Against The Grain

Tuesday, September 09, 2003

Gerard Serafin blogged this past weekend on 'miserably unhappy' residents at St. Blog's who might make good candidates for Prozak:

. . . Catholics who are miserably unhappy with the Church and her hierarchy. Failure after failure is pointed out, name after name is vilified. The worst is believed about any and all. They come across, in the words of Pope John XXIII, as dreary prophets of gloom. Misery! . . . Maybe it's time for those who seem unable to find anything good to say about the Church in her reality to move on.

Today I read a post -- by way of Bill Cork -- from Alan Phipps of Ad Altare Dei, who mentioned that this was precisely the reason he refuses to link to certain blogs in spite of their popularity:

It's horribly draining for me to read post after post of the same bitching and moaning, complaining and blaming, deriding Bishops of our church as far as the eye can see. And the worst of it is that many times the only source they have is calumnious speculation from some secular news magazine claiming to preach the truth. If that isn't the poorest apologetics witness I have ever seen, then Catholic evangelization is in serious trouble.

I wondered about this very thing recently, with particular reference to the "radtrad" Catholic websites that populate the net. I consider myself blessed not to have even encountered a radtrad prior to my becoming a Catholic. God knows it is difficult enough for converts to make that leap across the Tiber -- how many would bother to do so if their chief encounter with Catholics online were those who had nothing remotely positive to say about the Church? (What an utterly sad and joyless world the editors of a website like Novus Ordo Watch or Diocese Report must inhabit!).

Anyway . . . all this kvetching has prompted me to wonder: just where does 'Against The Grain' fall in? Optimistic? Pessimistic? Do you link to this blog, and why or why not?

Your thoughts and honest opinions would be greatly appreciated.