Blogging

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I had a message asking if all I was going to do this year was post a weekly parish newsletter from 1863.  Well, the answer, at the moment, is "probably" or at least it is for the next couple of months.

The 1863 weekly series is possibly a bit more important than you might think and is therefore worth doing as well as I can.  Three Popes: Pius X, Pius XII and Paul VI: changed the calendar and the Mass utterly during the twentieth century, and I think we all ought to know just how radical that change was.  It doesn't write itself, though, and spare minutes are hard to come by; and because, in each set of reforms, the victors wrote the history as they went along, tracing what was done when and the real reasons why (rather than the reasons given out at the time and subsequently), studying this stuff is more of a task than I'd imagined.

But another reason is thinking about what my subject matter would be if it wasn't this.  I stopped reading Mundabor because of the dreary article by article attack on everything the Pope was saying, and on everything that people were saying in the Pope's name.  When you get to the point of realising that it's the style that's objectionable (and how!), and that on some, maybe just some, maybe quite a few, questions of substance he might have a point, it's time to take sides. 

And I'm taking the side of those who choose not to get publicly involved.

So expect a lot about 1863 from me, but not much more at present.