Robert Mickens, the Rome correspondent of The Suppository, decided, last week, to indulge in a little petulant whining:"...it is extraordinary that ordained ministers can find so much free time and energy to "feed a blog". Is it possible that they have no housebound, hospitalised or imprisoned parishioners in need of their presence and ministry? It is also extraordinary that their bishops allow this. But then again we are living in extraordinary times."
I know that The Suppository, like most tabletista-oriented organisations, hasn't quite caught up with the idea behind the whole interweb thingy... they expect people to pay to read their online drivel, for heaven's sake! But this comment from Mr. Mickens is really pretty pathetic...
Anyone who actually blogs knows that it doesn't take very long at all to type up a post or two. You only need one or two posts a day to keep the stats up. Obviously, one has to have something interesting to pass on, or at least something mildly amusing, or no-one will bother to read the blog. The content also has to be reasonably well-written: poor grammar and poor punctuation get pretty short shrift from fellow bloggers. There is a whole world of would-be sub-editors waiting to catch you out.
But the point about blogging is that it's a minor diversion: it isn't one's whole life. If it were, one would soon run out of anything original to write, and no-one wants to read a mere re-hash of what everyone else is saying.
As for Mr. Mickens bewailing the lack of ministry to housebound, hospitalised or imprisoned parishioners, well, it's obvious he's stuck in some sort of parallel universe. Very few people appreciate being called on unexpectedly, and visits before 9am or after 8pm would, in my estimation, probably be as welcome as a dose of 'flu. In a similar vein, hospital nurses are apt to get shirty with visitors outside the hours of 9:00am - 8:00pm unless the patient is actually in extremis. And, somehow, I suspect that prisons are not too keen on out-of-hours visitations...
...computers and the internet, on the other hand, actually work pretty well outside office hours, and if one is clever enough to have mobile broadband, they work pretty well just about anywhere.
The comment is rather obviously directed at our more high-profile priest-bloggers, so I strongly suspect that a few journalistic knuckles may have been rapped after the Blackfen blunder...
Wasn't it the second council of the Vatican that taught that:
ReplyDelete"All members of the Church should be of one mind and heart in their efforts to utilize the media, effectively and without delay, in the manifold works of the apostolate, as times and circumstances demand...Pastors of souls should lose no time in fulfilling their obligation in this respect, closely connected as it is with their ordinary work of preaching"
(inter mirifica 13)
Is Mr. Mickens suggesting that this council was in error?
Am I right in thinking that it was Mrs Mickens that ran the pie shop in Blackadder ?
ReplyDeleteAs an American, am I to infer from the descriptions of the "Tablet" ("Suppository") that it is similar to the liberal "America" magazine which (dis)graces the shelves of our local college library?
ReplyDeleteTruthfinder, I don't know about your "America" magazine, but the Tablet (aka the Bitter Pill or the Suppository) has been undermining Catholic teaching on contraception and other matters since 1968.
ReplyDeleteGo to Fr. Tim's blog and do a search with "Tablet" as the key word to find out how they attacked him...
It's usually those that blog and run posts that find the time to visit the sick and housebound. The rest are too busy glued to the TV, focussed on themselves or wallowing in self pity. Also many of the lonely, sick and housebound enjoy interacting on the blogs.
ReplyDeleteThe more that comes out of the Tablet the more i am convinced it should be condemned.
Does Robert Mickens do all that he expresses others should do?
"It is also extraordinary that their bishops allow this."So they're big fans of episcopal authority?
ReplyDeleteDon't you know only the 'educated' elite should be allowed to speak?
ReplyDeleteFr. Erik,
ReplyDeleteOne of the things that persuaded me to drop my subscription to the "Tablet" was the seeming lack of education demonstrated in its editorials. Many was the time that a polemical position was taken on the basis of a strawman that had no basis in fact, when the facts concerned could be easily checked.
These seem not to be the actions of an "educated elite" (I am a great fan of true elitism, myself) but of those dedicated to the "will to power" that Nietzsche so clearly foresaw.
Gregory - I'm sure Fr. Erik will correct me if I'm wrong, but placing "educated" within quote marks suggests that Fr. Erik thinks that the Tabletistas believe themselves to be the educated elite and the rest of us are just the plebs who should keep quiet and listen to our elders and betters...
ReplyDelete...and not dare to blog about our opinions...
...or even to possess any such opinions...!
Doh! Thanks Mac and apologies to Fr. Erik for missing his subtlety. My dozyness knob must be set to 11 today...
ReplyDelete