A post to prove that I'm still alive...

Taps microphone
Is thing thing still on?

Apologies to the couple of people who still follow me.  I've not been very diligent about keeping it up to date.  A mixture of genuine busy-ness and a wretched dose of sloth has kept me away from my blog.  Anyway, I wanted to add a few links to my blogroll and draw my readers' attention to a few articles.

The Irish Blogosphere
Since my last post, I've added links to a couple of Catholic blogs which concern themselves with Irish issues.  First of all, the Lux Occulta blog has a mainly historical focus, with a wealth of articles and pamphlets painting a picture of the Irish Church in the first half of the 20th Century.  Need one say that this picture doesn't always square with the dominant narrative?
Even though he's based in England, The Thirsty Gargoyle seems to be the go-to blog for commentary on the media's treatment of Irish Church matters. When he takes Patsy McGarry to task like this, he does the Church and the truth a great service.  I wish that the Bishops' Conference were more pro-active in doing likewise.  There seems to be this assumption that it's unpastoral or counter-productive to challenge the mainstream media in this way or that because of the genuine failings of the Church that we must therefore sit in silence.  However, renewal and justice can only be served by truth, and a failure to challenge untruths does no service to the faithful.  When I read The Thirsty Gargoyle's blog-posts about the Irish Church, I usually wish that I had the time (and intellect) to write them first.

Further Afield
Amy Welborn is one of Catholic America's best known bloggers.  In her latest book, Wish You Were Here she writes about her experience of losing her husband (the late Michael Dubriel) and her path through grief as she takes her family on a trip to Sicily a few months after his death.  It's a very honest and faith-filled account of grief and healing, and is permeated with a sense of the sacramentality of this world for the believer - grace and healing by God's power gradually make themselves known to her, often through the most mundane and everyday of things.  This book is well worth a read and Amy's latest blog Booked is worth following.

To my mind, John Allen is one of the best religion reporters out there.  I'm not a fan of his newspaper, the National Catholic Reporter, but his work is rightly noted for its fairness and insight.  One of the reasons I like his work is the way in which he's able to school other journalists (and indeed many Catholics) with articles such as Three things about the church to give up for Lent.