To B(log) or not to B(log) ...

Since my last post, and since emerging from the busy-ness of marking examination scripts and the end of the school year, and having returned from a very enjoyable eight days in Scotland, and having rescued myself from the one or two jobs I should really have done before going to Scotland rather than after coming back, I have been pondering the question of whether or not to resume blogging.

A number of the comments on my last post suggest that my reappearing in the blogosphere would be appreciated. I do think that the sense of those comments - about thoughtfulness and balance - is correct, and reflects what I aimed to achieve when blogging. I do miss the impulse for study and writing that arises from having a blog.

Given the content of my last post, though, I am still left with the question of what sorts of things I will be willing to blog about. Should I leave some topics alone, Liturgy perhaps being the most obvious one to avoid? I have not really come to a full answer to this question, having only reached the point that it might be useful to rationalise and therefore limit the number of post labels that I use, thereby providing some boundaries to the topics about which I will post.

Related to this is the question of what I should include in the sidebars to the blog. I haven't really come up with any rationale about this, though some editing is likely.

A first go at some principles I might well follow as I resume the keyboard:

1. I will want to engage in dialogue, both internally to the life of the Church and externally with issues arising outside of the Church. Put in another way, this is to say that I don't want to just talk to those who agree with me but want to offer a discussion to those who don't. This is something that I gain from my knowledge of the charism of the Focolare Movement.

2. Some might be keen to find the imperfections in them, but I believe that the fundamentally correct  attitude towards the teaching (and, indeed, the events) of the Second Vatican Council, of the pontificates of Pope Paul VI and of Pope John Paul II, is that they should be received as gifts to the Church to be valued and explored. The addresses of Pope John Paul I during his short pontificate are strikingly similar to those of Pope Benedict XVI during the early weeks of his pontificate, which is quite striking. The thesis that, during my own lifetime, the Church has been given precisely the Popes that she needed at precisely the times they were needed, is one that intrigues me.

3. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is the reference point for the content of Catholic teaching. This is really a consequence of the second point above. That this is the measure of faith expected of those joining the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham highlights this point for the whole of the Catholic Church. As Pope John Paul II said in the Apostolic Constitution ordering the publication of the Catechism:

I declare it [the Catechism] to be a sure norm for teaching the faith and thus a valid and legitimate instrument for ecclesial communion.

4. Blogging by definition brings Catholic faith and life into contact with the world at large, and much blogging comment takes place in that space between the Church and the world. There is more to this than just quoting Catholic doctrine, and thinking that that will suffice.

And, meanwhile, there is nearly two months blogging to catch up on!