Fr Finigan's Talk
As advertised earlier, Fr Tim Finigan visited the parish last night to give an excellent talk on Richard Dawkins and the existence of God. He was accompanied by Mulier Fortis. There were over 50 parishioners present, partly because Stations of the Cross immediately preceded - in fact one member of the audience confessed that he had never heard of Dawkins before coming to the talk, so I hope he won't be inspired to rush out and read The God Delusion!
The dúnadan was also present and so the four bloggers posed for photos (as seen above) and then dined at a lively little restaurant on Newington Green - a splendid meal, even including complementary glasses of calvados! The talk was part of the parish's William Lockhart Circle programme and the blogosphere is certainly proving useful in finding speakers - the next talk at Kingsland will be given by 'Auntie' Joanna Bogle on 4th May.
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posted by Fr Nicholas at 9:17 am
8 Comments:
I'm relieved you identified mulier fortis. For a moment I thought you had an Anglican woman priest present.
I'm afraid I had the same thought. Must have been a fun evening, though.
There is something really weird about this blogging world. I only look at the Catholic blogs from time to time but what shocks me is how unintentionally self-revealing they are. The bloggers frequently emerge as really nasty people riding hobby horses, obsessed with self-promotion and single issues; they don't appear to have much idea how they come across. I now have severely modified views on people I once admired and can understand why they are unpopular in a wider world. I don't mean you, Fr Nicholas. Your historical and antiquarian postings fascinate me and you are never tendentious. I don't need to look at these sites but they have led me to reconsider my position in relation to conservative Catholicism. My beliefs have not changed but I am not sure whether I want any longer to be identified with it among my friends, given the types who promote it, old, middle-aged or young. I hope I am not becoming pharisaical.
Patrick - thanks for your comment and your kind remarks about this blog.
In defence of the blogosphere, I think bloggers can be misunderstood - by their very nature, blogs are going to be quite personal and self-revealing. They are, basically, on-line journals. But just because bloggers might write about their own (possibly quite dull!) lives and hobby-horses, doesn't mean necessarily that they're self-promoting or 'nasty.'
Of course, there are exceptions but the bloggers I know are well-intentioned and hope to do something in spreading Christ's Gospel, even if they do this imperfectly. I know lots of people who have found blogs helpful.
There is much more to the Catholic Church than the Catholic blogosphere! If you don't find blogs helpful, then you don't need to visit them, as you say!
Fr Nicholas, it was great to meet at last, and thank you for an entertaining evening...
(Anon and Jeffrey, sorry for the heart failure which must have been induced at the misapprehension! I nearly always wear black, but I hadn't realised anyone could mistake me for a "priest"!!)
Glad you like it!
At the risk of promoting self...
If you go here Father
http://simon-peter-says.blogspot.com/search/label/Richard%20Dawkins.
or here in tiny url form
http://tinyurl.com/2wbsxr
there are a couple of posts, especially the first one, loaded with links to Richard Dawkins videos and related matters.
As I may well be one of those nasty bloggers with an uncle Toby-like obsession, *if* you think these posts contain information that is useful might I ask you not to publish this comment or the link to my blog but simply copy and post the Dawkins links without attribution.
Funnily enough, the second post also contains a commment on the likes of Father Maloney, the biblical "expert."
I so agree with Patrick.
I thought the Catholic bolgs were a really good source of information when I first discovered them. As I'm researching at Postgraduate level I visited often. But I became increasingly alarmed by their conservativism and firightened by the often abusive, rude or nasty comments in the comment boxes.
I take your point about 'on-line journals' but I think it goes further than that. I think it can take the form of selective on-line networking which is not very user friendly.
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