Catholicism and Blogging

 So I unpublished most of my posts yesterday because I hit upon the rather difficult question of whether a blog needs an imprimatur; which is a question that really only a Catholic would be inclined to ask or acted upon; so until I found an answer which satisfied me, I temporarily returned my posts to drafts. I have now republished them. 

The answer I've come to comes from this post from the national Catholic register. The answer, as filtered through my understanding of things, is this: blogs are web logs, they are diary-like posts whose nature is more like a digital pub or living room or town square or such like, they are not textbooks or anything like that; as such, to think they would 'need' something like an imprimatur (indeed, could even possibly ' have' such a thing) is simply wrongheaded. The Catholic Church will either present itself in the public square, or will have other people present itself for her, and those other people will likely not do so as well as loyal Catholics. Loyal Catholics may yet make mistakes, but that's inevitable, but at the very least we have greater motivation to get things right, and since this is more akin to an engaging in a private or public conversation, rather than an engaging in something like a teaching position or such like and claiming to have any authority on the topic of what the Church teaches, then it seems we wouldn't need such a thing as an imprimatur anyway. 

There are other aspects to the line of reasoning here, but I think I'll leave the topic here. Simply to note that this is, in truth, a blog; a web log, an engagement in public discourse, I do not claim to have the authority to teach Catholic teaching; I can and will defend it to the best of my understanding of it, and in such a defense I will strive to make copious references to actually authoritative and authoritatively approved documents on the issue, so as to back up my defenses with authority; but I am not myself an authority on the issue; at least not presently, whether or not I shall become one some day is in God's hands.


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