I really do try to work on my humility, and then I remember I’m a blogger.
Eric Sammons of the blog The Divine Life and recent author of Who Is Jesus Christ? Unlocking the Mystery in the Gospel of Matthew has updated his list of the Most Popular Catholic Blogs.
His metric for this list is the number of subscribers to the RSS feed of a blog as per Google Reader.
Third, after running the program last time, a few people noted that there were some discrepancies between their Google subscriber number and what I posted. This happened in a few cases where Google’s “default” feed for a blog was different than the main feed for the blog. The most egregious case was The Curt Jester, who wasn’t even on the list last time (having only 14 subscribers in his “default” feed), but is #4 now (with over 4,800 subscribers). Mark Shea’s blog also was effected by this discrepancy. I tried very hard to find any of these “missing” feeds and incorporate them into the updated list, but it is possible I missed a few again.
Thanks Eric.
No doubt some more tweaking is needed since I am pretty sure American Papist gets more traffic than my blog. But there will be no perfect ordered list and the order is not as important as a solid listing of popular Catholic blogs.
Thankfully to help prevent cranial swelling due to bursting ego the Pope has some wise words in his recent message “Truth, Proclamation and Authenticity of Life in the Digital Age.”
The task of witnessing to the Gospel in the digital era calls for everyone to be particularly attentive to the aspects of that message which can challenge some of the ways of thinking typical of the web. First of all, we must be aware that the truth which we long to share does not derive its worth from its “popularity” or from the amount of attention it receives. We must make it known in its integrity, instead of seeking to make it acceptable or diluting it. It must become daily nourishment and not a fleeting attraction. The truth of the Gospel is not something to be consumed or used superficially; rather it is a gift that calls for a free response. Even when it is proclaimed in the virtual space of the web, the Gospel demands to be incarnated in the real world and linked to the real faces of our brothers and sisters, those with whom we share our daily lives. Direct human relations always remain fundamental for the transmission of the faith!
Amen to that!
