Curious Case of Lenten Blogger

CMR fave Erin Manning has a bee in her bonnet. Erin takes issue with the annual festival of Catholic bloggers who give up blogging (reading and/or writing) for lent.

She says she understands why some people may do this but this is not, in her mind, a panacea for the distracted Catholic. She probably has a point. She spends a few paragraphs talking about ugly chicks wearing no makeup (I am not really sure what that is about?), but sums up her point.

Spending too much time reading novels can distract us from God. Surrounding ourselves with people who admire us can foster pride. Being the first person to sign up for every parish ministry opportunity can feed a disordered desire for attention. Spending hours on the phone each day can get in the way of our attentive living of our proper vocations. Any kind of human contact can create situations which involve hurt feelings. And almost any sort of hobby can have the sense of being removed from the real world (e.g., what good is stamp collecting, etc.?) but that doesn’t make them worthless.

Since it is now clear to me that Matthew and I can be bad and distracted Catholics whether we are blogging or not, so a blogging we will go. Besides, we have some work to do. An anonymous commenter left this encouraging little note for us today on a post about the Oscars of all things.

I can no longer follow this blog. You are all a little too extreme. Hollywood does not celebrate, for instance, the cannibal hannibal lecter. It celebrates the tremendous performance in acting that Anthony Hopkins gave us in that role.

Thank you for all the good insights that you used to provide. Unfortunately, the tone of this blog has turned for the worse.

As another commenter pointed out, we routinely write absolutely nonsensical and absurd things on this site, but is was Matthew’s lamentation that there aren’t good and noble characters like Atticus Finch winning the actors the statue but typically characters of dubious character and a great deal of dysfunction that is the last straw for this person. Go figure. So Matthew and I cannot give up blogging now, we have many many more readers to drive away before our job is done.

So what will we give up for Lent? Erin Manning mentioned that the wonderful Francis Beckwith is giving up blogging for lent. Therefore, Matthew and I have decided to give up reading Francis Beckwith for Lent. That way we can join all the other cool bloggers giving up blogging this Lenten season.

Anyway, back to blogging now. We have a lot more readers to drive away and if we do our job right hopefully by next Lent no one will notice when we give up blogging.