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This article by Rachelle Linner is in the Feb. 27th, 2004 edition of Commonweal and mentions Gen X Revert. One interesting thing mentioned is that, while there are priests and brothers blogging, there is not one woman religious. I would love to see one of the nuns in a good, vibrant order blogging (Dominicans of Nashville, Daughters of St. Paul, Mother Angelica's order, etc... The closest we have is Barbara Nicolosi of Church of the Masses as she was with the Daughters of St. Paul for awhile. The modern nuns of course are too busy smearing blood on missile sites and praying to the Four Winds. Perhaps the Curt Jester might create a "blog by a modern sister"!

My first thought on reading this column was that I had read it before. It had the standard notion of blogs being tilted toward the "conservative", rather than "orthodox", but either way it is true. The author gives the standard line: blogs are "conservative" or "traditionalist" and therefore "cynical", "judgmental" and "corrosive". This type of thinking is why Commonweal does not have the growing readership that First Things, Crisis, etc.. have. "Liberal" Catholicism is truly a dead end road, offering nothing different from liberal secularism. The few blogs that offer this are reactionary and simply contrarian to the dominant blog outlook. Any new idea or reform is shot down by those who fear a return to "the pre-Vatican II" way. This article is simply the latest in a tiring litany of writings by people whining of the "traditionalism" of Catholics today. Mel's movie brought this stuff to a fever pitch. The attempt by Catholic bloggers and other Catholics to reconnect with their tradition and culture is a positive thing that has been trampled on by too many within the Church. The author of the article ends with a quote from Flannery O'Connor that is meant for the "conservative" or "traditionalist" bloggers but which applies equally to the author and the Commonweal readers:

"Human nature is so faulty that it can resist any amount of grace and most of the time it does"

I would suggest that many a grace has been resisted by Catholics over the past 30 years - including those who equate "traditionalist" with negative and corrosive.