make peace with them and then come to give your gift to God.
I come now to make that peace with all here whom I have offended, through my overwhelming pride and anger.
I am really very amazed and grateful that a writer and thinker as fine as Mr. Allen dedicates so much time and care to writing here, and to doing the meta-analysis from which this present column comes. Mr. Allen cares deeply about the things which are most important to me as well, and speaks of them with great intelligence, and ever present humor. One drawback of this textual media is we cannot always tell when he is joking. We must be master readers of James Joyce's Ulysses in order to perceive when our communal leg is being pulled. Dudes, Mr. Allen was joking here; c'mon, let's not get bent about it, but reflect upon the ways what he wrote is true; reflect upon why what he wrote touches a nerve so deeply, and let us enter unto that slow and Benedictine process of conversion through stability unto peace and to love.
Please forgive my severely limiting literary incapacities; I hope and I pray what I write here from the heart makes some coherent sense, if read at all. I know that slight, brief quip caused me to reflect deeply about how I present myself to this blessed NCR community. Our Lord warns us in the strongest terms against anger, and I forget this when I read some of the strong language used against people I deeply care about. And so I must pray "Lead us not into temptation" and will try not to read what I know will provoke my anger, knowing I cannot resist writing back in anger, without the future possibility of correction, deletion, softening, embracing.
Love thy enemy. Be not angry, as we will face judgment for it.
The loner part? Well, desert hermit here, and yet I feel so deeply and truthfully and gratefully accompanied by this present faith community, very gratefully, as NCR has ben for me for forty five years now. And God but don't we still all miss very very much the great Gary MacEoin . . .
I beg therefore this community's forgiveness for all of my many sins of pride and of anger, for all of the anger which I have displayed here, and pride, and I firmly resolve to amend my ways, to avoid the occasions of anger, to follow the Rule with ever greater fidelity, and to spread the Love, with your help and with the help of God, who is Love.
Dudes. Where's the Love?
Well, why, right here on ncronline.org, present among us.
Let's show it.
Love ya', dude . . .
frère charles du désert OSB OBLAT (Congrégation de Subiaco)
Jesus got angry too frere
Jesus got angry too frere charles. I know how sometimes this comments section can drive one right into that anger but it's how we use it that determines whether its sin or not. I think you've done pretty well at restraining your anger while trying to get others to see what you are saying and they aren't getting. If you feel you've sinned (and what would it be, one of those old venial sins anyhow?) well, then consider yourself forgiven from me as I am one too and won't hold it against you. You are inclusive as Jesus was rather than exclusive so take a blessing from me for that too!
Thank you very much, again,
Thank you very much, again, for your welcome consolation here, earthenvessel, yet I seem to remember reading somewhere some very strong warnings against the sin of anger, in the very Word of Jesus.
We may also read most easily upon Wikipedia, although the excellent HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism remains the most standard and reliable source for being edited by the Reverend Father Richard P. McBrien, about the Cardinal Sins. or Capital Vices, AKA the Seven Deadly Sins, which includes the sin of wrath, id est, anger.
So weaklings like me with no courage find it just so much easier to avoid the occasion of this deadly sin, to try to take a deep breath and count to ten (as a former Marine buddy at work, the most peaceful guy I know, advised me at the other week at seeing my face deeply dismayed, and to seek that wisdom from above which Saint James characterizes as peaceful, gentle and friendly.
And of course to read always the Rule For Monks of Our Holy Father Saint Benedict (and the REverend Father John dear SJ, etc.)
ANYTHING but reading certain blogging comments!
but now do not get me started!
"For the moment also I am
"For the moment also I am gratefully employed"
"Well, desert hermit here"
An employed Desert Hermit???
You prefer the unemployed
You prefer the unemployed professionally pious prostituted by wealthy while pious patrons to bear Cardinal Rode's forty foot red silk cape?
Don't get me started; I could get angry.
Please study the pre-Vatican Council II worker priest movement, particularly in France; great concept there, and less vampires feeding on the widow's pence and the worker's change spared from feeding their starving families (see the Reverend Sister Joan Chittister OSB's ever-excellent recent column) to pay off court settlements. The present system is clearly not sustainable (as former President Castro recently wrote about the USA as a whole).
Desert monks have been self-supporting from the first centuries. Read your Cassein, and above all the wonderful works of the Reverend Father Lucien Regnault, OSB, my former Prior in Solesmes.
Meanwhile I pray our friend here Clint Green recovers his employment.
With that civilized Canadian health care system of course you are not a wage slave for life.
"professionally pious
"professionally pious prostituted by wealthy while pious patrons"
You have some issues Charles! I don't think insulting others helps your cause, it just makes you sound bitter.
John: As someone who has been
John:
As someone who has been a "Catholic blogger" since 2002, I don't think you have anything to apologize for and the fact that some feel you do merely proves your point. Given that you are known as a man who will bend over so far backwards to be fair that you risk fracturing your lumbar vertebrae, I think people really need to lighten up...:-)
God bless,
Peter
The blogosphere, I added,
The blogosphere, I added, often seems populated by what Homer Simpson once described as “alcoholics, the unemployed, angry loners . . ."
I had thought the reference to Homer Simpson might be enough to flag that line as a joke
The clarification really wasn't necessary.
But just for the record -- I'm not unemployed.
Oh I see. What I actually
Oh I see.
What I actually had in mind were instead those “comments” sections you often find at the end of blog entries,
It wasn't the blog operators whom Mr. Allen intended to denigrate.
It was those of down here in the "peanut gallery."
God knows I feel better now.
Greg, Your reply brought me a
Greg, Your reply brought me a smile, even as I had winced a bit also at John's words, myself being only a member of the peanut gallery.
But, on the other hand, I do understand John's point from reading all these entries as well, and do agree that the extremes get pretty extreme sometimes. I also agree that most people are not all that angry. I once had a pastor who used to say something I've found pretty true along the way: only about 10% of the people in any parish care very much (about who the pastor is, in his example); there will be 5% very very supportive and 5% very very negative, and the rest move along pretty okay in the middle. It seems these days many of us are angry with people we don't know online for the (utterly stupid and mean) things they say, but do well with people we rub up against in our parishes. I think it helps many of us to be able to communicate in this way that we can't so easily up close with people anymore, but I wish we still could talk to each other locally. I think the 'jury [may] stay out' in regard to online communication.
Anyhow, thanks for the laugh. So well put.
Your reference to Caesar is
Your reference to Caesar is reprehensible and inexcusable.
......just kidding.
John, as a pastor with an
John,
as a pastor with an online parsh discussion group I know of what you write. The vitriol with which some folks--even regular church goers--write has been an eye opener to me. As we used to say in Latin class: Non Illegitimi corabundum. Don't let the b@&$)"ds get you down
Thank you very much for a
Thank you very much for a look at ourselves. I freely admit to being intemperate in my comments, after so many, many years of finding our input was not welcome, we are only beginning to find our voice and hopefully, sooner rather than later, we will learn that shouting and screaming does not win friends or arguments. It really comes down to what we do, not what we tell others to do or what we intended to do.
Are bloggers frustrated
Are bloggers frustrated conservatives? I was, but my blog healed me.
Our parish was refused the right to begin a Respect Life group, and after taking it all the way to the bishop, I despaired about ever carrying on what has been a lifetime of prolife activism in the diocese of my childhood.
I started my blog in 2006 out of a frustrated desire for expression of the pro-life viewpoint, but having as powerful outlet as a blog serves as an emergency valve, letting off enough steam to lower the blood pressure of it's author. Not that current events don't elicit a heated response now and then, but I have found my blog to be a forum for civil discussion on topics related to the Culture of Life. Both sides benefit if they are civil.
If commments are uncivil, I simply delete them. Most of the uncivil comments are from those pro-abortion organizations I have discussed, like the notorious Planned Parenthood, who issued an in your face "Choice on Earth" holiday card in 2007. When I asked for prayers for my disabled daughter with pnemonia in the hospital, One of their members told me, "I hope she dies, that's what you get for opposing choice".
I hope she wasn't a Catholic.
Mr. Allen, I caught that same
Mr. Allen,
I caught that same comment that you mentioned and I resisted writing about it. Not for any particular reason except that I didn't want to draw any attention to the National Catholic Reporter.
You're the only column I read on the the NCReporter and when you wrote that I was a bit dismayed. I just chalked it up to another liberal losing their bearing and letting their slip show.
Granted that the quote was misinterpreted, it was a bit careless and needed to be explained, which you humbly did.
I enjoy reading your articles and have even purchased a couple of your books.
Now if only you would be lured away to a legitimate Catholic website...
In Jesus, Mary, & Joseph,
Tito
"another liberal losing their
"another liberal losing their bearing "
"letting their slip show"
"a legitimate Catholic website"
How do you characterize these lines, in light of the present discussion?
ncronline.org is the ONLY legitimate Roman Catholic website and has been the most legitimate Roman Catholic publication in the English language in these Americas for nearly a half century.
The proof that what the excellent Mr. Allen wrote is accurate as well as funny are the raging angry-loner reactions it receives (not that this one falls under that category).
Lighten up, dudes!
frère charles du désert OSB
(and we are indeed very fortunate for Mr. Allen's contributions here)
I too was one who posted that
I too was one who posted that I was disappointed with the remark. Yet, it was so out of character, that I did not give it all that much weight. I think it was appropriate to have it pointed out that the remark had an offensive affect, but before we get too upset over a remark that someone may make, we should examine it is light of all the other things that are said by that person. I have all too often tried to use a "throw away line", only to discover that it has often landed like a thug. I read your remark in this context, so I did not take offense. None-the-less it was nice to read your explanation and apology.
Keep up your well written and informative jouralism.
God's blessings.
I myself am moving from
I myself am moving from BLOG-FEAST to BLOG-FAST! I now limit myself to reading only the articles here and in other publications, and following the more incendiary ones with a brisk walk around my neighborhood instead of reacting in print. I feel better already. The ultimate goal is to eliminate my own contributions, some of which have been described so well by Mr. Allen:
"In other words, cyberspace can become just another forum for Catholics to yell at each other, with the nastiness turbo-charged by distance and anonymity."
Eventually, I shall probably even stop reading the original articles and just increase the walking. Thanx for pointing me in a new direction, Mr. Allen and as they say in La Bella Roma: Arriverderci! Adieu! Auf Wiedersehn!
On the other hand,
On the other hand, sometimes when we inadvertently dig a hole it is better to put down the shovel. (smile) Attempts to explain have potential to make the hole deeper, satisfying some folks while offending a new batch of folks. Just something to think about.
I couldn't agree with you
I couldn't agree with you more.
Please see a blog in our parish regarding our pastor:
http://www.sttimsreporter.blogspot.com/
I hope this is your blog,
I hope this is your blog, John, and people will respond to my comments about your book, The Ten Trends. I am not finished reading it but I find the main changes in the Catholic Church have not even been mentioned by you.
I am talking about the peoples' change in understanding the tenets of the Roman Catholic Church. I am not the only "Cradle Catholic" whose beliefs have changed. I am 75 years old. I no longer believe that Mary "conceived by the Holy Ghost." I no longer believe that Mary was a perpetual virgin. I do believe that Joseph was Jesus' father, not God. Or that Mary was raped. An angel would certainly then say for Joseph to take her as his wife for Jesus needs to be born. He is a great teacher and one of the more evolved human beings.
I no longer believe in original sin, nor the need for redemption so the mass is no longer a sacrifice for me. I believe the mass is a gathering of God's people to praise the Creator of the many universes. Jesus died for his teachings. Jesus taught us to "love our enemies" and I believe that is why we made him an idol and worship him as God. It is so difficult to love your enemies that we made Jesus super human.
I believe Jesus is truly present spiritually when we receive the bread of the Eucharist and his presence helps unite us as one Body to live as he lived.
I think many Catholics still hold on to the God in the sky, an old man sitting on a cloud. We have no idea of who or what God is except that we strive for love, to be loved and to love.
I think, John, that is one of the Trends that you omitted because it would upset too many people or you just haven't come around to an adult understanding of Jesus, God, Mary, Joseph, etc. etc. etc.
I think the understanding that I and many others have will bring about a greater understanding and compassion for each other. The Roman Catholic Church does not teach the truth. And, when that is said, we are all in this together, all of humanity, all equal.
Certainly the Pope is not infallible. Certainly all that pomp, clothes, vestments, sitting on a throne... has to be discarded for me to have an respect for him. And, THE BISHOPS, POPE, ETC. HAVE TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ABUSE CRISIS for me to ever have respect for them again.
now I know it..
now I know it..
signed to your rss
signed to your rss
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