Although Catholic blogs play an important role in catechesis and evangelization, I’m sure that every Catholic blogger has asked themselves at least once why they do it. Is it really worth the time spent away from work, from family, from prayer? Is anybody listening? Does anybody care? One of my friends recently shut down his personal blog altogether, saying “While I have a lot of respect for many bloggers, I feel the blogosphere to be a net negative to the Catholic Faith. … It is the epitome of Francis’ ‘self-referential Church.’ Far from leading to a deepening of the faith, it has led to a corrosion of it.” Could this be true?
My friend’s words certainly don’t describe the work of Catholic bloggers I work with. But I’ve seen the corner of the Catholic blogosphere he describes — the place where people attack one another viciously over minute points of doctrine or liturgical practices that baffle non-Catholics and fail to bring anyone to a holier and more peaceful frame of mind. I regularly engage in verbal fisticuffs with Catholics on LinkedIn who insist that if the majority of lay Catholics reject the Church’s doctrine on artificial birth control, then the lay Catholics must be right and the Popes must be wrong. I have to ask myself if I’m really helping when I enter the fray.
And my answer has to be yes. Every blogger, like every Christian, is a witness to the strength of God’s love alive in the world. Every one of us has a story of struggles, joys, heartaches, and glimmers of the salvation that awaits us. We follow Christ for deeply personal reasons that uniquely showcase the majesty of God’s creation and the depths of his mercy.
As the beloved disciple John said in writing his Gospel, “there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” When we bloggers share the difference that Jesus has made in our lives, we are drawing on an infinite store of spiritual power and wisdom that could more than fill all the books in the world. When we blog from a place of prayer and compassion, keeping the ultimate goal of salavation of souls in mind, we are fulfilling our Baptismal mission to spread the Good News.
We don’t, or shouldn’t, blog to show that we’re better Catholics than anyone else. Our blog should not be a trophy case displaying our own intelligence or faithfulness, because in our heart of hearts we know that we’ve all done stupid and faithless things. Our blog should feature installments in the story of our on-going love affair with God. Because no matter how mixed our motivations, if we weren’t in love with God we wouldn’t be blogging or commenting or arguing online in the first place.
Some readers have called me arrogant and judgmental, and I have to accept those accusations as true since my husband and my spiritual director have echoed them on occasion. But those accusations need to lead me to greater warmth, greater compassion, and greater understanding. They can’t sink me into self-doubt and despair. The solution for me and maybe for many of us is to give more, not to give up. Even from within a prison of our own inadequacies and sinfulness, we can still preach the Word of God.
St. Paul shows us how to continue our work of evangelization no matter what the shape or size of our prison. While St. Paul was in house arrest in Rome, he welcomed all who came to him and boldly taught them about Jesus Christ (Acts 28: 16-31). Under this same incarceration, he also wrote the great prison epistles of Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians — back when people wrote in ink rather than in bits and bytes. So, following the great missionary example of St. Paul, I will continue to pray, to write, and to share with others my love of God even from behind my own internal and often invisible prison walls.