Catholic Blog Awards 2007

A couple weeks ago I was making my rounds on various blogs and noticed that CatholicAnarchy.org had received a vote on this year’s Catholic Blog Awards, in the “Best Political/Social Commentary Catholic Blog” category. Thanks to whoever you are who voted.

When I scanned through the “big winners” of this year’s awards, I was unsurprised. There are, of course, what might be called the “big three” Catholic blogs in terms of popularity. All of them are basically apologetics bloggers, two of whom have absolutely no credentials to do that sort of thing. Not that I would insist that Catholics have some theological training in order to blog, apologetically or otherwise… Despite my current work on a doctorate in theology and my intention to become an academic theologian, I am definitely of the mind that all Christians are theologians and agree with the theologies of liberation when they rightly critique theological elitism. But what I have a problem with is people setting themselves up as authorities on subjects when they do not, in fact, have the training to do so, and an even bigger problem with the fact that so many seem to fall for their version of Catholicism. And I simply cannot stand the tone with which they write.

The rest of the nominees of these Catholic Blog Awards, I have to say, are absolutely disappointing. I did not investigate all of them, as my stomach couldn’t take it, but the vast majority of Catholic blogs, at least according to this sampling, are some of the most mindless, hateful, right-wing blogs I have ever seen, and despite their claims to the contrary, most have little actual knowledge of Catholic teaching or history on any number of subjects they rant about, whether it be homosexuality, war, liturgical practice, etc. The Catholic blogosphere is in a tremendously bad, embarrassing state compared to the representatives I have seen from other Christian churches.

Of course, there are exceptions. I have been impressed by TCR News Musings for a while now, and link to it often. dotCommonweal, of course, is well done and attracts a wide variety of people which makes for some engaging discussions. I’ve also been impressed with two newer blogs (at least I think they are new): The Lamb and the Dragon and Evangelical Catholicism. There are others I’m probably forgetting, but these are four that I check almost daily. Each of these four received some votes on this blog awards thing, but not nearly as many as they should have.

Please prove me wrong and suggest some Catholic blogs I should be reading.