Not so deep thoughts for Saturday morning

I can make a distinction between writer's block and blogger's block. This entire summer I have been struggling with the latter. Everyone who blogs has, either consciously or semi-consciously, an over-arching idea about what they're doing and why they are doing it. Since blogging for me is wholly an avocation and something I do in my free time, I have very low expectations when it comes to assessing what good I might accomplish by posting things on the internet and inviting any and all to read it.

When it comes to blogging, I pride myself on several things: original content, relatively in-depth treatment of whatever subject I write about, writing about things that arise from my experience, unsentimental charity, honesty and accuracy. I gave up a long time ago trying to post about anything and everything that catches my interest, or that is current and relevant.

Whenever I grow all introspective about blogging, it is always important for me to mention those I have come to know and even to collaborate with, however loosely, through my blogging. Thinking along these lines always puts me in mind of that great speech given by Bl. John XXIII to open the Second Vatican Council, which is such a tremendous blessing to the Church of God: "In the daily exercise of our pastoral office, we sometimes have to listen, much to our regret, to voices of persons who, though burning with zeal, are not endowed with too much sense of discretion or measure. In these modern times they can see nothing but prevarication and ruin. They say that our era, in comparison with past eras, is getting worse, and they behave as though they had learned nothing from history, which is, none the less, the teacher of life. They behave as though at the time of former Councils everything was a full triumph for the Christian idea and life and for proper religious liberty."

To wit: the church, despite the many doomsayers, is in good stead in the blogosphere and the on-line arena, a place that is necessary for the church to be present amidst so much that is dehumanizing. It remains my very humble prayer that I can make, at least from time-to-time, a positive contribution.