Another blogger wrote yesterday that blogging this past week was slow. That was the case here too, but it was not because there was nothing to blog about or I was going through kind of self-doubt. On Wednesday, my 8 year old Lenova Thinkpad R61 fried, it truly did its best with Windows 10. Now that I have my fancy new Lenova Ideapad, we're back on track.
When I began this blog back in February 2006, it was to post the music list and liturgical information for the choir and any interested parishioners at my territorial parish in Toronto where I had begun a choir. After a while, as I read a few other blogs, Father Z and the New Liturgical Movement specifically, I came to realise more about how blogs worked, how we could communicate and learn from one another, and on a personal level, how a blog could also be an outlet for ones thoughts about the issues facing the Church and the broader culture. The nature of my posts and writing gradually took on a different theme. To be truthful, it also provided an outlet, if the Catholic paper would not print my letters, then I would. If the call or email to the bishop was ignored, there was another option.
Under Pope Benedict XVI (I do not accept the title, "Emeritus"), blogging was pretty straightforward. We had a Pope we loved and whom we saw working on a restoration, We accepted his "hermeneutic of continuity." and we went about our work. I wrote about liturgy and other matters and stood with the Pope and the Bishops in the matter of the new Missal for the modernist rite and worked to promote the "extraordinary form." In fact, I worked weekly in both, as some of you will recall.
In February and March 2013, all that changed. Two years later, in 2015, I faced a major challenge because of my work here and that is recalled permanently to the immediate left. With the prayers of you, a certain Cardinal, a certain Bishop and many priests, I emerged from that scandalous and repugnant episode. People offered thousands of dollars to aid my fight. Make no mistake, the persecution against me has continued behind the scenes, but they will not succeed.
There has been a cost to this blog. There has never been a request for money, unlike some others. I've been threatened with a lawsuit, received countless harassing emails, other threats of which I cannot speak and the loss of friendships from hypocrites who ate my food, accepted my hospitality but can't stomach the truth.
My job here has been to wake up Catholics and through that, in whatever small way, help people understand and get through this dark crisis in the Church.
Some may take an approach that we should no longer report on the harrowing episodes of those who have infiltrated the Church to destroy Her and your faith. They would rather now take a more passive approach and speak of butterflies and meadows and all things bright and beautiful as if doing otherwise has played in to the hands of the enemy. I understand the emotions that lead one to want to walk in the meadow. I do not accept that it is what we need to do. I won't be throwing in the towel, I will use it to wipe the sweat from my brow and trust that God will give me the fortitude to get in for another round.
No doubt, the enemy is well pleased at the throwing in of the towel by those who have such an incredible reach. After all, hundreds of thousands of visitors a month can now just look at little kittens, they're so soft and furry.