One year of Blogging

The stats always list a few hits in Rome...?

This blog sees its first birthday today and has had just over 81,000 hits in that time, which is amazing to me! (From 514 last July to 15,789 last month.) I know this is tiny compared to some but still astonishing from my point of view. It's grown through word of mouth, through friends and acquaintances at first and then through other (much more widely read blogs) taking up various posts - first here in the UK, one or two in Europe and latterly in the USA.

It started almost by accident as I wanted a place to put a video of a Solemn Extraordinary Form Mass held here so that people could see it. From there I saw that it might be used as a way of parishioners accessing more information but it quickly grew to encompass wider interests. As it has grown it has become a source of great encouragement for me personally.

Trying to push forward an agenda of Catholic orthodoxy and the Holy Father's mindset in the area of liturgy and in calling the dwindling Catholic Church in the Western World back to its Christian roots (the New Evangelisation) can be a lonely endeavour in an English provincial diocese. Finding common cause with so many people of like mind and in many instances finding that they contact me privately because of the blog has been a great blessing for me.
I've also found that it has become a sort of ministry to a much wider audience than my little parish here in Lancashire. As I have found support in others, so they have found support and encouragement in the posts or in conversations that have arisen though them - lay people and priests alike.

I can see why our beloved Holy Father has given encouragement to priests to blog in his message for World Communications day last year:

“The spread of multimedia communications and its rich ‘menu of options’ might make us think it sufficient simply to be present on the Web, or to see it only as a space to be filled. Yet priests can rightly be expected to be present in the world of digital communications as faithful witnesses to the Gospel, exercising their proper role as leaders of communities which increasingly express themselves with the different ‘voices’ provided by the digital marketplace. Priests are thus challenged to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources (images, videos, animated features, blogs, websites) which, alongside traditional means, can open up broad new vistas for dialogue, evangelization and catechesis.
Who better than a priest, as a man of God, can develop and put into practice, by his competence in current digital technology, a pastoral outreach capable of making God concretely present in today’s world and presenting the religious wisdom of the past as a treasure which can inspire our efforts to live in the present with dignity while building a better future?”

I take this opportunity to thank everyone who reads this blog and to say that you are remembered in my prayers. May God bless you. Keep the Faith!