St. Blog's Church
Linner, Rachelle
Immigration problems are largely of the Netherlands' own creation. Seeking an answer to the labor shortage of the 1960s, the Dutch invited guest workers from Turkey and Morocco. It was assumed...
...This naivete was quickly dispelled when I realized the diversity—and varying quality—of Catholic blogs...
...I'll let Flannery O'Connor have the last word: "To have the church be what you want it to be would require the continuous miraculous meddling of God in human affairs, where-as it is our dignity that we are allowed more or less to get on with those graces that come through faith and the sacraments and which work through our human nature....We can't understand this but we can't reject it without rejecting life...
...Becoming Dutch, it was assumed, would happen to immigrants as a matter of course, with diversity flavoring an overall unity...
...Rotterdam is discussing potential policies for restricting residence registrations...
...What has happened, though, is that many immigrants have become culturally and economically isolated, continuing to turn to their country of origin to find a spouse, buy a house, or feel patriotic...
...The traditionalist blogs are one response to the weakening of Christian certainty—in this case, a negative response—one that often displays a judgmental attitude and a corrosive cynicism about the "secular" world...
...Anyone who doubts the efficacy of the Internet as a means of "people power" should talk to China's Internet censors...
...Some are pastoral, such as The New Gasparian by Jeffrey Keyes, CPPS ("dedicated to the life and mission of St...
...Intrigued by the genre, I set out to explore the most visible precincts of what is known as St...
...There's a resident humorist, the Curt Jester, whose parody of Amazon.com sells the Patriot Anti-Missalette Battery, "Guaranteed to not allow modern missalettes such as those published by Oregon Catholic Press within a thousand feet of your church...the ultimate in GIRM warfare protection"—General Instruction on the Roman Missal, get it...
...The sociologist Peter Berger has observed that Christianity makes three "certainty offers": one through the institutional church, another in an absolute understanding of Scripture, and finally one based on personal religious experience...
...It could be an invitation for growth in faith, a need to rely on the fruits of the Holy Spirit (especially charity and patience), and a relaxed awareness that it's not our responsibility to separate the wheat from the tares...
...Paul...
...Broadly speaking, the Roman Catholic and Eastern churches make the first offer, Protestant Christianity ("esBALOO pecially in its evangelical variants," " says Berger) the second, and the third "runs through almost all Christian communities, from the great mystics to the most recent flowering of Pentecostalism...
...Immigrants were encouraged to preserve their cultural identity, much as in earlier times Catholics, Protestants, Socialists, and liberals composed distinct but equal participating sectors in Dutch life...
...All religion, like all politics, is local...
...iY 31{GtBS~iHRi+R 4 ,xP~1~'""r Rachelle Linner ST...
...I began reading with the expectation that all sites would exhibit the thoughtfulness and charity of Peter Nixon's...
...The generosity of the Dutch welfare system has proved to be something of an obstacle to assimilation...
...A number of priests and seminarians also write blogs...
...Berger notes, however: "All three forms of alleged certainty have been considerably weakened by the modern human sciences" ("Protestantism and the Quest for Certainty," Christian Century, August 26-September 2, 1998...
...Is there a more integrated alternative to the sharp and growing divide between "white" (native Dutch) and "black" (immigrant, predominantly Muslim) schools...
...An absence explained by the conservative bent of many blogs, or just a function of statistics...
...Blog's...
...Can young women training to be daycare workers be allowed to wear a burqa, which exposes only the eyes...
...One gets a quick sense of a blog's politics from the organizations its author provides links to...
...Some bloggers identify by their professions: in my admittedly small sample of one hundred Catholic blogs there were numerous lawyers, a few software engineers, one midwife (Fructus Ventris), homeschooling parents (and students), and some who write from the heart of distinct vocations, such as Karen Marie Knapp in From the Anchor Hold: ("living simple, single, and submitted, in a real city, in a real world...
...The clearest way to understand much of the Catholic blog phenomenon is to perceive it as a form of personal apologetics...
...Blogs range from offering recipes to requests for prayers, to moving spiritual reflections and writings about saints to polemics about political correctness in the pulpit...
...most explain (some-times with an unfortunate didacticism) what led the author to Catholicism...
...some are filled with gratitude and others are narcissistic...
...Not all the Jester's lines hit their target...
...This diversity is not, unfortunately, a mirror of the wider church...
...Some blogs are geographically rooted: "an opinionated conservative Catholic chica living in San Diego" offers Molly's Musings, and Mere Catholics is the work of "real live Catholics in the backwoods of Canada...
...Some are irenic, some vituperative...
...The tenor of a site can frequently be ascertained from its title or tag line—The Fifth Column ("Orthodox Catholic commentary on current events"), Magisterial Fidelity, Against the Grain (authored by the man who maintains the Cardinal Ratzinger Fan Club...
...Not surprisingly, there are several blogs by converts...
...But there is no sign that the challenges immigration poses are ready to subside...
...When one talks about immigration, one talks about many things at once: economic viability, national identity, inter-national relations, religion, history, public policy, and a nation's current well-being and hopes for the future...
...Curiously, women religious are absent from St...
...Blog's has an official proofreader, Nihil Obstat ("Don't ask for the facts unless you want the truth") who corrects both grammar and improperly formed Web addresses...
...It was assumed (naively) that this would be a limited, short-lived arrangement, but immigrants who have materially bettered themselves naturally want to stay...
...Blog's Parish—the moniker applied to the loose collection of Catholic blogs...
...Not all bloggers have the erudition, prudence, and intelligence of a Frank Sheed or a Maisie Ward...
...Human nature is so faulty that it can resist any amount of grace and most of the time it does...
...of note is the Shrine of the Holy Whapping by "Catholic nerds" at Notre Dame...
...Blog's, with some exceptions, tilts decidedly to the conservative side of the Catholic culture wars...
...Historically, the Dutch have had much experience dealing with immigrant infusions (often religious exiles and, more recently, political), and they also have a strong tradition of broad-based societal cooperation for the common good...
...s a librarian and information specialist, I have a professional interest in the social aspects of the Internet, particularly its use by activists (of several political stripes) and those who lack access to conventional forums of public debate...
...Commonweal 1 I February 27, 2004...
...NetLingo: The Internet Dictionary defines a blog as "a frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links...a mixture of what is happening in a per-son's life and what is happening on the Web, a kind of hybrid diary/guide site...
...Given that their generation has little fear of technology, numerous college students maintain blogs...
...Beyond extending the invitation to come, the Dutch took a low-key approach to assimilation...
...Catholic blogdom is a predominantly lay phenomenon, and many, if not most, bloggers are married people and parents...
...BLOG'S CHURCH America's most vibrant parish...
...First-, second-, and even third-generation Muslim immigrants do not have the same sensitivity to the history of Jews in Europe as do other Europeans...
...Most blogs allow readers to comment on postings, so dialogue and debate become a part of the reader's experience...
...What should be done about the rising tension between Muslims and Jews...
...regrettably, in this electronic parish rack, Commonweal is less visible than Crisis and First Things...
...How does one tackle issues such as street crime and potential terrorism without pigeonholing ethnic or religious groups...
...How far can religious symbols and values be allowed to penetrate secularized institutions...
...The Dutch are asking themselves many questions...
...Gen-X Revert brings "random stuff from a Catholic Long Islander" and a Catholic in Minnesota offers his take on "the current state of Catholicism in the world, the United States, and the Archdiocese of Minneapolis-St...
...The Dutch, unlike the French, are not considering general public-school restrictions on headscarves...
...Bloggers take advantage of the Internet's characteristic strengths—openness, low cost, and autonomy (read: no editors)—to engage in what in this case A Commonweal I 0 February 27, 2004 was previously a specialized ministry...
...She was senior information analyst at the search engine Northern Light from 1996 to 2003...
...There are other ways to respond to the erosion of certainty...
...Can immigrant populations be spread out geographically in the future...
...Blogging is analogous to the street preaching of the Catholic Evidence Guild...
...Dominican student Dismas offers reflections at Stealing Heaven and still another anonymous Dominican orates in Effectus Geminus—Double Effect...
...My Web surfing is usually guided by serendipity and, six months ago, I was delighted to discover Peter Nixon's excellent blog, Sursum Corda (an insightful Catholic blog that eschews extremism in any direction...
...This is not unlike checking out the publication rack in the back of a church...
...Many immigrants stay on the dole and never learn to speak Dutch, while the cultural difference presented by religious adherence to Islam is turning out to be at least as hard to overcome as earlier differences between Catholics and Protestants...
...Rachelle Linner, a librarian, lives in Boston...
...If only she'd had a blog...
...The segment of the Internet that fosters this kind of dynamic grass-roots effort is powered by e-mail and includes listservs, bulletin-board discussion groups, and weblogs (better known as blogs...
...Blogs allow for anonymity, which cloak a Benedictine's sermons (Sir Monk's Sermons) and a seminarian's "frequent musings...as he learns to be another Christ" in Alter Christus...
...The number of anti-Semitic incidents is rising, and Orthodox Jews in Amsterdam are feeling increasingly threatened...
...Timothy P. Schilling emigrated from the United States to the Netherlands...
...Gas-par del Bufalo and the Spirituality of the Precious Blood...
...The best of these are reverent with gratitude...
Vol. 131 • February 2004 • No. 4
