The Bloggers' Roman Blognic May 3

This is how the Catholic blogosphere works.

You get a computer and you get it hooked into the internet. You surf for Catholic and Catholics' blogs. You like some, and you don't like others. You very much like the ones that have new content every day or even every few hours. You find out stuff you didn't learn in Religion class or Sunday School or RCIA, and follow the links to Scripture or the documents of Vatican II or other documents to be found on vatican.va. You discover Vatican II didn't actually say what people have always told you it said.

You read articles from Catholic newspapers from all over the world, and are amused or outraged when the blogger who posted them writes his or her own remarks in parentheses in red.

Eventually you leave comments, and eventually you vote in the polls. The internet is the unrestricted free market, only bloggers aren't selling anything except (occasionally) advertising space or our blog books. Readers donate or do not donate, as you choose. The internet is also unrestricted democracy because bloggers are respecters of numbers, not of persons. If 5,000 voters say they like Father Z's blog better than that of Cardinal Sean, that's what the poll-collecting blogger is going to report.

The next step, for the initiate into the Catholic blogosphere, is to start his or her own blog. I recommend getting a stats counter right away because there is nothing like the thrill of finding your first hits. I remember sitting in a freezing apartment in Boston in November 2006 and seeing my first hits. It was awesome.

I yam anarkay, said Johnny Rotten. But anarchy does not mean smashing stuff. In some cultures, it means people sorting things out for themselves during an emergency and doing a good job of it. During the Eastern Seaboard Blackout, Toronto saw two kinds of 4-way stops: the kind where a civilian self-appointed traffic cop directed traffic, and the kind where drivers just inched along, deciding together who would go now and would would wait. I read one Toronto journalist (sorry, no link) say the second arrangement worked better.

The Catholic blogosphere is self-regulating in that Catholics read the blogs they like, and sometimes they read the ones they don't, but they soon get fed up with those ones, and go back to their faves, often leaving comments in the combox. It's kind of like the sensus fidelium, baby.

Catholic bloggers can regulate those comboxes. Comboxes can be nasty places. As a blogger, I keep out the nastiness because I feel it is my responsibility to my readers and to my blog. As a Catholic, I feel the sense of personal responsibility rather strongly, and as a writer, I think a lot about tone and its effect on my audience.

One thing about the Catholic blogosphere: we think a lot about right and wrong, virtue and vice, sincerity and hypocrisy. One of the stroppiest blogger I know goes to confession twice a month. We seem to go to church a lot. A lot of prayer is going on. We link to stories of this saint, of that. Of this martyr, of that. And so far I have not yet come across a big Catholic blogger who doesn't love, with a happy filial love, the Holy Father, Benedict XVI. (And what a contrast to some other Catholic circles.) We might be angry or happy-go-lucky, bitter or sweet, suspicious of bishops or trusting of bishops, but we are all professed Catholics. We love God. We love His Mother. We love the Church, Mater et Magistra.

So. The Vatican Blognic. The Vatican Blognic to which all the (presumably Catholic) bloggers of the world have been invited. Sort of. We were invited to apply, but I don't quite get this because even I know enough about the Vatican to know that handling the thousands and thousands of inevitable applications in the space of three weeks would be difficult. Say just 1000 Catholic bloggers across the world apply. Who has the time to check out 1000 blogs in three weeks? And who in the Pontifical Council for Social Communications knows which Catholic (or Catholics') blogs count? I mean, the blogosphere is a hyper-democracy, but anyone who spends as much time linked in as I do, knows who the big guns are.

If our English-speaking big guns--the big guns WE annually vote are big guns--don't get invited, then Catholic bloggers will know that no-one at the PCCS understands blogging and it is--cough cough--Business As Usual.

Business As Usual is not all bad. For example, a Vatican insider like John Allen, Jr. probably worked his butt off to get where he is. And normally, I would have no problem with John Allen, Jr. He's a good writer. He gets the story. He's managed to thrive in an environment where other journalists fume with frustration. But he did something pretty bad: he called a bunch of fellow Catholics, marginalized Catholics, Catholics who don't have the power and prestige he has fought for and won, "the Catholic Taliban."

Talk about the media equivalent of "Let them eat cake." But I think there's something else going on: I think those who thrived under the old system of Catholic writing, patronage and diplomacy are terrified of the new system that's springing up. They're terrified of Gutenberg II. Business is Usual is on the way out.

Business as Usual can mean being someone's pal. For example, maybe you know an ambitious priest, the kind who cultivates this important friend and that important friend, like a minor Roman aristocrat in 70 AD. But such men, the priest and the minor Roman aristocrat, are not just clients of the more powerful. They are the patrons of those less powerful. The patrons do favours for the clients, and the clients do favours for the patrons. In Roman days, that might mean the aristocrat got his client a business deal, and the client followed his patron through the street shouting "Patricius for Consul!" In our day, it might mean the ambitious priest makes sure his client gets to World Youth Day, and the client introduces him to her uncle, the Grand Knight of the K of C.

Life is full of such exchanges, and I myself am intensely grateful to my older mentors and champions, who--I will quickly stress--all showed a disinterested enthusiasm for my writing and academic talents. I cannot see how helping little Seraphic can help further anyone else's career, unless your boss is likely to say, "Say, there, Seraphic's Mentor, you're a wonderful discoverer of new talent!" My mentors are more like the grade school teacher who almost dies of pride when her hitherto illiterate pupil wins a spelling bee.

The Catholic blogosphere, though, gets you around that whole patron-client system. It giggles at the patron-client system, and at the first whiff of the patron-client system, sings a happy song of revolution.

And Hilary White, singing happy songs of revolution, has announced the "OTHER" Roman Blognic. Having lived in Rome for some years, reporting on Vatican days and ways, Hilary suspects that those the Catholic blogosphere would have chosen to represent us will not be invited. And so, in the spirit of Catholic blogosphere, Hilary has invited Catholic bloggers to her Roman blognic.

Who is Hilary White? Well, Hilary White is a British and Canadian journalist and blogger living outside Rome. She is around my age. She enjoys a good scrap, and you can occasionally find her being scrappy in my combox. She writes for LifeSiteNews. She thinks that I am conservative only when compared to Charles Curran and Sister Joan Chittister, which is an opinion that makes me somewhat terrified of Hilary. I mean, hello, I go to Trid Mass. But let it not be said that Hilary is closeminded, for lo, she invited me to her blognic and asked me to invite others. Never met the woman in my life although I've dated at least one of her pals.

She has invited big guns like Father Z and Father Tim Finigan. She has invited cheerful, pacific types like Mulier Fortis and me. (It's like she read my list or something.) She has also invited a host of Bad Kids, both the ones I have a sneaking sympathy for, like James Preece, but also ones I normally would not be in the same room with. In fact, upon discovering she had invited one in particular, I had screaming, crying hysterics. But I'm still going, of course. When it costs only £60 to fly from Edinburgh to Rome and back, how could I not?

The cool kids are going--or joining in live via internet. The bad kids are going--or joining in live via internet. The much-maligned so-called "Catholic Taliban" (disgusting phrase) are going--or joining in live via internet. It's... I don't know how to describe it...It's the English-language Catholic blogosphere's Woodstock, only no drugs or rock bands or wandering about dazed and naked, covered in mud, while ignored babies weep.

It's an end-run. And, I hasten to remark, because I told Hilary it is important to stress this, it is 100% loyal to Christ, the Roman Catholic Faith, the magisterium and Benedict XVI.

When Benedict XVI was elected Pope, he asked us to pray that he not flee before the wolves. Not being naive about Vatican workings, many of us have a vague idea that some of these wolves may be living in Rome. Well, we are not afraid of the wolves, and we are coming to Rome.

O, Catholic bloggers! The Vatican wants to know what Catholic blogging is all about. Let's, in loyal joy, show them.

Don't wait for your PCCS invite. Don't wait for someone else to arrange your accomodation or to print out your map. Find a hotel room, a convent room, any room. (Just about everyone in the Roman tourist industry speaks English.) Buy a ticket. Blog your acceptance speech. To Rome! To Rome!

Sign up here.

Update: Father Zuhldorf is coming. Need I say more? And I have three weeks to practise refering him as Father Zee, not Father Zed.