A Time For Choosing (And Blogging)

And it came to pass the slandered priest of whom I have often written in the past is wondering whether the open attacks to his blogging activity are perhaps of detriment to the priesthood, and whether it would not be wiser to stop blogging so that the priesthood isn't damaged as a result.

By many other priest bloggers – or simple bloggers – I would smell the quest for sympathies and the implicit invitation to flood the combox with messages of support. Not by this one. By this one I believe what he writes, he also thinks.

Well, let me say two words about the blogger's fears, then.

The duty of a priest is to scandalise the secular world. I actually go as far as to value a priest according to the measure in which he can – for the right reasons, of course – do that. Therefore, the idea that a good blogger priest should stop blogging because some hack has no better way to earn his bread – poor chap, by the by – is as absurd as the idea a prophet should stop preaching and prophesying because the mob is getting angry at him. I am, in fact, an affectionate reader of the blog in question exactly because I see in its author – though I may disagree with him on single issues – one of the best ones the blogging priesthood has to offer. You can put it the other way, and wonder what good it is a blogging priest who never scandalises the secular minded, the idiots, or the journalists.

In addition, the reasoning is flawed from the start. If putting a priest in the middle of a controversy justifies his stopping of his blogging activity, the secular idiots will only have to mount an attack on every decent blogging priest to silence him; nay, they will be indirectly encouraged to do so. In which cases, one wonders why a priest should have a blog in the first place. On the contrary, I think a priest who feels so inclined should have a blog; and that he should have it in order to upset stupid journalists, and such likes.

Moreover, the assumption that the public perception of priests is damaged by having them publicly attacked is, if you ask me, deeply faulty. The priesthood is damaged by the priest who are never attacked, but she is exalted by those who are attacked because of their attachment to their job. The smart readers will be ble to discern; the less smart ones are, in fact, the ones in the greatest need of good blogging priest.

This is a time for choosing. We Catholics can choose to either be worried about the perception the world has of us – as laymen, or priests – or be worried about the message getting out there, and opening the eyes of at least a few; probably, in time, more than a few.

No, of course Father Ray Blake should not stop blogging. Actually, he should be proud of the scandal he caused, and proud of the better opinion of priesthood smart people will have because of him. We are called to be not of this world, and the Church should in fact be the enemy of the world.

Let the reactions of unspeakably bad journalists be a litmus test of how good a blogger priest is faring.

God knows we have no need for non controversial priests.

Mundabor