Tuesday April 24th
AID TO THE CHURCH IN NEED
To Brompton Oratory for a Board meeting of the UK section of the international charity Aid to the Church in Need. As always, lots to plan and discuss. All sorts of good things happening: a recent wonderful pilgrimage to Walsingham, sales of v. popular Easter cards (the office actually ran out of all stocks and there'll have to be a massive printing next year. This is great for fund-raising...but my heart sinks slightly. Does this mean that sending Easter cards is going to be like the Great Christmas Card Hassle each year, with days and days spent over address-book and lists???. Oh dear...) Over lunch, a discussion on, among other things, the situation of the Church in Pakistan (where ACN is giving help to a number of churches), the plans for future activities of the charity in Britain.
Much discussion, too, about the Internet. I sometimes think that what is being cosily termed the "Catholic blogosphere" is a good deal smaller than it seems: I get a lot of hits on to this blog but I suspect that many are from people who simply like cruising from Catholic blog to Catholic blog within a limited frame of reference and they visit a rather small number of blogs but very frequently.. That doesn't mean I'm reaching many people: it means that a smallish number visit me - and a smallish group of other blogs - a lot! One can see the emergence of a group-culture within this (friendly and pleasant, but nevertheless rather inward-looking?) group: in-jokes,chatty references, etc within a limited network. No,no...I'm not objecting. But it's not quite the wide-ranging readership I had imagined might be out there...
So if you are a new reader, and/or you are some one who doesn't just like reading Catholic blogs, do drop me a comment! I'd like to know about you!
8 comments:
Joanna, double-click on the SiteMeter button on the bottom of your blog... that will show you how many readers you get in a day, and where they're from (well, where the last 100 were from)
You're currently on about 200 visitors a day. That's not chickenfeed. And not all of those will check your blog every day. Hardly a small group of inward-looking bloggers!
Ever tried Sitemeter? It shows you exactly where people are coming from. Or ClustrMap is good, too, shows graphically where your viewers are, as opposed to the numerics of Sitemeter.
Hi Joanna, shouldn't you have a link to Universalis somewhere, so that people can get their daily fix of spirituality? It has a blog as well, which you may find interesting; or not...
The Ronald Knox piece I was suggesting to you is here but I hold no particular brief for that blog!
Hello auntie joanna, I found your blog through a link from one by a friend (or was it a link from a link - I sometimes follow a chain of links to see where I get to) I have popped in a couple of times since as I find your articles interesting.
yours
Angela
I read your blog from time to time. I am very much interested in and have a great fondness for England, which I have visted 3 times since 2000. I like to hear about Catholic life in England, past and present, and appreciate your historic perspective. I read other Catholic blogs from the US and the UK.
Thanks for your offerings. Keep on blogging on!
I read your blog from time to time to see if you mention anything about what is going on in Europe concerning Christians trying to keep a hand on all the new law's that are encroaching "our rights"
I find your blog somewhat interesting to read as you speak of your daily life in England, but to be honest I do not find it very helpful. There is so much going on in our world around us and to our rapidly changing world it seems you could use this blog in a more effective way. I do appreciate when you have spoken of the homosexual issues that will continue to come, and what is happening in the schools, and apathy of the children in society etc. These issues are worth discussing. Nothing against history, but the living really need attention.
Joanna, I am a priest currently living in Rome and I enjoy your blog. Your style is engaging. However, I think you should worry less about whether your readership is narrow and more about whether your experience of the church in England and Wales might need broadening a little. From years of experience of the church in the North of England, I would suggest that parish life in the nationwide vineyard is by no means as lively and hope-filled as it seems to be in your London/SE corner! Would that it were. Keep up the blog.
I read your blog from Australia (although born in England). I'm a convert to the Catholic Church of one year, a 39 year old mother of two.
I seem to fit your description quite closely. Yours is one of a small number of catholic blogs I vist frequently and generally do not visit blogs of other genres. So your post made me think about why I do this.
I think its become I come from a generation that has been brought up on feminism, individualism, secularism, endless tolerance and endless snide remarks about Christianity. I know all the arguments and assumptions inherent in the dominant Anglo-Australian world view (at least the reasonably well educated, middle class world view) and they've never sat all that well with me even as I tried to adopt them as my own as I'm largely expected to do.
Then finally, through blogs such as yours, I started to find a world view that actually made sense. That holds together without inconsistencies.
Reading blogs makes up a very small proportion of my day. During the rest of my day, I remain in a world filled with the BBC, Australian Broadcasting Comm., metropolitan newspapers and advertising billboards. Blogs keep me in another community, one where Christ matters. I hope that, just occasionally I'm able to bring the Catholic thinking I'm learning to bear upon the rest of my life.
In the meantime I really enjoy your blog (and your work with EWTN). For along time being English meant for me being Anglican. Your work has helped me to marry my Englishness with my Catholicism so that I can feel both fully English (or english-Australian) and fully Catholic. Thank you.
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