Blogging

Making your voice heard

Can. 211 All the Christian faithful have the duty and right to work so that the divine message of salvation more and more reaches all people in every age and in every land.

Can. 212 §3. According to the knowledge, competence, and prestige which they possess, they have the right and even at times the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful, without prejudice to the integrity of faith and morals, with reverence toward their pastors, and attentive to common advantage and the dignity of persons. [Code of Canon Law]

[Via Hermeneutic of Continuity]

Amy’s new blog: Via Media

Amy is moving. Amy Welborn, who I consider the foremost Catholic blogger, has a new gig blogging at Beliefnet on a new blog called Via Media. Most of us know the tragedy and difficult times Amy and her family have experienced in recent weeks so this new venture is a multi-faceted blessing for her. And for those of us who enjoy her writing.

She says she’ll return to a more frequent style of blogging covering the world of what interests her, even as she will continue to use her blog at Charlotte Was Both for less frequent, but more personal writing. I will be sure to keep both her blogs in my feed reader. I suggest you do the same.

Advice to the public relations rep emailing me

What follows was my response to the PR flack offering me a review copy of a book she’s representing and in which I have absolutely no interest. I didn’t respond to her first email, but after the second one I thought I’d give her some advice:

Couple of suggestions:

1. If you’re going to pretend to be a reader of my blog, get my name right. You called me “Domenico” in the first email and “Trey” in the second.
2. Don’t pretend to be a reader of my blog. Be honest. I see right through the deception and it offends me more than if you were just honest about reaching out to Christian bloggers.
3. In a release targeted at the Christian market don’t refer to the “magic powers of song”. Call it “miraculous”.
4. Know your audience. If you knew even a little bit about my blog, you’d see that this is not the appropriate venue for this book.

Thanks but no thanks.

I’ve worked on both sides of the public relations fence. As a magazine editor, I received (and still receive) many press releases. And several years ago I worked at a public relations agency doing IT work, but getting to know how the business works. It’s amazing how often there’s not a lot of difference between public relations and spam.

Friend me!

I sometimes forget that while I find myself writing and hanging out in many corners of the Internet, many of my friends only know this blog. Yet, there are several social media sites where I’m much more “present” than here at Bettnet these days, mainly for the quick, slice-of-life thoughts and moments. And I know that many of you have found me in those places, but many have not.

So occasionally I will post here to remind you where else you may read my musings if you so desire:

 
• Bettnetlog: My tumblog where interesting links and an aggregation of material from other places I visit ends up.
 
• Twitter
 
• Facebook: I’ve friended a lot of people there. I’ve found it a great way to re-connect with people I’ve lost touch with.
 
• Plurk: Plurk is like Twitter but with a twist. Conversations are much easier here than on Twitter. Lots of Catholics here.
• Delicious: A bookmarking service where I save links to interesting stuff online
• Friendfeed: Another place that aggregates my online presence, but it’s more wide-ranging and it also includes commenting.

So if you’d like to friend/subscribe on any or none of those sites, please feel free. Of course, I’ll still be posting here with about the same regularity as I’ve been posting.

Be back soon

I just noticed it’s been nine days since I’ve blogged anything. Busy moving and unpacking. Lots to say soon. Stay tuned.

First? Maybe not, but early

An amusing anecdote from the UK today. The Catholic Herald, a British Catholic newspaper, writes in its “Editor’s Briefing” about the Catholic blogosphere. (Page down to “The Bishops and Bloggers”.) Their aim is to discuss the fact that Britain’s bishops see bloggers as thorns in the side.

However, the article traces the origins of the Catholic blogosphere back to Josh LeBlanc and (now-Fr.) Chris Decker’s creation of CyberCatholics.com in 2000 (although I don’t know if it was a blog per se; maybe Josh can clear that up) or to … me.

Dominico Bettinelli Jr, managing editor of Catholic World Report, has a claim to the world’s first Catholic blog. He began to blog daily at Bettnet.com after the terror attack on September 11 2001. After 9/11 there was an explosion of blogging in the United States and talented Catholic bloggers began to attract a nationwide audience.

Unfortunately, he makes several mistakes here, besides spelling my first name wrong. First, I am not the managing editor of Catholic World Report and have not been so for a long time. Second, I began blogging in July 2001, but did not begin doing so daily until later, although a portion of my archives is missing between November 2001 and March 2002. Before that, it was once per week or a couple times per week at most. Third and most important, Kathy Shaidle was blogging at Relapsed Catholic on October 19, 2000, almost a year before I started.

Anyway, it’s flattering to be recognized, but I have to give credit where it’s due.

Top 10 ways to know you’re on a Catholic blog

On the other hand, you have the Creative Minority Report’s Top Ten Ways You Know You’re on a Catholic Blog. Much better—and more succinct—than NCR’s article.

Interestingly, very few of the 13 items (sort of a baker’s dozen top 10) apply to my blog. What does that say?

Yet another old media article on Catholic blogs misses it

All you need to know about the National Catholic Reporter article entitled “No blog is an island — A guide to the Catholic blogosphere” is that it refers to Amy Welborn as a “traditionalist”.

Really? To quote “The Princess Bride”, I’m not sure that word means what you think it means.

‘Nuff said.

New blog: St. Peter Canisius Apostolate (catholic-teaching.org)

A new blog from Jeff Vehige called St. Peter Canisius Apostolate, with the stated goal of catechizing the Catholic faithful. Current posts include a series of reflections on the Vatican II document on the liturgy called Sacrosanctum Concilium, a list of “five books every Catholic should read”; a series called “Fridays with the Fathers,” as in the early Church fathers; and “Tuesdays with”, not Morrie, but “St. Thomas”. Looks like good meaty intellectual stuff.

New blog: Dracut Musings

Longtime Bettnet reader Brian F. has a new blog called Dracut Musings. He plans to blog on a variety of topics: sports, politics, religion, family life, Massachusetts, etc. He’s off to a good start. Check him out.

A sabbath of blogging

This Thursday will mark my seventh full year of blogging here at Bettnet.com. On July 3, 2001 I redesigned my web site, which had been up for several years before that, to incorporate a blog. Of course, I didn’t even know the word “blog” back then, but that’s what it was. There were no comments for the first year and a quarter and I had to write labriously the HTML code for the first several months.

You can see my first halting entries at the now defunct, but still legible, archive page. To keep things in perspective, I hadn’t yet met Melanie and Isabella was some five years in the future. The sex-abuse scandal hadn’t broken yet and 9/11 was still 2 months in the future. George W. Bush was just seven months into his first term and the big political crisis was embryonic stem cell research.

Since October 26, 2002—the date I began using the then-current iteration of my blogging software—I have written about 9,300 blog entries. In the year and several months before that I wrote at least 700 more. (Some days I was writing 10 entries per day!) So, my estimate is that I’ve written more than 10,000 blog entries in these seven years.

I may not have the oldest Catholic blog around, but it’s older than most. And I hope to have it around for a long time to come.

Photo by S. Sepp via Wikimedia Commons. Used with permission under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license 2.5.

Catholic Dad blogging

Since Danielle was nice enough to link to me as an example of a Catholic Dad blog, I thought that I should expand my daddy blogging repertoire.

In answer to some of her commenters who thought that the daddy blogs were more full of politics and snark, while the mommy blogs focused more on family life and were sweeter and good-natured. I think that depends on your definition of “mommy blog” or “daddy blog”.

There are certainly some Catholic women who are mothers who do lots more blogging on politics, culture, theology, and social issues who have—and I say this as one who has the same tone often enough—a tougher tone. ( Karen Hall and the Anchoress come to mind.) It doesn’t make them better or worse than other mom bloggers. Just different.

Same with Catholic Dads. Some focus more on larger issues of society while others blog mainly about their families or their hobbies. It’s just a matter of taste. It also might have something to do with the differences between men and women as well.

New blog: Stuff Catholics Like

With an obvious nod to the hilarious and popular blog Stuff White People Like, Jeff Miller, Ian Rutherford, and several others have started the equally hilarious Stuff Catholics Like.

Stuff White People Like is a satirical take on explaining the crazy things that people of European descent do and value. For example, recent entries have looked at the weird circumstances in which white people wear scarves—often not for warmth but for fashion; their propensity for New Balance shoes; rugby; free healthcare; and music piracy. It’s not that these are peculiarly “white” topics, but the entries explain how white folk—i.e. upper middle class Euro-Americans—put them to unusual use or approach them in a funny manner. What makes it funny is how it turns the normal attitude upside, turning the behavior of people in the minority into the norm by which the behavior of the majority is judged.

Anyway, Stuff Catholics Like also takes a satirical and light-hearted look at all things Catholic. Some entries extol the things that Catholics love from a timeless perspective, while others examine those peculiar modern inventions that drive some of us crazy. So for example, there are entries on holy water, babies, and rosaries, as well as non-Catholics wearing Catholic stuff (think the recent sighting of Clinton wearing a “Brazilian Mary bracelet”), clapping in church, and felt banners.

While it is fun—and it is important that those of you without a sense of humor, and you know who you are, should not go to the blog—it is also an opportunity to learn a thing or two. So go there, and enjoy it, and when your non-Catholic relatives, friends, and co-workers ask you “Why do Catholics…?” you’ll have a place to send them to have a laugh and understand.

Papal visit wrapup; how did the blogs affect your experience?

Texts of the Pope’s homilies and addresses as well as video and audio recordings of the various events are available at the USCCB Papal Visit Site.

So this was the first blogger-era papal visit to the US. Was it a different experience for folks, beyond watching the TV coverage? Did you have a different experience of the visit through what you read and saw online?

I’d love to hear people’s reflections.

Why won’t you leave me alone?

What do you call someone who you ignore, but they won’t stop writing about you? Who imagines a rivalry with you when you just want to ignore them? Who once asked people to stalk you on your honeymoon? Who you banned from your site because of their incoherent rantings? Who just sent a seemingly friendly and complimentary note and on the same day trashes you on their blog? Who points out your family holiday photos and makes wisecracks about them?

Crazy? Stalker? Take your pick.

Frankly, I wish they would just go away and forget I exist. Look, I’m not writing all that much anymore. Just leave me be. Sheesh.